Plettenberg Shadow Review

[kufman]

Today I got out to the track with the Shadow. It is not an indoor carpet type of motor. If you undergear the thing, it gets hot!! I started out with 72/18 gearing in my TC3 (final drive of 2.5) and foam tires. With this gearing the motor was just plain boring. It didn't seem to have torque or speed and it got hot in a hurry. I decided that it was undergeared and went up to a 20 tooth pinion. Better this time, but not great. I geared up again to a 22 pinion. Now the motor seemed to come alive. Lots of speed and plenty of torque too. Unfortunately I need something that can handle more current than my U-Force 75. I felt that with the gearing up at 24/72 it ran even better but the controller ran up to 170 in 3 minutes of running. The motor on the other hand, was cooler than with any of the previous setups. When i got home tonight I deicded to make a run out in the street with a 26 pinion and rubber tires which are a larger diameter than the foams. THIS MOTOR IS AWESOME with this setup. Again the controller got hot even though the outdoor temp was 37 degrees F, but the car was very fast and could still spin all 4 tires comming off of the line. After 4 minutes the controller was fairly warm to the touch and the motor was just barely warm. I think this motor will make a great outdoor, asphalt, large track motor. A fan will help the controller stay at a descent temp. This motor also makes a great speed bashing motor, you know, where you run up and down the street over and over again to see how fast you can go. On 6 cells I would say that this motor is as fast as my basic 4200 on 8 or 9 cells. When geared correctly, it seems to run cooler than my basic or my aveox.

Matt :D

[starluckrc]

Interesting. You did up the timing and switching frequency right? Current draw should be similar to the Extreme according to the pdf's. I just traded my mini-T for a TC3 today, so I can play around with the setup myself and see what is best. I remember my old Basic 4200 on 9 cells. It was a rocket!

[kufman]

I ran the hard timing, but I forgot to up the freq to 16 kHz. That may help. I completely forgot about the switching freq, thanks Starluck!! I think this motor will allow me to compete in open modified class where everyone is running 8t brushed motors. I could almost keep up running my basic 4200 with a 5.5:1 ratio, but I lacked speed down the straights. I don't think that will be a problem with the Shadow. :)

[kufman]

Almost forgot to mention, this motor with the U-force 75 is very smooth off of the line. Being a 4 pole motor, the controller seems to "acquire" the rotor position very quickly and there was virtually no stuttering or cogging at all!

[TheSteve]

Nice review - it really seems 4 pole motors are very sensitive to correct gearing. I admit I used to torture my Aveox RC7 with a ratio of 5.6:1, with really good cells it still had tons of torque and scared the nitro guys with the speed.
I also find 4 pole motors very smooth, very similar to my 12 turn c40 with 14.8 volts( which does have a very different feel then a c40 6 or 7 turn on 6 GP3300s)

[Craps]

Educate me!

Switching to 16khz frequency will do what with the 4 pole motor?

I thermalled big time with the 11.1 volt Li-Po on the Extreme that I had to switch to my other U-Force 75 ESC. Jamie told me to drop the pinion gear size due to the increased voltage and I did not listen with my 20/87 gearing that should have been around 16/87.

[TheSteve]

Higher drive frequencies allow the motor to operate more efficiently if they are low turns - 8 or less generally. The tradeoff is the ESC has to turn the fets on and off more often, and its the switching on and off of the fets that generates controller heat. So trying both is a good idea while moitoring temperature.
For Hacker 2 pole motors like the C40 6s, 7s and the B50 6s the controller runs cooler as does the motor at 16Khz drive frequency.

Here is the "official" document from Schulze:
http://www.schulze-elektronik-gmbh.de/guide/gswit-de.pdf

[kufman]

TheSteve has said it all when it comes to the higher drive frequency, Thanks. I just drove my TC3 again at 9:45 at night with a flashlight on the top of the body. I see why they call this thing the shadow, it can destroy every brushed motor I have ever seen! For some fun speed runs I am running 72/26 with 64mm rubber tires and 6 cells and this thing is crazy fast. The higher drive frequency did seem to help the controller heat a little bit. I may try medium timing and see if that helps too (lower the timing the lower the current at which the controller runs most efficient..... I think!). I think with my fan assembly I will be able to race this setup next summer on the big outdoor track near me.

[Craps]

With the computer link you can go up to 32khz?

Which 16khz or 32khz?

The Plett Extreme motor feels like a brushed motor and has lots of torque.

The medium timing and what khz?

[kufman]

I went up to 16kHz since I don't have the computer link. Unfortunately, I have to go to work today so I doubt there will be any testing.

[Craps]

In the Plett specs it is recommended to set the ESC to 19khz, so that is either 16khz or 32 khz with the U-Force 75. I tried and liked the 16khz setting better than 8khz. I might try the 32khz when I get time, but I believe it will lead to thermalling the ESC quicker.

