# Warp 9 motor: What are you using for max amps?



## major (Apr 4, 2008)

jtgreeson said:


> I just got my conversion on the road and am tweaking the settings on my Zilla. What are folks using as a "max motor amps" for the WarP 9 motor? The Zilla, Soliton, some Curtis, and other controllers can push fairly high amps. I've experimented with 200 to 500 amps. I like the performance increase and am tempted to go higher. I believe the WarP 9 can take 1000 amps for 20 sec, 450 amps for 5 min. I've read Otmar's FAQ on settings. Thanks for any comments!


Hi jtg,

I don't know from experience on this particular motor, but I'd I advise to keep it set low (like 300 amps) for the first few hundred miles to break in the motor. Maybe do moderate driving at normal currents for stretches. That is to seat the motor brushes and lay down a film on the comm. Then increase the current limit setting maybe a 100 amps at a step for 50 to 100 miles and work your way up to that 1000 amp magic.

Socking it to a new motor will just overheat the brush contact surface and not allow a proper commutator film to establish. This promotes rapid brush dusting and brush/comm wear. I know you are tempted to give it all it's got and have fun. But in the interest of a long lived and happy motor, take easy at first 

Regards,

major


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## jtgreeson (Aug 14, 2009)

Major, Thanks for that advice.


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## Qer (May 7, 2008)

1000 Amps for 20 seconds can work, but you'll be pushing your luck:






We've (ok, Tesseract has) been running several 1000 Amp runs while testing the Soliton 1 and the light show you can see in the motor is a build up towards flash over, and then it's time to call someone for some towing help.

After every 1000 Amp run you need to run the motor at low current (200-300 Amps if I remember correctly) for several minutes for the brushes to set again, otherwise you'll start the next 1000 Amp run with scorched brushes which probably will lead to flash over and disaster.

If you run 1000 Amps at low RPM the motor won't get properly cooled and then it'll flash over faster, so if you're using direct drive you should consider adding a blower. If you don't, the motor might lock up and that can happen at rather low Amps, easily below 500 Amps if you never go above 2000 RPM which isn't unlikely at direct drive or unmodified automatic transmissions.

We've managed to zorch a few motors (various brands) and I think it's safe to say that our conclusion is that 9" and 1000 Amp is a slightly unbalanced combination...


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## The Toecutter (May 30, 2010)

I've heard that the WarP 9" motors start arcing at 170V(*if* their timing is adjusted properly, otherwise its even less), but Netgain rates them at 192V. Can they really handle 192V?

I'd much rather have a 192V/600A maximum than a 170V/1000A maximum, simply because I want more power in the upper end of the RPM band to increase top speed and passing ability on the highway.


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## Tesseract (Sep 27, 2008)

The Toecutter said:


> I've heard that the WarP 9" motors start arcing at 170V(*if* their timing is adjusted properly, otherwise its even less), but Netgain rates them at 192V. Can they really handle 192V?


Arcing/zorching seems to depend more on the total power delivered by the motor than just the voltage or amperage. IIRC, the above video showed the motor running at ~2000 rpm, 1000A but only ~100V. Our dyno maxes out at 3500 rpm (the pump starts cavitating) so testing at double the voltage and half the current isn't possible, but I could do a similar 100kW run at ~3000 rpm (~150V) and 667A. 



The Toecutter said:


> I'd much rather have a 192V/600A maximum than a 170V/1000A maximum, simply because I want more power in the upper end of the RPM band to increase top speed and passing ability on the highway.


We've come to a similar conclusion and are acting on it. A 300V/500 controller priced at or just above a Curtis 1231C should be a real winner for smaller, but still highway-capable, conversions.

We get lots of requests for a lower voltage but still 1000A version of the Soliton1, but the industrial IGBT modules - and the film capacitors - we use don't really come in a lower voltage rating, so there's no opportunity for us to reduce the parts cost in that direction. Additionally, at least one motor manufacturer - Kostov - makes motors wound for higher voltage at a lower amperage (neutrally timed) so this seems like a good direction to go all the way around.


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## The Toecutter (May 30, 2010)

Tesseract said:


> We've come to a similar conclusion and are acting on it. A 300V/500 controller priced at or just above a Curtis 1231C should be a real winner for smaller, but still highway-capable, conversions.


Unless Netgain makes a WarP 9" HV version of their motor or someone pays a hefty sum for a motor re-wind(maybe the 9" Kostov can handle high voltages perhaps), I don't see this having a whole lot of advantages, given that you can already set a current limit with a Zilla 1k HV, although I suppose the cost of this controller would be much lower than a Zilla given the components you could use.

