Castle 85 fire

[asesso]

just finished my eraptor 620 after double checking all measurements and took it out for it"s maiden flight. I am using a spectrum dx7 with a seven channel reciever two 5 cell lithium packs a castle 85 speed controller and a 2 cell radio pack. The gyro is a futaba 401. The initial motor run up was reversed so the rotors did not spin. I reversed the red an black wire from the motor to the speed control( the motor is a thunder tiger obl 49/08) and re started the heli. She lifted off perfectly with excellent stability and control. I did some basic turns and was begining to land to check all the bolts( 3-4 minutes flying time) when I saw a puff of smoke and the speed controller caught fire! I landed normally disconnected the batteries and the fire went out. I used the castlel link software to initialy setup the controller with heli fixed point linear control. Does anyone know what I did wrong?
Art

[SpeedVision]

Bummer. I had the exact same thing happen to a CC Phoenix 35. I even had to reverse my motor to get rotation correct... Hard to diagnose, especially if your motor fried as well. Make sure you give the motor a good look and sniff to see if the smoke was motor related. Make sure you test the motor on the bench to insure you don't repeat the process all over again... My fire occured on the end with the 3 output wires for the motor. In general, pure white smoke is from a motor failure and a black/brown smoke is from the ESC.

Fortunately, Castle Creations and my TPPacks.com stood behind their products which never made it outside of my basement... Castle had me a new ESC in less than 2 weeks at ZERO cost to me. If both went, it will be pretty tough to say which was the primary cause (chicken or egg).

If your ESC is no longer under warranty, Castle will replace under their flat rate repair policy for a very reasonable price...

[asesso]

Thanks for the reply. The motor and leads look untouched but I literally had flame coming from the motor side of the ESC. It programmed fine when I was setting it up and the early part of the flight other than reversing the motor leads was perfect. I have an e-mail out to castle
Art

[dogfart]

I had the same thing happen to an Align 75A ESC and 100A ESC.

[SpeedVision]

They won't tell you much, other than to send it in with the return from from their website. Is it under warranty? If so, they more than likely give you the benefit of the doubt and replace it (that's what they told me). Out of warranty, you'll be charged the flat rate to fix.

Are you sure the motor is ok? Did you see white smoke? Look for a hardened foam amongst the windings and if you see any the motor will more than likely be scrap. Mine appeared perfectly fine from the outside, but I put power to it and I got more magic smoke. ESC got hot to the touch in a couple seconds.