ODrive and "mechanical advance"

1

Hi forum,

We’re hoping to use a particular motor with our ODrive Pro that is built by a company specializing in propellers of various kinds. They have shared that they have “mechanical advance of 15° for CCW” that their own propeller drives/controllers are expecting. Note that it does have a Hall sensor.

Will the ODrive get confused by this situation, or is there a setting somewhere to reflect this motor feature?

Should this motor behave just like any other BLDC, with the “mechanical advance” angle being adjusted for in software? Or will it still have preference for CCW rotation, etc, that we don’t want?

Googling “mechanical advance” for BLDC’s has not been very fruitful (it has been translated from German to my native English). Is there another term I can use to learn more? Is this “mechanical timing”, which seems to mean the location of the Hall sensor with respect to the windings?

Thanks!

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Hi! This is a holdover from cheap motor drivers that only use six-step hall-based commutation – and yes, this is similar to mechanical timing, also sometimes called “phase advance”. This is thankfully totally irrelevant with the ODrive, as it will automatically compute the hall-phase offsets during calibration, and the field oriented control algorithm will ensure optimal torque production at any motor speed :slight_smile: no need for adjusting any phase advance in software, and the ODrive will ensure correct, balanced torque production in either direction.

Please let me know if there’s anything else I can help with!

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