This would go good with a Netgain WarP 11" HV, OTOH. You could have modest torque that won't destroy your transmission/CV joints, but still have impressive max horsepower, and likely, a perfectly flat torque curve all the way to redline. That would be fun and now your EV would no longer be limited to a 90-100 mph top speed due to running out of power too early, and you'd be able to careen down the highway at speeds appropriate for baiting Corvettes and Porsches without nearly as much worry of your motor over-heating.


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## electrabishi (Mar 11, 2008)

I don't know guys. I saw your video a while back but I haven't followed the threads on it. It just seems to me there may be something wrong with your motor for it to arc like that. What voltage are you seeing across the commutator when you get to that arcing point? I typically don't run the WarP9 in my truck over 170V.

I agree with Major about taking it easy on the initial break in. On the Mitsubishi I did just about like he said for the break in period. However since then I can and do routinely run the 1000 amp limit on the controller. I do not get any arcing on the motor and the comm is looking real good according to Jim Husted.

In doing a series of 5 or 6 zero to 60 mph "full power" runs for data gathering purposes the motor does not get significantly hot. Warm yes, but not painful to touch.

Those motors are pretty tough and in fact we jam 2000 amps through them as well in drag racing the Pinto. So basically what I'm saying is that, if everything is set up right, and all the parts are in good repair, a Zilla 1K will not hurt a WarP9 motor. As long as you do not exceed voltage and rpm limits those motors will take the current. Typically in my case the batteries will get pulled down from over exertion before the motor gets too hot to touch.

Mike


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## electrabishi (Mar 11, 2008)

The Toecutter said:


> Unless Netgain makes a WarP 9" HV version of their motor or someone pays a hefty sum for a motor re-wind(maybe the 9" Kostov can handle high voltages perhaps), I don't see this having a whole lot of advantages, given that you can already set a current limit with a Zilla 1k HV, although I suppose the cost of this controller would be much lower than a Zilla given the components you could use.
> 
> This would go good with a Netgain WarP 11" HV, OTOH. You could have modest torque that won't destroy your transmission/CV joints, but still have impressive max horsepower, and likely, a perfectly flat torque curve all the way to redline. That would be fun and now your EV would no longer be limited to a 90-100 mph top speed due to running out of power too early, and you'd be able to careen down the highway at speeds appropriate for baiting Corvettes and Porsches without nearly as much worry of your motor over-heating.


It doesn't hurt to have a higher voltage controller as long as you can limit the motor voltage. In fact I run the 300V version of the Z1K in my truck. Being able to have a higher pack voltage allows you to potentially run smaller wires.


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## Bowser330 (Jun 15, 2008)

Tesseract said:


> Arcing/zorching seems to depend more on the total power delivered by the motor than just the voltage or amperage. IIRC, the above video showed the motor running at ~2000 rpm, 1000A but only ~100V. Our dyno maxes out at 3500 rpm (the pump starts cavitating) so testing at double the voltage and half the current isn't possible, but I could do a similar 100kW run at ~3000 rpm (~150V) and 667A.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


So you have mentioned before that the max power out of a 9" motor is 100kw...something about the relationship to the motors physical mass... Do you have any estimation on the max power out of an 11" or 13" motor? 

Your post is right on the money...the goal is to make max power, which is pulling the highest torque/amps possible at the highest rpm possible...the key to all of this seems to be higher voltage.


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## Qer (May 7, 2008)

electrabishi said:


> What voltage are you seeing across the commutator when you get to that arcing point?


Around 100 Volt, 1000 Amps for up to 20 seconds. It can probably be maintained for longer than that, but we don't know since the goal of the test was to see if the controller could stand the load rather than seeing how long it took to blow up a WarP...



electrabishi said:


> Those motors are pretty tough and in fact we jam 2000 amps through them as well in drag racing the Pinto.


For a brief moment and at rather low voltages, yes. I'd guess that you see (close to) 2kA for maybe 3-4 seconds and with a motor Voltage that doesn't get much higher than 100 Volt, maybe 150 Volt peak, then motor current will start to drop because you're going too fast. 



electrabishi said:


> So basically what I'm saying is that, if everything is set up right, and all the parts are in good repair, a Zilla 1K will not hurt a WarP9 motor.


Wanna see my logs of how to kill a 9"-motor with a Soliton 1? It's been done a few times.


