Re: Overheating of Roboclaw Solo 60A
Posted: Fri Jun 14, 2019 9:50 am
You are most likely experiencing overheating because your load is resistive. A purely resistive load will be a large amount of ripple current through the DC Link capacitors. This will cause them to overheat and shorten their life expectancy drastically.
You are effectively turning the Roboclaw into a switching regulator but without an inductor. That is probably bad for your electrolysis unit but it is definitely bad for the Roboclaw. Add a .1mH to 1mH inductor in series with the electrolysis unit. It needs to be rated for the current you will be driving so it will have to be a large inductor(physically). That should bring ripple current back down to something reasonable.
You are not running a regenerative load(eg a motor) so voltage clamping isnt an issue.
Also, your Solo unit must be mounted to a thermal mass that will conduct the heat from it. It will not support continuous 60amp operation without properly mounting it. Usually, it's mounted to a metal chassis but in your case, any large metal structure should be suitable.
You are effectively turning the Roboclaw into a switching regulator but without an inductor. That is probably bad for your electrolysis unit but it is definitely bad for the Roboclaw. Add a .1mH to 1mH inductor in series with the electrolysis unit. It needs to be rated for the current you will be driving so it will have to be a large inductor(physically). That should bring ripple current back down to something reasonable.
You are not running a regenerative load(eg a motor) so voltage clamping isnt an issue.
Also, your Solo unit must be mounted to a thermal mass that will conduct the heat from it. It will not support continuous 60amp operation without properly mounting it. Usually, it's mounted to a metal chassis but in your case, any large metal structure should be suitable.