Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Learning to Walk

So yesterday I got those scooter motors and today I wired them up for testing. While I was at it, I, of course, made a video.



Here's some pictures.
Photobucket Photobucket

Now for the inside details.
As I mentioned in the previous post, these are 24 volt 100 watt electric motors used in the Razor E-100 toy scooters. I have them connected to a dual channel Electronic Speed Controller (ESC), specifically the Dimension Engineering Sabertooth 2X25 (picture on right), which is then controlled by the C6C receiver. These motors are the belt driven version (now discontinued by Razor and replaced with chains). I chose belts over chains because I didn't want the extra noise. Belts are already on order (the official Razor ones) but the belt driven wheels are no longer available. However, I did find a generic compatible scooter wheel that should work just fine.

The ESC has a set of 6 jumper switches to configure the ESC for battery type, controller type, and other options. I had some trouble at first setting these correctly because I was looking at it upside down. So take note. Always make sure you know which way is on and off. Once I got that sorted out, I had to flip around the wiring on the left side motor so it would run in the same direction. Don't worry, most electric motors are polarity reversible. This is important to pay attention to because when I install the motors into the feet, they'll be facing opposite directions thus the wiring must be reversed on one of them.

Once I have the belts and wheels I'll have to build a frame to mount each motor and wheel to and then mount that into the feet. I don't have all of that figured out just yet, but with dozens of examples from other builders and a little trial and error, I should be able to manage it.

John

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