Hello guys, I have bought some 80A HV Flame ESC (6S- 12S lipo battery) from T-motor some times ago. Now I want to use it for my big Quad Copter (or Quadplane) using 12S battery. However I just read in this forum bad news about the “flame”, that it generates problems for motor, I don’t really understand what the problem is, but I am worried if the flame will make my drone Crashed. I don’t want it happen. Anybody can give advice how is solution to this potensial problems?? About motor, I will use Sunnysky motor 8318 Kv100 with 34" props.
The Flame is rated for 80A 12S , and my drone will draw current about 15-40A max. at 12S. Any opinion will be highly appreciated.
Best regards,
Tony
I believe their big problem is when going over-current. If you stay well below max you should be ok.
Use a low value thrust expo too.
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Here’s an example thread on Flame ESCs:
Probably set
MOT_THST_EXPO,0.2
T-Motor web site says to calibrate the throttle/PWM but I thought there was some info saying these had a fixed PWM range - maybe that was the Alphas…
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Shawn,
Thank you very much for this info. This is valuable to me. I believe my current draw will be around 15-40A max, much lower than 80A.
Tony
I have been flying quite a bit wih the Flame ESCs without any issue. They perform very well for me and flight characteristics are pretty smooth. My max power draw was 188A for 8 ESCs during a max power vertical climb, so in the range of 25A per ESC. I use the 0.18 EXPO value I had measured on the thrust stand a while ago as written in the referenced post.
@CLabeck
Thank you for sharing your experience. May I know how big is your propeller? Is it 30" ? I am curious why your EXPO value is so low (18??)??
Regards
Tony
I recently had issue with Flame 80A ESC running MN8014 motor and NS30x10 prop.
Even though there’s enough margin between max current draw and limit, I have had motor shutdown thrice.
What was T-motors response?
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They don’t have an answer.
We have even seen this is Flame 60A. It shuts down at a current spike but that is lower than the current required to shutdown.
Either they have set the values too low or something else is going on.
We have seen that often enough. There seems to be different firmware versions but no idea how they match up with the ESC’s.
I really would flag these ESCs. Specially Flame series which shutdown randomly mid-flight. I think it’s best to mention this somewhere in wiki. We have had shutdown on Flame 60A, 80A and 180A ESCs.
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Yes, Leonard mentioned that shut-down behaviour with Flame ESCs once too. They decide something is wrong (even though current may be well within limits) and just stop. They do not try to recover, and require power-cycling before they will work again. This is very dangerous for multirotors.
Unless T-Motor can show they have improved the electronics or firmware, to answer the original question at the top of this discussion:
“How To Avoid Problems Using Flame HV 80A ESC, Please Advice” - DO NOT BUY THEM
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Right. Until T-Motor shows some interest in working with Ardupilot why do so? They are not a Corporate Partner.
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I have tried my best to explain them the same. I even requested firmware without the protections enabled just to verify whether it was protections triggering. But they don’t want to co-operate to solve it.
Replies from them,
T-motor: “I just followed the issue and want to check something. Right now we just can know maybe the ESC issue, but want to confirm what’s the issue of it. If it is the protection issues, but we can’t cancel these protection right now. And we said we are worried to lead more dangerous accidents.”
T-motor: “For FLAME 80A, only overtemperature and overcurrent will cause stall. But these ESCs are all with these protection. So have you tested with other ESCs without these protection? Then will happe with same issue?”
T-motor: “Dear Mallik, if customer’s operation needs ESC without the protection way from flame ESC, then maybe he can choose other ESC. I suggested to use other other ESC because right now the reason maybe like this. Maybe we did not communicate successfully before. If you have any questions, we can discuss it again.”
They know there’s some issue. But they are not ready to take any action. With Flame 180A on X8 config, it was pretty huge aircraft which fell off the sky for the same reason. I personally would never trust these ESCs anymore even though I was official distributor for t-motor in India just because they are not ready acknowledge the issue and try to resolve it.
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Haha. To be honest, I always wondered why @Leonardthall was so against using t-motor ESCs. We realised it the hard way.
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I’m aware plenty of people use the T-Motor Alpha ESC successfully (and some dont too) so it’s a bit like they come from a different design team and different factory compared to the Alphas. And as far as I’m aware that still doesnt make the Alpha a perfect ESC either, but it is verifiably more reliable than a Flame 
I’ve seen in logs where the Flames have done their protection complete-cut-off and the current was no where near published limits of the ESC.
Yes. I can agree Alpha is better. No shutdowns at least. Something to note is Alpha ESCs can’t handle LiHV well. Rest seems fine.
Yes, That’s why people should be made aware. It’s literally deadly these systems falling off the sky.
Some of their motors also have serious issues and the bell’s fly off. I am not sure if they have fixed this problem but from what I have seen T-Motor don’t care if they have serious design problems as long as people keep purchasing the product. And if the aircraft crashes you need to buy more!
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Agreed.
Haha, yeah. The bell flying off problem. They say they are using stronger screws rather than reworking on design.
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Yep, they have had that problem for many years. They are happy to keep selling products that are simply not fit for purpose and pretend they are a premium company.
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