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## Tesseract (Sep 27, 2008)

The Toecutter said:


> Unless Netgain makes a WarP 9" HV version of their motor or someone pays a hefty sum for a motor re-wind(maybe the 9" Kostov can handle high voltages perhaps),


Well, the Kostov motors are all neutrally timed and wound for a higher operating voltage so it is not a matter of "can" they handle high voltages, rather, that they actually prefer them to higher amps. See for yourself at:

http://kostov-motors.com/tractionmo.../seriesdcmotorsforelectricvehicleconversions/




The Toecutter said:


> I don't see this having a whole lot of advantages, given that you can already set a current limit with a Zilla 1k HV, although I suppose the cost of this controller would be much lower than a Zilla given the components you could use.


Well, even I admit this is a diminishing returns kind of thing - it's not like cutting the amps in half cuts the cost in half... more like by maybe 1/3rd - but large conversion shops and small OEMs (e.g. - Meyers, GEM) need the controller to come in at much lower price than a Soliton1/Zilla Z1KHV. It may not be something that you want, but I assure you it is something quite desired by the aforementioned customers.

Conversely, an even higher power controller is what DIY'ers are always asking about, but given that Otmar - by his own admission - is still sitting on a bunch of Z2Ks that were built _last summer_ you can probably understand why we haven't bothered making a similar offering ourselves...


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## Tesseract (Sep 27, 2008)

electrabishi said:


> I don't know guys. I saw your video a while back but I haven't followed the threads on it. It just seems to me there may be something wrong with your motor for it to arc like that. What voltage are you seeing across the commutator when you get to that arcing point? I typically don't run the WarP9 in my truck over 170V.


Well, we've experienced this sparking with _four_ different WarP 9's on our dyno so far... I confess we did not break in any of them in the way major suggests above as we don't really have the battery pack capacity on our dyno to do that, but if it stops us from slagging motors then it is certainly worth doubling the pack capacity for that reason alone.



electrabishi said:


> In doing a series of 5 or 6 zero to 60 mph "full power" runs for data gathering purposes the motor does not get significantly hot. Warm yes, but not painful to touch.


I think the thermal inertia of the motor is way too high to see a meaningful rise on the case after a 5-6 second run. That said, you might noticed that the sparking definitely gets worse as time goes by in the above video. The temperature of the brushes/commutator clearly has some effect on when/if zorching occurs so we have mounted an infrared pyrometer on the WarP 9 in the Volvo V70 to see just hot the commutator gets. Should be very interesting data and not something anyone else has investigated so far as I can tell.



electrabishi said:


> Those motors are pretty tough and in fact we jam 2000 amps through them as well in drag racing the Pinto. So basically what I'm saying is that, if everything is set up right, and all the parts are in good repair, a Zilla 1K will not hurt a WarP9 motor. As long as you do not exceed voltage and rpm limits those motors will take the current....


I agree they are pretty tough. Putting 100kW into a motor with a 1 hour rating of maybe 20kW is certainly impressive in my book, but they can't take an "infinite" amount of power.

Furthermore, per my request to the NEDRA group I have received log files from several drag strip runs (none from you, though, Mike... ahem...) and 2K amps is rarely seen and never maintained for long. The average power, in fact, being delivered to the *two* motors is 300-400hp, or 150-200hp each, and this is only for 10-12 seconds... that's not too much higher than what we are pushing into the motor in the video (~134hp)!

So, the question posed by the OP is can you set motor amps to 1000A for a WarP 9 motor and a Zilla Z1k? Sure you can.

Our experience with water-cooled Soliton1's supplied by high capacity lithium battery packs is that you _can't_. 

In fact, this really points to an insufficiency with relying on individual limits for amps, kW, volts, etc... rather than what the motor really cares about, which is i²t. We are working on implementing an i²t limiting algorithm now, but figuring out a good value for the short term overload time based on a known, and valid, 60 minute rating is very difficult, and will likely prove to be very costly (ie - more slagged motors ahead!).


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## jtgreeson (Aug 14, 2009)

Jeffery, Mike, Qer, others.... Great info, thanks. After being a new guy in this diy EV hobby for only 9 months I am amazed at the both the mountain of great information as well as the big gaps in knowledge. One would think that good guidance for the WarP 9 would be available by now. Thanks to everyone for the input, I've got a few data points that I can use. The I2T idea might be best but not available to me. I'm still searching for what's a good Amp and Volt limit to set for this motor. 

