You will want good welding wire. It has nice fine strands and is easy to
work with. I use 2 guage on my motorcycle, but that is about the smallest
you can get away with. This is very thick wire much more so than anything
you will find at Home Depot. You will also need to locate a source of good
lugs and have a way of making proper crimps.
For testing you can use much lighter wire, but on the motorcycle you will
need something heavy duty enough to carry the 300 amps your controller is
capable of. Your Alltrax should have come with a wiring diagram. If you
have a hard time understanding it you may want to find someone local that
does, or contact their support department.
damon
From: Henry Heng <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: ElectricMotorcycles <[email protected]>
To: ElectricMotorcycles <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [ElectricMotorcycles] Wirings
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2007 23:10:31 +0900
Thanks Damon!
Sorry for the late reply, am swamped with work.
I'm using an Etek motor with the Alltrax 4834 controller.
Sad to say, I don't remember most of the electricals I've studied before. I
have rough knowledge about series/parrallel wired batteries from reading
the lists and pages, but wouldn't claim to understand it.
There're 2 pins protruding out of the motor, which I assume is where I'm
supposed to connect the controllers and batteries to?
I also have a DC-DC converter which I have no idea at all where to connect
it to.
I've been wanting to test our the motor and controller since I got them 2
months ago but haven't had the time nor knowledge to figure out how yet. I
probably won't have time till the 2nd week of august, after that I'll have
the entire summer to spend on the bike :D
For the time being, I'm mostly alternating between school reports and
building of the solar car which we'll be racing at the Suzuka circuit on
the 5th.
I probably have half a morning this saturday, so I'll probably try to
hijack the batteries to test out the motor.
Speaking of wires, I don't have any wires yet....
Is there anything specific I should get?
Or will typical copper electrical wiring do?
Henry
damon henry wrote:
Sure lots of us could since it is something that we have all done before.
Do you have a specific motor and controller in mind? Do you understand
some basics about electrical circuits?
My setup which is rather common goes like this. It is essentially one big
series circuit. The batteries are all wired in series which means that
you hook them up positive to negative to make one large battery (6 12 volt
batteries makes one 72 volt battery). My motor and controller are both
connected in series with this battery. I have a series wound motor with
the field windings available so I can reverse the field which reverses
rotation. I also have an Alltrax 4844 controller which has 3 terminals as
well as a fuse and a switch. Hooking the controller and motor into the
circuit is pretty straight forward. If you have a series wound DC motor
like I have with 4 terminals available you have to strap one of the
armature leads to one of the field leads (usually marked A1,A2 and S1,S2),
this controls the direction of the rotation. Then you hook the M- and B+
terminals of your controller to the remaining two terminals on the motor.
It doesn't matter which one goes where so just do whatever is convenient.
You also hook your battery pack to your controller. The positive side
goes to the B+ lead and the negative side goes to the B- lead. If you
have a controller with 4 terminals the other terminal is usually marked A1
and you don't hook anything to it. This lead is only used for plug or
regen braking or with a reversing contactor to allow you to have an
electronic reverse, these options are not often used with a motorcycle.
You also might want to include a main switch/contactor, circuit breaker,
fuse, and or shunt somewhere in the circuit, but where exactly is usually
a matter of choice. Also most controllers with have some small terminals
for hooking up things like a throttle, key on switch, Hi Pot lockout, half
power reverse and other possible options. You really need to know the
specific controller to know which is which although it may be marked on
the case.
There really are only to tricky parts to this, one is knowing how to make
the motor spin, and the second is making the right connections to the
controller. The way I remember how to hook up the contorllers is that you
almost always have only 1 wire going to B- from the negative side of the
battery, and only 1 wire going to the M- coming from the motor.
Everything else gets connected to B+.
Of course you really should check the documentation for the controller you
are using, which may include lots of extra circuitry for options you are
not using. You need to be able to weed through the stuff you don't need
then see if what I have just written applies to your specific case.
A couple of easy tricks for testing your connections include. To test and
make sure your motor spins in the right direction make the armature and
field connections then use a 12 volt battery and a pair of jumper cables
to spin the motor. Be sure the motor is being held in place, or it will
roll away form you. Also before you hook your controller to your motor
you can test your wiring by taking the two leads that will be connecting
to the motor and instead connecting them to a light bulb. Ramping up the
throttle should make the light bulb light up brighter. If you are using a
48 volt controller and a 120 volt light bulb it will not light up very
bright, but you should be able to see it gradually increase from off to on
about half way.
damon
From: Henry Heng <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: ElectricMotorcycles <[email protected]>
To: ElectricMotorcycles <[email protected]>
Subject: [ElectricMotorcycles] Wirings
Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2007 00:47:20 +0900
Could anyone explain to me how the motor, controller and batteries should
be wired together?
Also, can I use a typical bike tachometer, if not, how else should I
calculate the rpms?
Thanks
Henry
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