Purchasing of ESC and Failure in EDF Ducted Fan Testing
Our group faced difficulties in retrieving the ESC component for our EDF ducted fan. However, this issue was solved as we purchased a 80A 2-6S ESC from Rotor.
After purchasing the ESC component, we proceeded with soldering adaptors to the ESC wires so that the junctions are compatible with the EDF ducted fan and the 6S LiPo battery. The photo below shows the ESC with the soldered adaptors.
Apart from modifying our ESC, we have also charged our LiPo battery in preparation for the testing of the battery and the thrust of EDF ducted fan.
After all the preparation, we visited the MnT lab on 17 July in order to assemble our wheels and servos, and test out our EDF ducted fan.
The testing of EDF ducted fan was largely unsuccessful. The fan was running at an extremely high revolutions per minute, causing a booming sound to blast through the MnT lab. We hypothesised that:
- The 6S LiPo battery voltage of 22.2V might be too high for an everyday usage as revolutions per minute = KV * voltage.
- The code we were using did not specify the correct PWN value and we might have sent a ‘high speed’ signal to the ESC, causing the fan to run at full power.
On the other hand, the assembly of motor drivers, wheels and Servos were successful. We have completed the code sketch for wheels mobility and Servos functionality, and the assembly of the central portion of our prototype.