[Mr. Constructor]

Don´t do that at all, the 32 Khz mode is for the specially designed kontronik beat series of motors, this setup might be too high freq. on your motor, combined with higher loads the motor might fail (burned winding), if anything is running OK leave it that way, the 32 khz will make the motor only smoother, less powerfull, so this step isn´t mostly needed until you do not use the kontronik motors, they need the 32 khz to archieve best results with their outer magnet re-induction ring !

[Craps]

Thanks Mr C
Jamie sort of said the samething, but like the 11.1 volt TP 8000-3S4P with the U-Force 75 ESC and Plett Extreme motor and not going smaller on the pinion gear might have cost me a ESC.

I'll listen to this one.

[studysession]

What is the kv of the motor?
I assume this is same motor:
http://www.plettenberg-motoren.com/HP220_car/HP220_car.htm

Cant find the info on the site.

[Mr. Constructor]

The Info is in the Datasheets, but not clearly written down, i calculated a little, here are the results:

Extreme: around 4500 RPM/V but with up to 30% more Torque than the Shadow
Shadow: around 5600 RPM/V with high pulse AMPS (around 70 A seems to be no Problem at all)
Indoor 1: around 3.900 with smooth powerband and more driveable in smaller tracks (mostly indoor)
Indoor 2: around 3900 but with around 20% more Torque to fill the gap between the Indoor 1 and the Extreme, the shadow is the hardest ones from all the datas diplayed there, but this might not result in the best for the car, depends on esc, battery, gearing etc.

hopefully this helped ya a little !!

greetings from good old germany . . . ;-)

[studysession]

Cool and thanks! Greatings from the UK! :)

[kufman]

I got to do a little bit of testing today with my Shadow in my T3. It worked pretty good for the bashing area I had (mostly short grass with some dirt). The gearing that it seemed to like was 87/18 with the T3's 2.4 internal. I ran the U-force in medium timing mode, and 16 kHz. I also ran my aveox RC7 and Lehner 4200 today for comparison. The Shadow is very smooth and high reving. It seemed to heat up the controller the most, while the motor itself stayed fairly cool. The Aveox Has the most torque of the three and required a bit harder gearing, 85/22. Ran the controller with the same settings as were used for the Shadow. The basic 4200 is fastest motor to spool up, probably due to it's aircore design instead of the others which are iron core. The basic ran the hottest, while the contrller ran the coolest. Controller settings were 16 kHz, soft timing. Guessing from what I have seen of these three motors, I think the Extreme would be a great offroad motor. Probably very smooth and great torque too. That's all for now, see ya later.

Oh ya,

Studysession. If you look in my other thread "Lehner vs Plettenberg" ( I think it is called) I have graphs of the RPM/V vs Current for the Shadow, Extreme, Basic 4200, and 5300. The shadow seems to have a no load Kv of around 6200. It is about 5500 around 55A

[NIC]

According to MotoCalc:

http://www.motocalc.com/data/motor.html

Motor Name
Constant
Current
Resistance
Weight
Brushless
Out-runner
Plettenberg HP 220/15/A2 P4 Car Shadow
6597
2.346
0.0210
5.50
Yes

The Shadow has 6597 no load rpm.

NIC

[studysession]

Cool - thanks.

[kufman]

I ran the shadow again this weekend with a different setup from last time. This time things worked much better. I ran a fan on my U-Force and I set the timing down to soft (but not the softest). I geared the Shadow 72/24 *2.5 in my TC3 and this time it really moved. Even at this gearing, the torque was really good, spun all four foam tires. With the fan, my controller was 120 degrees F after 8 minutes of running on 6 3300's. The motor was around 145. All of the testing was done indoors on a carpet track. I think this motor is going to have great potential for indoor and outdoor racing. :)

[OptimaMan]

Kufman: based on those numbers, assuming about 6.0 volt under load (if you had an Eagletree system, you can actually measure voltage under load), you're top speed would be about 40 mph. Does that seem about right? Does your car have so much torque it pulls to the left?

[kufman]

35-40 seems possible. I was able to pass everything on the track without trouble. The troque was kind of an issue with the TC3 and the leftward pull. The sway bar that I had on the back made things worse. After I removed the sway bar I could see everything twist, but atleast I could control it. I had 35lb springs in the front and 25's in the rear, batteries forward with foams tires. Plaid in the front, purple in the rear. It is kind of weird that I see more torque when using the wrong timing mode!!

[Craps]

kufman
Glad to hear you are satisfied with the Shadow!

I am going to get around to testing mine one of these days.

My Extreme is very smooth with a huge amount of torque.

[Greg15]

kufman, what size fan are you running on the U-Force and how have you attached it? Is it just sitting flat on top?

[kufman]

It is a 40mm(1.6" sq) fan that I got from Jameco electronics (www.jameco.com). I glued the fan onto the piece of fiberglass and then bolted the fiberglass through the side of the chassis. here are a couple of pics. The fan is Jameco part number 196373 and similiar to Jameco Part Number 102921.


note: goto page 2 for next pic

[kufman]

one more pic

[Greg15]

Thanks for the pics, I have a 40mmx40mm fan and I like how you mounted it, better than actually attaching it to the esc itself.