Our motors came with seemingly very small wires, which may need to get swapped out. Here’s some info I’ve compiled on switching them out.
My belief was that the power cables were not large enough, as many of the Mitsuba Motors I have seen images of have 2 wires in parallel for each phase, while with our dual coil arrangement, there was only 1 cable. So, I’ve compiled some info to see if these are adequate.
Documentation from Nomura:
I asked them about the line in their manual that mentions switching the cables to a 14mm2 cable:
And got this reply when I asked about the procedure for swapping out the cables.
A bit more research into the cables that come with the motor:
They are labelled ‘ASV-5’, which is a Japanaese standard for automotive wiring with a PVC insulation jacket.
http://www.qifurui.com/en/UploadFiles/20140930154501.pdf
Our cables have a cross-sectional area of 5mm2.
From another table, this corresponds to a maximum current-carrying capacity of 51A for 40C ambient and 80C max temp (40C rise), in free air.
https://www.siechem.com/products/cables-by-segment/automotive-cables/avs/
So given this 51A maximum for these cables, and per Nomura’s recommendation, I do not think we need to replace the whole cables by removing the epoxy, but would recommend swapping as much of the cable as possible to our chosen 10mm2 cable we will be using with our connectors. We will only be drawing large currents for a small time during startup and acceleration, but temperatures should be carefully monitored during testing.