Motor spinning wrong way on trex 500l

[canadianR6]

Hi all, I just finished my first build on a new Trex 500l super combo with the GPro. Overall, the build went pretty well. I got it synced nicely to my brand new Futaba T8J. The only problem I am having, is that the motor seems to be spinning the wrong way and only turning the main gear, and not the tail drive gear or the main blades. My question is, is it common for Align to ship an ESC with the color coded brushless wires soldered on wrong, or did I do something wrong during setup? If it was something I did, is there a way to fix my problem without swapping the red, blue, and black wires around?
Thanks for any help.
Cal

[sunsetmaro]

Connect the Blue and Black wires in a different order to the motor. If you connected Blue-Blue, Red-Red and Black-Black, Keep the red-red but switch the Blue-Black and Black to Blue. That should fix it...

[canadianR6]

I appreciate the tip. I'll try that right now. So is this a normal situation when dealing with brushless motors?

[flint723]

Yes, normal.

[Gladius]

I don't know about the Align ESC, or the GPro, but Castle ESCs, and the Spartan Vortex allow you to reverse the motor direction without swapping motor leads. But as others have said, this is very common, and technically isn't a problem. It's just the way brushless motors work.

[canadianR6]

Thanks for putting my mind at ease. I thought it was due to something I did wrong.

[01ws666]

Originally Posted by Gladius

It's just the way brushless motors work.

Actually that's how any 3 phase motor works as an industrial electrician wiring up 480v motors all the time I generally know I've got a 50/50 shot at getting rotation right the first time and if it's reversed I just swap any 2 wires at the load side of the disconnect.

Also when a industrial motor needs to be sped up or slowed down we install a VFD (variable frequency drive) that is basically like the ESC's we use in our RC's and like ESC's you can usually reverse the motor rotation in the VFD parameters but it's usually faster just to swap 2 wires lol...

[Gladius]

Originally Posted by 01ws666

Actually that's how any 3 phase motor works as an industrial electrician wiring up 480v motors all the time I generally know I've got a 50/50 shot at getting rotation right the first time and if it's reversed I just swap any 2 wires at the load side of the disconnect.

I was sooo close to saying that's how any 3 phase motor works, but went with brushless, because I was trying to keep it more relevant to the current discussion!

[canadianR6]

One more thing you guys might be able to help me with. I'm at the field right now about to maiden my 500l with the gpro. I was doing one final inspection before liftoff, and I noticed that the swash plate would tilt in the direction that I was tilting the heli in, as apposed to correcting for the drift. Is there a setting that I missed out on that needs to be reversed?
Thanks again for any help, Cal.

[canadianR6]

Never mind, fixed the problem. It was a glitch in the gpro software on the computer. I had to tell the gpro it was facing backwards to get it to correct for drift properly.

[Mateyhv]

Great you have done the preflight check, that have avoided you some nasty expenses

[Mike7513]

Originally Posted by 01ws666

Actually that's how any 3 phase motor works as an industrial electrician wiring up 480v motors all the time I generally know I've got a 50/50 shot at getting rotation right the first time and if it's reversed I just swap any 2 wires at the load side of the disconnect.

I'm an electronics tech and I used to do field service. I had a guy call me up one day and asked me how to reverse the motor and I told him just swap any two wires. He calls me back a while later and says he did that and it's still running the same way. I told him that can't be. Well what he did was he swapped two wires and then he swapped two more wires! I told him that he just put it back the way it was and he was all, well there not connected to the same point anymore. I had to explain to him that the sequence is what's important. Connecting L1-T1, L2-T2, L3-T3 is the same as connecting L1-T2, L2-T3, L3-T1.

And I had the same 50-50 chance of getting it right when I wired up a motor.


Mike