What do we do with the motor wiring?
The motor came with 2 cables for each phase - 1 labeled ‘HI’ and the other labeled ‘LO’. Each of the cables if I recall correctly were 12AWG - which seems to me a little undersized for 40A, but it should be fine?
Midsun Google Drive location with a bunch of extra info (all of this would have been a lot easier to figure out if I had found this link first): https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/1WVsk_xNRJ7KxuGLBGOr7TKOIdZyiSEL7
The motors we ordered from Mitsuba have the following characteristics:
Keep reading if you want, but go check out the link - it has all the correct info.
The Motor Documentation page has graphs for both ‘HIGH’ and ‘LO’ settings, so I’m trying to discover what to do here. It seems as if there might separate current paths or something to get the higher speed/torque combinations.
The documentation above and a few Youtube videos I have seen have 2 wires going into a single crimp lug for each phase:
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ydWXVNJhaY)
Apparently we’ve had these Mitsuba motors running on our dyno in the past. (McMaster’s motors):
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1f4op9AAMY)
They also had both motor cables connected to the same pin on the controller.
Here’s another blog post about the Mitsuba motors:
https://motorsunspec5.wordpress.com/2016/11/14/week-4-state-of-shock/
Other Mitsuba datasheets uploaded by another solar car team:
https://sites.google.com/site/wscsunspec2014/uploaded-files
Other forum posts about the Mitsubas:
https://www.reddit.com/r/solarracing/comments/avlqq6/grinding_noise_using_mitsuba_m2096iii_with/
https://www.reddit.com/r/solarracing/comments/cgyjyh/mistuba_motor_specifications_and_cad/
https://www.reddit.com/r/solarracing/comments/9ul6vs/mitsuba_motor_efficiency_plot/
https://www.reddit.com/r/solarracing/comments/cgyjyh/mistuba_motor_specifications_and_cad/
https://www.reddit.com/r/solarracing/comments/aw9r8y/question_about_motor/
I don’t see any labels on the cables of the motors that have both going to the same lug. I think most of the motors in the pictures are M2096D-II. I don’t know the differences between the -II and -III.
And a Master’s thesis about building a solar car (some mention of motors but the battery section was most interesting).
With our motors, we received a 3 pole switch as well - which I presume they included for a reason, so I kept digging:
Nomura Co.'s Facebook Page seems to give a lot more insight:
https://www.facebook.com/NomuraCo/photos/a.1808168799427450/2203683109876015/?type=3&theater
Here’s a close-up of the coil windings:
There is an option to get a 2 coil switchable version, where you can switch the arrangement when the motor is stopped. There are 2 sets of coils and 6 sets of wires exiting the battery pack (3 for each coil).
They also have an adjustable stator positioning system (that we did not order):
Here’s a graph of the performance with the sliding stator:
Here’s a much better quality image of some testing - you can clearly see that the cables are not marked HI / LO. Also note the motor cover is gold (I’m not sure if that’s just for aesthetics of for another model):
Some pictures of well-used motors. We should look in to if we need to do any regular cleaning on the motors:
They hand-wind all the coils:
This was posted in 2018:
A new coil arrangement, where ‘Coil 2' is just a branch off of Coil 1. This apparently allows for some interesting overtaking and cruising arrangements, and you can switch the coil while driving:
Apparently they also make 300Wh/kg LiPo cells?
