So as I was driving my prototype vex robot and the motor controller kind of blew up and burned a hole through it, It started to spark and I just sat the robot down and turned it off. I’ve tried the same motor with different controllers and the motor controller would over head and stop working. Everything else works great, all four motors including the one the motor controller is plugged into. I’ve also split the motors in the Vexnet (1,10 and 2,9). Can anybody tell me why this happened?
-Team 1270
-Thanks
P.s Sorry for the pictures being so big, they were taken from a Galaxy S IV
You probably shorted the output of the motor controller. This has happened before, although not that often. Check for any exposed wire or pinched wires on the motor. Check that the wire strain relief on the motor has not been damaged.
This has happened to our teams a few times. The motor controllers aren’t made as well as they could be and the motor controllers tend to fail. Contact vex and if it’s defective they should exchange the motor controllers. I wish you the best.
As far as we’re concerned, this isn’t true at all. We have tens of thousands of these in the field, and receive very few reports of failure. If anyone has concerns about the performance of the VEX Motor Controllers, please reach out to our support folks.
You have this part correct. If your team experiences a problem with any VEX equipment, please contact us immediately so we can make things right.
Out of the hundred+ 2 wire motors we’ve used in our club, I’d say we have seen this maybe 5 times. Not often, but the parts are cheap enough to not report it. I was also unsure of which kind of abuse triggered it too to give more clear feedback.
However, we do have a Cortex with port 10 busted (so I bet it is a bad/blown H bridge on the inside). But that particular Cortex is now 1.5+ years old from when we switched from the old PIC contorllers in Jan 2011. Still good for a warranty repair? :o
