Motors Moving Faster In One Direction Vs Other?

Not sure what you mean by PID or how to set it, sorry. I'm using SMC3 and I have the KP set to 400 and Fpid to 1. Pwmax at 60 and Pwmin to 5. Like I said it's working well right now (without a load). The motor is a 12V 40A 50:1 gearmotor that is used for tarping dump trucks. It will throw 90LBs off of the sim chair if I connect it directly to the battery (don't ask how I know this). Supposedly the motor produces .8 HP and 44NM. I posted the specs for the motor a few messages above. Per your suggestion I will attach my clamp meter to the motor lead and test it, though I've never used my meter on DC, only AC. I hope it is DC capable.

Yes. I went through 10 of them.

Sorry, initially they were IBT2. 10 of them. I tried doubling them per your suggestion but they fried as well. The latest 2 were the 100A controllers suggested by Gadget999

Thank you so much. That explained a lot as I failed to previously associate SMC3's Kp Ki and Kd with PID! I could not watch the videos referenced as the links did not appear to work. I would love to watch a video for fine tuning purposes if you know of another please let me know.

As I mentioned above, the rig is working fine on a single new 100A controller with 90lbs of weight in the chair. I am hoping the other 2 axis will also work when I receive the 100A replacements. I used a clamp meter on the 12V motor lead per Gadget999 suggestion and it read 14 amps at peak with me pressing down an additional 30-40 lbs on the platform. Without pressing down it only reached 9 amps. The new controller did not even get warm and seems to work well thus far. I think having accidentally left PWmax to 255 when connecting the new controller initially is what fried them but I am not certain. Maybe they were just bad. Right now my Kp is 450, Ki is 0 and Kd is 0, Ks is 1, PWmax is 80 and PWmin is 10 and it seems to track pretty smoothly. Thank you for your help. I will update the post when I receive the other controllers.

Ok you have tuned the pid wrong

In my opinion you need to start again

Set pid to 1 - the motors should not work
Set pwm max to 200

Slowly increase kp till the motors start moving
Increase the number till it tracks on the screen with the rig loaded

I suspect your rig was moving too fast and overshooting back and forth using too much energy. You may have ended up in a situation where it tried to go forwards and backwards at the same time and short circuited

Get those p numbers down

By limiting the pwm max you are just masking the problem

Where did you get the motors from ?, they look interesting

Wow, that is not at all what is in the directions for setting up SMC3. Perhaps the directions should be changed to reflect the method you suggest? I will try your suggestion and report back. The motors are for tarping dump trucks. Here is where I purchased them from : https://tarpingusa.com/

This is what the instructions with SMC3 say to do and I followed it exactly:

Initial Setup

I strongly recommend you follow the steps below if this is the first time you are using SMC3 with your simulator to reduce the risk of damaging anything.

1. Disconnect the motor power supply
2. Make sure Simtools is not running – we’re not ready for that yet!
3. Wire up the Arduino (with SMC3 installed) to your H-Bridges and connect to your computer via USB
4. Run the Windows SMC3 Utility software and make sure it communicates with the Arduino (There is no need to set baud rates, they are not configurable)
5. Set the Kp, Ki, Kd, PWMmin, PWMmax, PWMrev to 0 for ALL motors (This will make sure the motors don’t move)
6. Set Clip to 255 (you need to do this first) and Limit to 255 (This will give you plenty of margin if something goes wrong while setting up)
7. Turn on the power to your motors – nothing should move at this stage!
8. Set Kp to about 400
9. Now slowly, increase PWMmax… at some point the motor should start to move. When it does check the “Green” feedback line is moving toward the “Blue” target position.
   • If it is then that motor and feedback is wired correctly - proceed to test other motors.
   • If it is moving away turn off motor power immediately (or quickly reduce PWMmax again). In this case you need to either reverse the wires to the motor being tested –OR– reverse the +5V and GND wires to your feedback pot for the motor being tested (do not do both). Restart the test from the beginning.
10. Do the above for each motor

by limiting the pwm max - you are basically clamping the max current you can apply and limiting the performance of the motors

its the PID you should adjust in a control system not the pulse width

for example a P of 400 would be way too much on my sim

Ah. Perhaps having my Pwmax set to 255 and having the KP up at 500 or so is what fried the 2 controllers then. I will try your tuning method as soon as i get the new controllers. Thanks.

Got same problem as you, hope you found solution, because i want help with this

I received my new replacements and they work! I lowered the Pwmax to 80 and wired in both of them and they worked just like the other one that is still working. After I was sure they were working stable I used the PID tuning method suggested by Gadget999 and lowered Kp, Ki, Kd to 0, raised the Pwmax to 255, Pwmin to 1 and Pwrev to 255. I put SMC3 in Motion mode and slowly raised Kp until the rig started moving. Mine started at Kp of 80. But I found to get a good trace of the potentiometer I needed to go to Kp of 150. With my weight in the rig I am running Kp at 180. I have not changed any other settings except to raise Pwmin to 10 and I have deadzone set to 1 on the traction loss motor as there seems to be quite a bit of mechanical slop (5mm to 7mm) on that axis due to the lever length and gear lash in the motor.

Overall the 100Amp controllers seem good so far. I for one do not recommend the cheap IBT2 on ebay as all of the ones I purchased eventually failed. Even doubling them did not work for my motors. I am assuming that the true amp load on the cheap IBT2 is not as high as they state or my motor is drawing more current than the clamp meter is showing. I will provide an update on the new 100A controllers once I have used them for some time.

If you are using the same 100A controller pictured I would make sure your Arduino sketch is in Mode 1, then follow the guideline in the previous post. When my 100A controllers failed, they actually emitted a cloud of smoke and fizzled... I had to pull the plug or I think they would have caught on fire.