Recalibrating ESC's after a Motor replacement?

[jbrumberg]

I got my quad built,flying around my property, and basic tuned enough to have some comfort level flying recently with a KK2.0 v1.6 FC, and as part of my learning curve crashed well enough to necessitate replacing Motor #1. I did not re-calibrate the ESC's following the motor replacement. Today was the first time I was able to test the new motor outdoors. The test did not last long and the quad fortunately ended up in a snowbank and basically undamaged. I had little control from the moment of lift off. After I got the quad back indoors, I took the props off, and ran the motors to dry everything out and check the motors. I noticed as I changed the Tx stick settings and/or the quad orientation the motors were not quite RPM'ing as I thought they should. So I decided to re-calibrate the ESC's, put everything back together, and give the quad another try. Well it flew and flew as it had been tuned previously. It would appear that with a KK board one needs to recalibrate ESC's following a motor replacement, especially a #1 motor.

I really did not believe re-calibration would be necessary. Replacing a motor with an equivalent motor with everything out of circuit. It really does not make complete sense to me. Is there an explanation? Are the ESC's that sensitive to change?

Thanks in advance.

I am happy that everything ended as it did.

Jay

 

[Motopreserve]

I was just typing up this same question.

helps some one noobs out people!

 

[Motopreserve]

Anyone????

 

[PeteDee]

To be honest I cannot think of any reason that re-calibrating the ESC's would be needed when replacing a motor and cannot offer any explanation as to why what seems to have happened has done so. I would believe more that the FCU in some way has become dysfunctional/unadjusted/de-calibrated and going through the reset/re-calibration process has reset the FCU. I have certainly had problems with KK2's losing their way and requiring factory resets and had to input all the settings and after was working just as it should.

Cheers

Pete

 

[jbrumberg]

Pete- Thanks for your response and your personal experiences with the KK's "losing their way..... requiring resets". This is what happened and reset seemed to have worked. Hopefully my next flight(s) will be uneventful. Thanks again for sharing. Jay

 

[Carapau]

Calibrating ESCs is normally done to let the ESCs know where the end points are on the transmitter so this is indeed very odd ie replacing a motor should not necessitate any recal of the ESCs. The idea about the KK board mentioned above sounds a bit more plausible.

 

[jbrumberg]

It is definitely odd and confusing. What I have to look at now pre-flight routine changes as I did lift off from a different spot which may not have been leveled correctly, at lift off the insulation sheet landing/launch pad froze to the landing skid insulation which definitely threw balance off, but this happened once before without a problem, and there was this brief wind gust so there were some coincidental factors as well. And like everything these "incidents" do not happen in slow motion nor in an anticipated way. Probably I'll never know. Hopefully my next flight will be as successful or more so than my last. We'll see. Thanks everyone. Jay

 

[Motopreserve]

And like everything these "incidents" do not happen in slow motion nor in an anticipated way.

I'm now working in my secret lab to develop a pair of FPV goggles that slow down everything in real time.

Stick with it. I truly think that the two of us would be making greater strides toward dialing these in if we had a little cooperative weather.

to clarify, logically it didn't make sense to me that we would need to recalibrate. But after Jay's experience, and then my crash yesterday, I am willing to admit that these tiny electronic buggers may not always make sense to my pea sized logic!

 

[PeteDee]

Our weather at the moment is not much better continuous days over 100 degrees F are not pleasant, I have been busy all these mornings so not able to get out first up when it is a bit cooler. Hopefully have an opportunity this morning to maiden my new Blade 130X though.

Pete

 

[jbrumberg]

Well my first flight today went really well so my concerns about the ESC's and motors have abated. My second flight did not go so well nor end so well. Actually it ended rather abruptly if not spectacularly :hororr:. At least this time around I am not worried about my ESC's or the motors apparently. Other stuff I am worried about like frame components- they need some work and/or replacement. All part of the learning curve and respecting the law of gravity.