Park 300 synchronizing

engineer

Senior Member
So I'd picked up 4 Park 300's with the intent of making a quad, but forgot the KK2 board, and its been on back-order for more than a month.

So I'm making a FT Flyer-Twin with differential thrust... because... I can!

I started soldering connections and testing ESC and motors, and after calibrating ESC, the motors do not start moving at the same time. One will start spinning at 10%, another will just kinda twitch and not start spinning until 15%. Once they're spinning, they'll keep spinning if I slow them down around 5% or less. I switched ESC between motors, and behavior is the same, so it seems to be a motor thing...

Is that normal? Do I need to do something to calibrate the motor or something? Does it just take some time to break in? Tips? Tricks?

Thanks!
 

xuzme720

Dedicated foam bender
Mentor
Nothing you can do about calibrating the motors...but, you do have 4...do all four show the same tendency?
 

RoyBro

Senior Member
Mentor
You might want to take a look at the FT Cruiser supplemental video about differential thrust. If you haven't already.

Also, what brand & model ESCs are you using?
 

engineer

Senior Member
I've only soldered up the first two, but tomorrow I'll solder up the other 2 and see.
ESC's are Turnigy Plush 12A. I don't recall if I've watched through the Cruiser supplemental vid, but my set up seems to work; beside the motors not starting at the same moment, the differential seems to work fine.
 

engineer

Senior Member
Well, to verify, I mixed both channels identical on throttle since it needs balance when not ruddering, which is where i noticed it.
 

xuzme720

Dedicated foam bender
Mentor
Not the mix...saying the rudder trim could cause a slight imbalance in the motors or it might just be a slight difference in the motors. You might be able to adjust the endpoints and get them matched that way...

Talk about fun with mixing! :)
 

engineer

Senior Member
Hmm, my terminology must still be off a bit. On the 9XR (love it!), every channel is called a mix, whether its simply +100% THR or some complicated thing. For my comparison test, I didn't have rudder mixed in.

And in the mean time, I watched the Cruiser extras, and I'm set up good.
 

DDSFlyer

Senior Member
I don't remember in the supplemental vid for differential thrust (since I didn't set my cruiser up for it) but do you still have to take off a power lead from one ESC to make sure the Rx isn't receiving them at the same time?
Another thought would be to make sure that both ESC's are programmed to the same default settings?
Just random ideas from a noob, disregard if they'd be dumb answers
 

xuzme720

Dedicated foam bender
Mentor
Hmm, my terminology must still be off a bit. On the 9XR (love it!), every channel is called a mix, whether its simply +100% THR or some complicated thing. For my comparison test, I didn't have rudder mixed in.

And in the mean time, I watched the Cruiser extras, and I'm set up good.
Yes, it can be confusing as the terms can be interchangeable. What I was referring to was one motor being on the normal throttle channel, second motor on an aux channel that is slaved to the throttle channel 100% throws. By endpoints you can adjust the slaving percentage on the low side of the slave channel up or down to match both motors start point.
I think that will do it, or let me know if this isn't clear enough. I'm making some assumptions on your familiarity on programming...
 

engineer

Senior Member
Ok, so a few more details from suggestions, the second ESC is using a servo extension with the middle (positive) wire disconnected, and I reset both ESC to default settings just to be sure. Power is being supplied through a distribution board i got for the quad, 3mm bullet connectors to ESC, 2mm bulllet connectors to the motors. I swapped power locations, motors, and servo extensions back/forth. My motors are running on channels 1 and 2 with each mixed to 100% Throttle, and trims are zero'd.

It is definitely the second ESC.
So I have new questions!
What does a motor do if one of the phase wires isn't getting signal?
How likely is it that my ESC is just straight broken?
Could it be a bad solder connection?

Thanks for input!
 

xuzme720

Dedicated foam bender
Mentor
if it's the ESC and calibrating it hasn't helped, it might be just off a little. If a phase wasn't hooked up, the motor would just chatter or screetch without turning. From your descriptions, it's a workable ESC, not broken, it just doesn't match the first one exactly. Bad solder connections would more likely show up under full load rather than low, but that isn't a given. Electronics are funny sometimes...
 

engineer

Senior Member
Ok, so in conclusion, I soldered up a third ESC, paying extra attention to make sure good connections. At low signal, this one still twitches a bit before movement, but does seems ok after its above 5%. The third is much more responsive than the second ESC, but still not as great as the first one. You said it, Electronics are wierd...