RoadTest: NXP Sensorless Motor Control Eval Kit + Motor
Author: adsicks
Creation date:
Evaluation Type: Development Boards & Tools
Did you receive all parts the manufacturer stated would be included in the package?: True
What other parts do you consider comparable to this product?: ST-Nucleo IHM07M1
What were the biggest problems encountered?: Development libraries were poorly documented.
Detailed Review:
I would like to thank NXP and element 14 for allowing me to evaluate this product.
I had planned to do a motor to motor Torque Stall Test. I mounted the motor to a chassis and tried using an 18V drill for the counter torque. However the software kept giving me stall errors.
Wait! What is a Motor Torque Stall Test anyways? This is a way to test a DC motor set up that is used by many manufacturers and distributors such as Halliburton. The stall torque occurs in a motor when the rotational speed is zero. Electric motors have a particularly hard time with this test because the stall can over current the motor and overheat the coils.
With this controller board I was unable to determine the maximum continuous stall torque. This is the maximum amount of torque a motor can produce without overheating. After performing my experiments I am uncertain as to whether the maximum stall torque can even be determined in sensorless mode due to the mathematics involved. The maximum stall torque would need to be known beforehand, thus this test would need to be performed in a different manner.
On a brighter note, this is an awesome kit. It worked out of the box. In a few hours I was able to have the motor up and spinning. It comes with its own firmware library that uses the FreeMaster tool for motor control. However, one thing I can compare to the competition is the lack of reverse for he motor. Another motor kit I have from a different manufacturer will let me run a 3 phase sensorless motor backwards and forwards. Trying to plug a negative number into Freescale to do this with this kit did not work. All in all this is a good kit for industrial motor control applications. It was fairly easy to get up and running and uses existing tools many might be familiar with.