At this point I'm leaning towards limits of 150 volts and 600 amps after I break in the motor and batteries. I'm looking for max performance within reason for my vehicle and it looks like the motor is the limiting factor. (Zilla Z1K lv, 160volt 180ah LiFePO4 pack) With that setting I'll use max acceleration with some caution, limiting it to 20 sec or less at a time. It looks like others' experiences affirm that the motor can briefly take more that the 450amp/5 min limitation that Netgain has published with no long term damage. That puts me up to something less that 100Kw where damage was done. This is also close to what Otmar recommended in the FAQ's for the Zilla. Anyone with another viewpoint? Should it be lower? 

It would be great to find a consensus to be available for everyone using this motor.


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## electrabishi (Mar 11, 2008)

Tesseract said:


> Well, we've experienced this sparking with _four_ different WarP 9's on our dyno so far... I confess we did not break in any of them in the way major suggests above as we don't really have the battery pack capacity on our dyno to do that, but if it stops us from slagging motors then it is certainly worth doubling the pack capacity for that reason alone.


Then it is likely this is the cause for all that sparking, and if in fact you burnt up brush rigging then it likely could have been avoided.




Tesseract said:


> I agree they are pretty tough. Putting 100kW into a motor with a 1 hour rating of maybe 20kW is certainly impressive in my book, but they can't take an "infinite" amount of power.
> 
> Furthermore, per my request to the NEDRA group I have received log files from several drag strip runs (none from you, though, Mike... ahem...) and 2K amps is rarely seen and never maintained for long. The average power, in fact, being delivered to the *two* motors is 300-400hp, or 150-200hp each, and this is only for 10-12 seconds... that's not too much higher than what we are pushing into the motor in the video (~134hp)!


Sure they can't take infinite power. But to find a valid limit on what they can take I think you should properly seat those brushes before abusing your motors some more.  Jim had me re-seat the brushes on our last blown up motor with a Comm stone. Their cost is insignificant and it only took me an hour to seat the brushes running with the motor directly connected to a 12V deep cycle battery. 

And too I have posted my data in places (I just can't remember where all those places are  ) If you are on the NEDRA Group you can go to the Files section and I have the info on the Dyno runs posted. I will put a link here in case it might happen to work for you. I will go through tonight and find the posting s I have done of a few of our on track runs. I do admit the 2000 amp number is only reached briefly. And in parallel mode the 2000 amps is then split between each motor. But you can do an average power on the data I have and it will likely be over 150HP. In fact I believe I did this once with the Mitsubishi (will have to go look that data up) and I think on average over a 0-60mph run the average electrical power to the motor (with the Z1K) was 180HP, may have been peak but that was years ago so let me go look that up. Here's the links to the Dyno runs (I know they are messy links  )

Mike

http://f1.grp.yahoofs.com/v1/0BcITE...yno_Results/Crazyhorse_Pinto_DAQ4_06AUG08.pdf

http://f1.grp.yahoofs.com/v1/0BcITL...ults/Crazyhorse_Pinto_Dyno_Output_06AUG08.pdf

http://f1.grp.yahoofs.com/v1/0BcITC...esults/Crazyhorse_Pinto_HP_Torque_06AUG08.pdf


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## Tesseract (Sep 27, 2008)

electrabishi said:


> Then it is likely this is the cause for all that sparking, and if in fact you burnt up brush rigging then it likely could have been avoided.


Hmmm... Okay. I wouldn't have thought breaking in the brushes would have made that much of difference, but given the relative pain to do it versus slagging another motor, why not try?!?

The Volvo V70 definitely has enough battery pack - 38kWh - to run the motor at 300A for 1 hour. I assume we want to keep RPM above 2000, too, right?



electrabishi said:


> Sure they can't take infinite power. But to find a valid limit on what they can take I think you should properly seat those brushes before abusing your motors some more.


Duly noted... however, you made an interesting, and I suspect inadvertent, observation there... does no one know for sure just how much current for how much time a WarP 9 can take? We know we've exceeded that limit, whatever it is, but only in actual vehicles where the motor current was all over the place and no one was actually looking at the motor, unlike, say, the dyno. 




electrabishi said:


> And too I have posted my data in places (I just can't remember where all those places are  ) If you are on the NEDRA Group you can go to the Files section and I have the info on the Dyno runs posted.


