Brushless DC Motor Randomly Stalling - Help!

[brenTRON]

Hey all, I’m encountering a problem that I would love your help with:

I have a brushless DC motor rated (1.5v to 9v).

I’m feeding a range from 3.36v to 3.95v (see the video, wiring diagram, and motor specs below)

At seemingly random times, once the motor is turned off, it will not turn back on again. It doesn’t seem to correlate with how long it was last run, or the load it had. It never stalls while spinning, only once turned off.

The only pattern I can start to gather after hours of experimenting is that if it happens to stop spinning and the shaft is in a certain position, the likely hood of it starting back up, goes down drastically. There are two shaft orientations that seem to be a hang up. But…. Not always. Not every time the motor stops in those orientations does it stall. Only sometimes. The inconsistent nature and lack of pattern in this problem has me baffled.

The severity of the stall too, seems to be inconsistent. Sometimes to get the motor going again I only need rotate the shaft slightly our of the stall orientation and then apply power. Other times, this will not work and I have to apply power and manually rotate the shaft for several gentle but quick spins before the motor will begin to spin on it’s own. Other times I have to apply power and spin the shaft manually very quickly for 20 or more rotations before the motor will spin on its own, and it’s not an immediate take over… the motor will start to spin slowly and gradually accelerate to full speed.

Any ideas at what is causing this? This project is for a Halloween party I am throwing, and I plan to make 8 or so of these particular gadgets, but they need to work reliably without manually having to manipulate the motor in order to get it to work.

I would love any insight you might have. I am brand new to small electronics.



Here is the exact motor I am using:

https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B07Q44YYKG?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2_dt_b_product_details



Here is the motor issue live in a video:

https://www.loom.com/share/bbf8b3978e2a49cea628d1a052894829



Here is my wiring diagram:

 

[Greywolf74]

Wow, that is a head scratcher for sure. Only questions I can come up with are...

1) Have you tried a different motor to make sure that one isnt just faulty somehow. I'm assuming so though since you linked a 6 pack of those motors. If it happens with more than 1 motor then Id have to question if the motors are just junk or not.

2) Have you built more than one of these devices yet? Is more than 1 device having this issue? If its only 1 device having the issue and its not a bad motor then maybe one of the switches/diodes/resistors/leds is bad causing an issue?

3) have you tried any sort of volt and/or amp meter to see if theres any kind of voltage or current oddities at different points in your circuit? For example I recently built a resistor bank for pulling high current loads out of lipo batteries and I ran a store bought inline watt mater between the load and the batt. For some reason whenever the load was turned on no power would be drawn from the battery. Turns out the watt meter was bad and when a load was applied the watt meters inner circuitry would cause the circuit to open and not let any power through. I'm just wondering if you have some sort of issue in the circuit itself causing the voltage to fall below operating minimums. Not sure just brain storming. I'm a novice at electronics so I'm just trying to think of any possibility.

BTW, its a brushed motor just fyi. brushless motors have 3 wires, brushed have 2. Its also a really cool idea! I can see where that would be a hit at a halloween party!

Thats all I can come up with off the top of my head. Let us know how it turns out or if you have any updated info on it. I'm curious to see what happens with this build!

 

[brenTRON]

Wow, that is a head scratcher for sure. Only questions I can come up with are...

1) Have you tried a different motor to make sure that one isnt just faulty somehow. I'm assuming so though since you linked a 6 pack of those motors. If it happens with more than 1 motor then Id have to question if the motors are just junk or not.

2) Have you built more than one of these devices yet? Is more than 1 device having this issue? If its only 1 device having the issue and its not a bad motor then maybe one of the switches/diodes/resistors/leds is bad causing an issue?

3) have you tried any sort of volt and/or amp meter to see if theres any kind of voltage or current oddities at different points in your circuit? For example I recently built a resistor bank for pulling high current loads out of lipo batteries and I ran a store bought inline watt mater between the load and the batt. For some reason whenever the load was turned on no power would be drawn from the battery. Turns out the watt meter was bad and when a load was applied the watt meters inner circuitry would cause the circuit to open and not let any power through. I'm just wondering if you have some sort of issue in the circuit itself causing the voltage to fall below operating minimums. Not sure just brain storming. I'm a novice at electronics so I'm just trying to think of any possibility.

BTW, its a brushed motor just fyi. brushless motors have 3 wires, brushed have 2. Its also a really cool idea! I can see where that would be a hit at a halloween party!

Thats all I can come up with off the top of my head. Let us know how it turns out or if you have any updated info on it. I'm curious to see what happens with this build!

Thanks for the help. You've given me some ideas to troubleshoot! I'll give some of these a try and see what I can find. I'm hoping it's just he motor. I've purchased another brand motor that I'll also try out.

Wow, that is a head scratcher for sure. Only questions I can come up with are...

1) Have you tried a different motor to make sure that one isnt just faulty somehow. I'm assuming so though since you linked a 6 pack of those motors. If it happens with more than 1 motor then Id have to question if the motors are just junk or not.

2) Have you built more than one of these devices yet? Is more than 1 device having this issue? If its only 1 device having the issue and its not a bad motor then maybe one of the switches/diodes/resistors/leds is bad causing an issue?

3) have you tried any sort of volt and/or amp meter to see if theres any kind of voltage or current oddities at different points in your circuit? For example I recently built a resistor bank for pulling high current loads out of lipo batteries and I ran a store bought inline watt mater between the load and the batt. For some reason whenever the load was turned on no power would be drawn from the battery. Turns out the watt meter was bad and when a load was applied the watt meters inner circuitry would cause the circuit to open and not let any power through. I'm just wondering if you have some sort of issue in the circuit itself causing the voltage to fall below operating minimums. Not sure just brain storming. I'm a novice at electronics so I'm just trying to think of any possibility.

BTW, its a brushed motor just fyi. brushless motors have 3 wires, brushed have 2. Its also a really cool idea! I can see where that would be a hit at a halloween party!

Thats all I can come up with off the top of my head. Let us know how it turns out or if you have any updated info on it. I'm curious to see what happens with this build!

Thanks for the help. You've given me some ideas to troubleshoot! I'll give some of these a try and see what I can find. I'm hoping it's just he motor. I've purchased another brand motor that I'll also try out.

 

[Greywolf74]

Thanks for the help. You've given me some ideas to troubleshoot! I'll give some of these a try and see what I can find. I'm hoping it's just he motor. I've purchased another brand motor that I'll also try out.

Thanks for the help. You've given me some ideas to troubleshoot! I'll give some of these a try and see what I can find. I'm hoping it's just he motor. I've purchased another brand motor that I'll also try out.

NP, let me know how it turns out and let me know how much one of those party favors costs!