We’ve been able to run the motorcontroller succesfully with our previous 24V powersupply.
However, after recently switching to a 48V powersupply, we heard a quite strong spark coming from the motorcontroller (just a few minutes after powering it up). We didn’t even initiated the motor or were able to connect it with it before the spark came. This is the third motor-controller that we broke!
One thing to notice is that the motor was in IDLE when this happen!
@r91 from your picture, It looks as if either the PVDD1 pin of U4 or the capacitor C42 has exploded. This pin on the chip, and the little cap take the full DC bus voltage from your powersupply.
It’s possible, if you have an excessively large power supply (with very large output capacitance and very low internal resistance) that if you suddenly connect the board with the DC power supply already turned on, there will be a huge inrush current into the ODrive. Such an inrush wave could end at this tiny cap and blow it.
However, I’ve not had any problem connecting my ODrive to a large 48V battery with no inrush protection.
In your pictures, it looks like there is a lot of dirt on the board. Is it in a machine shop with bits of metal filings flying around? If so, then it’s more likely that a piece of metal filing has caused a short circuit.
Actually, judging by the overheated trace heading for the shunt resistor, I’d wager that a short between PVDD1 and SP2 is exactly what happened.
It was almost certainly caused by that dust. It could well be that the dust was there when you were running at 24V. but it wasn’t quite enough to arc over due to the lower voltage.
You need to be careful with such a high voltage across pins of a chip that are so close together. If you are using ODrive in a machine shop or any dirty environment, you should put it in an enclosure.