We need the actual raw data from the controllers, not data already put into a graph. This is because we run calculations on it to get average power, Ah consumed, heating effect, etc... Data already in graphical form is useful for seeing trends but not too helpful for extracting really useful information like the above.



electrabishi said:


> I do admit the 2000 amp number is only reached briefly. And in parallel mode the 2000 amps is then split between each motor.


I've been wondering - is it better to run a single 2000A controller and series/parallel shifting of twin motors, or supply each motor with its own 1000A controller? I mean, you lose 0.3 seconds in the shift from s to p with the Zilla's (likely waiting for the contactors to settle down). 



electrabishi said:


> But you can do an average power on the data I have and it will likely be over 150HP.


That seems to match, more or less, the results we are getting, then. Good stuff!


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## electrabishi (Mar 11, 2008)

Tesseract said:


> Hmmm... Okay. I wouldn't have thought breaking in the brushes would have made that much of difference, but given the relative pain to do it versus slagging another motor, why not try?!?


Its not really all that hard. Get a commutator stone and run it back and forth across the commutator in front of each brush while the motor is running on a 12V battery. In about an hour you will take your brushes from 15-20% seated from the factory to the full 100% seat that should be able to handle the large currents you want to torture the motor with. What you did was send them off to war with that dreaded dyno monster with only 1 bullet in their six shooter 



Tesseract said:


> Duly noted... however, you made an interesting, and I suspect inadvertent, observation there... does no one know for sure just how much current for how much time a WarP 9 can take? We know we've exceeded that limit, whatever it is, but only in actual vehicles where the motor current was all over the place and no one was actually looking at the motor, unlike, say, the dyno.


Its all a thermal management problem. Super-cool them and its likely they will take way more than you can throw at them. Drive them around in Phoenix with the front grill covered with an air dam and it may not make it a mile down the road. The comparisons are relative and so you would have to qualify your answers with the conditions of the experiment. 



Tesseract said:


> We need the actual raw data from the controllers, not data already put into a graph.


Noted, I'm trying to dig it all up 



Tesseract said:


> I've been wondering - is it better to run a single 2000A controller and series/parallel shifting of twin motors, or supply each motor with its own 1000A controller? I mean, you lose 0.3 seconds in the shift from s to p with the Zilla's (likely waiting for the contactors to settle down).


In Parallel mode your two scenarios would be equal. You would be getting 1000 amps through each motor. However in Series mode I get (at least initially) 2000 amps through each motor (thats twice the launching torque as the 1000 amps through each motor). Your initial acceleration conditions make a big difference on your final ET.



Tesseract said:


> That seems to match, more or less, the results we are getting, then. Good stuff!


Glad to help, I'll dig up the data I have for all the plots I've posted. I do remember, going back in my box of memories, that some certain Electrabishi data is flawed by a scaling factor on the Battery voltage reported. However nobody was probably using the battery voltage data, but I do believe I made the note of it in the plots for the truck. 

Mike


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## major (Apr 4, 2008)

electrabishi said:


> Its not really all that hard. Get a commutator stone and run it back and forth across the commutator in front of each brush while the motor is running on a 12V battery. In about an hour you will take your brushes from 15-20% seated from the factory to the full 100% seat that should be able to handle the large currents you want to torture the motor with. What you did was send them off to war with that dreaded dyno monster with only 1 bullet in their six shooter


Hi Mike,

Stoning shapes the brushes but does not seat them. To properly seat the brushes, it take time at load. There is a lot of confusion about these terms, shaping, stoning and seating. Motors are usually stoned at the factory. But rarely if ever seated. Seating includes the filming of the commutator. We've been thru this before and had some nice photos posted showing the difference between stoned and seated brush faces. Maybe someone can post up that old thread if they can find it.

major


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## electrabishi (Mar 11, 2008)

major said:


> Hi Mike,
> 
> Stoning shapes the brushes but does not seat them. To properly seat the brushes, it take time at load. There is a lot of confusion about these terms, shaping, stoning and seating. Motors are usually stoned at the factory. But rarely if ever seated. Seating includes the filming of the commutator. We've been thru this before and had some nice photos posted showing the difference between stoned and seated brush faces. Maybe someone can post up that old thread if they can find it.
> 
> major



Not saying that I disagree with anything you said. But all my motors came from Netgain with about a 20%-30% "shape". In the truck and for the first round in the Pinto, I did the drive around easy thing to finish "shaping" them and "seat" them properly.

