Impero was on the water today in between battles. all she has in her is motors and rudder servo so extra batteries had to be added to get her even close to waterline. still sat a 1/2" ish to high, oh well not bad for nothing in her. Minor leaks were discovered although exact location is a little shaky. I was impressed with the effectiveness of my rudder set up (i went with a push-rod set up). On cannons: I know Stephen at Strike said he had made some nice progress on getting his new cannons built but we will have to wait and see how long until he is able to get production up to speed. I know a couple of guns in WWCC are planning on making guns for people (after their ships have their guns of course). One team is planning on making them traditional style while one of our new guys has an interesting idea for simplifying the building of them. More time spent working the design up in the CNC machine but then able to turn em out in short order. In theory at least, only time will tell its effectiveness. Ill keep you posted on the status unless you find something sooner. Jon
chain drive rudder trick: make unsupported length long enough that ~1" of it never reaches a sprocket... use zip tie to tension chain by pulling links in that 1" segment into zig/zag... works great!
not yet. need to do some electronics waterproofing and mounting of batteries first.. she'll be riding very very high... I did decide in the short term to skip the rudder stabs on the secondary rudders for time reasons (limited window till pool closes for first float,will add this winter, easy enough)
on the port/stbd rudders there is a little fixed protrusion from the hull that runs about half the length of the rudder in front of the axis of rotation. term left over from my rc airplane days where the fixed portion of the tail control surface was a stabilizer (stab)
motors ran under their own power today. Drivetrain was relatively quiet although it is amazing how much an amplifier the wood hull can be. rudder chain drive is workign properly, may have to grind down a few of the brass sprocket sleeves to fit but good on that front. now onto the not so good. Hobbyking 45A car esc: the good cheap as all get out. reverse to forward to reverse transition is every bit as good as my old castle creations esc did not seem to drive tx nuts but still need a good valid range check. the not so good heat sink was getting a bit warm with no real load on the motor. will have to see what to do next to keep it cool as hot as the heat sink was the plastic case was hotter, a lot hotter durration was less than 5 minutes of messing around with TX settings to get the motors spinning right and esc's operating together the ugly The coooling of the main power components on teh board is sub-par (and unecessarily so). conducting heat through the circuit board and plated vias can be engineered properly, but this one is not. add to that an absurdly thick thermal interface pad (thermal interface material is a good conductor compared to air, an extremely poor one compaired to aluminum (any alloy thereof)) and this esc could be a case study in how to overheat electronics unnecessarily. general clenliness: board was not properly cleaned of flux general solder quality: several blobs of solder at various locations on board where they should not have been... one near pins on fets, nearly connecting two pins that should not be connected. other notes low dropout regulators provide the 5V bus.. each esc has 2 regulators, each rated for 1A. each of these regulators at 1A dissipates >1W power and they are in an enclosed and sealed air volume.... I am tempted to remove the logic board from the power board and rewire it to enable better cooling. I just lack the desoldering station necessary to do that correctly. I would say something to the following: for the cost, not too bad but I need to up my normal hobbyking derate from 1.5x to about 2.5x I think. (e.g. if HK says 45A, I am going to consider it a 18A). the Littorio won't be going out unescorted on any ponds until I gain more confidence that the esc's are not simply going to burn up. they might be ok, but we will see. I have three of the esc's (one spare) and it is unscotchkoted, so I may take it to work and try to modify the board for better cooling and drainage.
Why do you even need more then 1 esc? I pulled my viper15 (one of Strikes) form my Deutschland and it ran a weight down Impero perfectly on four motors. Isn't multiple esc just adding a potential failure point? or is my thinking off and they are completely necessary?
Probably because he is running brushless. Having an esc per motor even with brushed is more like insurance.
It sounds like you got bad ESC, Greg. I've been running their 30A (doesn't have a fan), and their 45A (pretty much the same ESC, but with a fan, to outside appearances anyway), and never had a heat issue. If you've tested more than one of them, my apologies, but if you've just used the one, then I'd try another one. I have seen some solder issues, and a couple of their 100A car ESCs that I saw had to have their joins remelted for a good electrical connection.
possible, but unlikely. the construction notes apply to all 3 esc's, the getting hot notes apply to two of the three (third is my unwired spare).. I will run them till they burn up, and we will see. although I am very tempted to modify the spare and see what she will do with either a water jacket or a competent heat sinking method