However when I rebuilt the back motor in the Pinto I did not have time to drive around 500 miles 20 miles at a time with recharges in between. Jim said I'd kill them if I trounced on them with only that much of a "shape" and had me stone the comm. Although the comm was fine - it was brand new, the effect was to get the brushes fully "shaped". And then to get as much "seating" time on them as I could I think I got all of 100 miles before hitting the track. But at least they were fully "shaped". After racing that weekend they had a real nice purple patina glazing on the comm.

So I understand this. But the point I was making is that taking a motor right of the shelf and whacking it with 1000 amps at load, with the brushes not fully "shaped" could cause this sort of arcing in the motor like what is pictured on the above video. And continued hi power use in this condition is likely to burn up some brush rigging. But I can't say from experience, I have not done that yet. Too afraid of Jim coming to visit me in the night. He's close enough to drive to my house now ;-)

Mike


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## EVfun (Mar 14, 2010)

The comm fireball pretty much limits the motor amps. Alas, it's not nearly so good at limiting battery amps. That's O.K. though, 'cause you won't need many battery amps after what it does to the motor.


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## electrabishi (Mar 11, 2008)

Tesseract said:


> I've been wondering - is it better to run a single 2000A controller and series/parallel shifting of twin motors, or supply each motor with its own 1000A controller? I mean, you lose 0.3 seconds in the shift from s to p with the Zilla's (likely waiting for the contactors to settle down).


Oops, missed this one. Wanted to comment on the 0.3 second switching time. I actually think the contactors would switch faster. But the Zilla does a whole routine: "Shutdown all contactors, Check aux sense switches on the contactors that were supposed to drop, Turn on new contactors, Check aux sense switches on the contactors that were supposed to come on", before it applies power back to the motor. Thats a lot of stuff and I think its amazing it does it in a mere 0.3 seconds.

But now back to that 0.3 seconds. That doesn't mean you lose 0.3 seconds on your ET. It just means that for 0.3 seconds you are not accelerating. You (me in this case) are still travelling the 80 - 90 mph during the shift. So you really only lose 0.3 seconds that the acceleration power is applied.

I know the shift is effective because we have made runs where we disabled the S/P switching, and with everything else the same, ET was higher and top speed was lower. So there is a benefit. And if you were to fudge the numbers and add the power you lose in the 0.3 seconds of the run its not likely to decrease the ET out to at least 2 decimals. But I'll leave that to you math majors to play with.

I did find the data you were looking for on the Electrabishi:

One note, I made a mistake above in that it was the motor voltage that was reading wrong in my particular hairball. You can easily see what it should be during any of the 100% duty cycle events. In that case the motor voltage and battery voltage should be the same. If you notice the graphs show motor voltage way hhigher that what I have it set to. The battery voltages indicated are accurate. So if you do any math using the motor voltage figure out the proper scaling factor and use the 100% duty cycle events to calibrate that factor.

And before anyone draws any conclusions about the motor voltage and performance.. keep in mind this is with a 192V battery pack. If you run 72V motor with a 72V pack the performance will be way worse because a 72V pack will sag and you'll never see 72V on the motor. Another good reason to have a lower current/higher voltage controller that is higher in voltage that what the motor can handle.

Zilla_DAQ_8Jul06_1.JPG
Zilla_DAQ_8Jul06_1.xls
Zilla_DAQ_8Jul06_2.JPG
Zilla_DAQ_8Jul06_2.xls
Zilla_DAQ_8Jul06_3.JPG
Zilla_DAQ_8Jul06_3.xls
Zilla_DAQ_8Jul06_4.JPG
Zilla_DAQ_8Jul06_4.xls
Zilla_DAQ_8Jul06_5.JPG
Zilla_DAQ_8Jul06_5.xls
Zilla_DAQ_8Jul06_6.JPG
Zilla_DAQ_8Jul06_6.xls
Zilla_DAQ_8Jul06_7.JPG
Zilla_DAQ_8Jul06_7.xls

Enjoy,
I never really had time to play with this data any more than I have. I hope you guys can find good use for it 

Mike


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## Tesseract (Sep 27, 2008)

electrabishi said:


> Oops, missed this one.


And then I apparently missed your response!



electrabishi said:


> Wanted to comment on the 0.3 second switching time. I actually think the contactors would switch faster. But the Zilla does a whole routine.
> ..
> But now back to that 0.3 seconds. That doesn't mean you lose 0.3 seconds on your ET. It just means that for 0.3 seconds you are not accelerating. You (me in this case) are still travelling the 80 - 90 mph during the shift...


Yeah, I was mostly just pointing out that there is at least some time penalty incurred when switching the motors from series to parallel, and not so much suggesting that the Zilla should do it faster. That said, I have to agree that the time penalty from coasting for those 0.3s, rather than accelerating, is probably not going to be meaningful. So, point.



electrabishi said:


> I know the shift is effective because we have made runs where we disabled the S/P switching, and with everything else the same, ET was higher and top speed was lower....


It's pretty obvious how going from s to p is valuable in a drag race, but for other types of racing (e.g. - autocross) it's harder to see any advantage, and for a daily driver harder still. The real trouble, of course, is deciding when/if to switch back to series mode.



electrabishi said:


> I did find the data you were looking for on the Electrabishi:


Thanks! Every bit helps. So far, though, it doesn't look like any of you drag racers need more than 1800A... 

EDIT: links aren't working for me... says documents not found... s'alright... found them in the files folder of the NEDRA Yahoo group.


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## Tesseract (Sep 27, 2008)

EVfun said:


> The comm fireball pretty much limits the motor amps. Alas, it's not nearly so good at limiting battery amps. That's O.K. though, 'cause you won't need many battery amps after what it does to the motor.


  

Okay, now that I've picked myself back up after falling out of my chair... We have noticed a consistent behavior in the logs every time a motor zorches. The Soliton1 uses a "slow" loop to regulate average motor current, and a fast hardware loop only acts to limit peak current (in the case of a short circuit, mainly). When a motor zorches the current shoots up much faster than the slow loop can regulate, but not nearly as fast as a hard short - the field inductance is still present, after all. We've been tossing around the idea of using that sudden increase in current as an indicator that zorching has occurred and shutting down the PWM output for, say, 100ms or so before ramping motor current back up.

Sound plausible?

On another note, still related to the original post... We installed an infrared pyrometer to watch the commutator temperature of the WarP9 in the V70 and while it's too soon to draw any conclusions, it does seem that idling the motor is a big part of the problem as it requires high motor amps (200A) at low rpm (850-950). We then installed an external blower which when turned on caused a 45C drop in comm temp while idling. The blower doesn't seem to do much when at highway speeds, but it does help once again after you exit the highway and are sitting at a stop light - it is then, we believe, that the motors were actually melting on us.


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## Qer (May 7, 2008)

electrabishi said:


> I never really had time to play with this data any more than I have. I hope you guys can find good use for it


Pfft. Not much high current in that data. A total of 47 samples at or above 600 Amps out of 2832 samples. However, there's one interesting tidbit in that data:










It seems that you've limited motor current to 400 Ampere and voltage to ~95 Volt in this run and to the left in the graph it tries to keep the current at 400 Amps but the regulation keeps overcompensating which result in that the current gets a bit, uh, shaky. However, as soon as the Zilla hits those ~95 Volt, duty cycle and thereby voltage and current goes perfectly smooth.

Very interesting. I thought the Zilla would only behave like this at full duty cycle, but apparently the voltage limit is a completely different piece of software than the current limit.


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## GerhardRP (Nov 17, 2009)

Qer said:


> Pfft. Not much high current in that data. A total of 47 samples at or above 600 Amps out of 2832 samples.


So, can you post some Soliton ! data dumps with a Warp 9 at high current.
Gerhard


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## Qer (May 7, 2008)

GerhardRP said:


> So, can you post some Soliton ! data dumps with a Warp 9 at high current.
> Gerhard


From the New controller prototype thread:










Please note that the Y-scale is between 990-1010 Amps, ie the complete span is 20 Amps and the Soliton only varies about 5 Amps total during 10 seconds.


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## GerhardRP (Nov 17, 2009)

Qer said:


> Please note that the Y-scale is between 990-1010 Amps, ie the complete span is 20 Amps and the Soliton only varies about 5 Amps total during 10 seconds.


OK, that's cool for showing off the controller, but not for resolving the Warp 9 motor issue which is my question: I need motor current, motor voltage and RPM for several short runs of acceleration from stop to about 2000 RPM with current limits of say 100, 250, 500 and 1000A. [Better in a high gear, rather than smoking tires.] Then a long series of just driving around under varied conditions, including low and high current conditions.
Gerhard


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## Qer (May 7, 2008)

GerhardRP said:


> OK, that's cool for showing off the controller, but not for resolving the Warp 9 motor issue which is my question: I need motor current, motor voltage and RPM for several short runs of acceleration from stop to about 2000 RPM with current limits of say 100, 250, 500 and 1000A. [Better in a high gear, rather than smoking tires.] Then a long series of just driving around under varied conditions, including low and high current conditions.
> Gerhard


Oh yes, we went away on a tangent there, I'm afraid.

It's really hard to say what's ok or not, both the Zilla and Soliton are definitely powerful enough to burn a WarP to a smoking ruin so it's pretty impossible to guarantee anything (besides, you should ask NetGain anyway).

That said, doing it at low RPM definitely has the potential to hurt the motor more than at high RPM so it's definitely better to use a gear box to let the motor stay at higher RPM (and thus lower current) and let the gear box transform the RPM to torque.


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## GerhardRP (Nov 17, 2009)

Qer said:


> Oh yes, we went away on a tangent there, I'm afraid.
> 
> It's really hard to say what's ok or not, both the Zilla and Soliton are definitely powerful enough to burn a WarP to a smoking ruin so it's pretty impossible to guarantee anything (besides, you should ask NetGain anyway).


I'm not looking for motor limits, but rather to model the motor [actually, complete EVs] to enable system and operational optimization. 


Qer said:


> That said, doing it at low RPM definitely has the potential to hurt the motor more than at high RPM so it's definitely better to use a gear box to let the motor stay at higher RPM (and thus lower current) and let the gear box transform the RPM to torque.


Maybe I chould try to move this to my motor theory thread http://www.diyelectriccar.com/forums/showthread.php/dc-motor-theory-and-model-39931p9.html Start at post #89 to see what I want. Basically data from the initial acceleration [any gear is ok] from stop at fixed current is plotted Voltage vs. RPM. A linear fit gives the stall voltage and RPM per volt for that current. Plotting stall voltage vs. current gives the brush voltage and motor resistance. Having those parameters, we can extract the field map from a "random" dataset covering all operating conditions.
Gerhard


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## The Toecutter (May 30, 2010)

Does anyone know the maximum current a WarP 9" can have at 192V before arcing occurs? I'd like to think it is 600A, but I really dont know for sure. I've heard 1,000A at 170Vmax, *if* the brushes are timed properly. But I really want to see my peak power be reached at as high of an rpm as possible to increase top speed; the higher voltage will also increase maximum continuous horsepower. What amount of current could the motor withstand at 216Vmax without arcing? 216Vmax and 500Amax would be even preferable for my application than 170Vmax and 1000Amax, even though the latter would give much higher peak power and torque.


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## major (Apr 4, 2008)

The Toecutter said:


> Does anyone know the maximum current a WarP 9" can have at 192V before arcing occurs? I'd like to think it is 600A, but I really dont know for sure. I've heard 1,000A at 170Vmax, *if* the brushes are timed properly. But I really want to see my peak power be reached at as high of an rpm as possible to increase top speed; the higher voltage will also increase maximum continuous horsepower. What amount of current could the motor withstand at 216Vmax without arcing? 216Vmax and 500Amax would be even preferable for my application than 170Vmax and 1000Amax, even though the latter would give much higher peak power and torque.


Good morning Toe,

I assume you refer to motor volts and amps as opposed to battery. I think that Tesseract has found the commutation limit to be 100 kW when was testing the Warp9 on his dyno. I've not had the opportunity to confirm that. The old rule was 170 volts.

It is difficult to find high voltage performance curves for this motor. But offhand, I'd say the motor voltage and current figures you seek will result in too high RPM. Have you considered that?

major


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## The Toecutter (May 30, 2010)

major said:


> Good morning Toe,
> 
> I assume you refer to motor volts and amps as opposed to battery. I think that Tesseract has found the commutation limit to be 100 kW when was testing the Warp9 on his dyno. I've not had the opportunity to confirm that. The old rule was 170 volts.


100 kW is sufficient for my application.



> It is difficult to find high voltage performance curves for this motor. But offhand, I'd say the motor voltage and current figures you seek will result in too high RPM. Have you considered that?
> 
> major


Yes, I have considered that, which is precisely why my application requires a controller that can limit the motor's rpm(eg. zilla). I'd much prefer to have, say, 100 lb-ft of torque available at 6,000 rpm with that rpm being the max, and that 100 lb-ft being the max torque allowed, than 200 lb-ft up to 4,000 rpm and running out of torque very quickly afterward due to the motor voltage limit being reached. I might end up with less peak horsepower, but having my peak reached at a higher rpm means a higher top speed and also the greater max voltage makes my continuous power rating increase. The reduced torque also reduces wear and tear on components.


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