Tutorial SMC3 Arduino 3DOF Motor Driver and Windows Utilities

Never set the Fpwm higher than 20kHz, you will burn IBT2 momentarily, take care of the supply from the fan to the IBT2 heatsink.
Lower the voltage to about 18-19V,
Alternatively, do what I did and replace the IBT2 with this controller
https://www.xsimulator.net/community/threads/reasonably-priced-100a-motor-controllers.17638/
I have been using it for a few months and it performs very well, powered by 24V.

Hi Sebastian...you are correct point #1! When I got the motor stopped turning, the PSU went down from the normal 24V to 3.58V.

Thanks for helping me narrow down the issue to debug this continually. I might need bigger PSU.

I am using MeanWell SE-600-24. Link. Output, 24V, 25 Amp, 600W.
My motor is 24V 350W 3000RPM. Link. -> nominal run current is 14.6A

The motor you have is not suitable for driving a motion sim, too high RPM in all projects a 24V 250W 75RPM motor is used.

I should mentioned earlier that I use this Worm Gear Gearbox NMRV-030 Speed Reducer Ratio 80:1
Link

We still don't know if the PSU shuts down because the actual current drawn is too high (over current protection gets activated) or if the issue comes from regenerative currents beeing not handled well (over voltage protection gets activated).

In fact, looking at your 600W Meanwell PSU shutting down driving a 350W motor, I am pretty certain that regenerative currents are the issue here. A bigger PSU wont help at all in this case. Or does one single 600W PSU drive multiple 350 W motors?

There are a variety of options on handling regenerative currents. Among those are: lead batteries, Zehner diodes, shunt regulators and Sabertooth 2x32 motor driver with load resistors on the aux power outputs.

In my experience with the IBT2 at 24V, manual control of motor movements often ends up blocking the IBT2 due to too high currents or even its irreparable damage, it is safer to test by selecting “Sine” where the signal builds up gradually.

HI Sebastian, when you say 'lead batteries', are you talking about replacing the PSU to 24v battery?

All the options mentioned above (except for the Sabertooth motor driver) are usually wired in parallel to the PSU to handle the regenerative energy coming from the motor.

If you use large capacity lead batteries (like from a car), you can also use a smaller PSU because current spikes that would activate the over current protection are handled by the battery. On a 24V 3DOF you will need 6 12V car batteries, which take up a lot of space, though.

I see.
How about a large capacitor instead of a car battery? Like this https://amzn.to/3YHGFrO

You could in theory, but energy density of capacitors is really bad.

A 6 Farrad capacitor at 24 V will store 1/2×6×24^2/1000=1,8kJ of energy. Alternatively, two 12V 12Ah motorcycle batteries in series will store 2×12×12/60/60/1000=1036kJ of energy. Both cost roughly the same.

I have no idea about the order of magnitude of stored energy that is required for a motion simulator. I know some people successfully used lead batteries, but I have never heard of someone using capacitors. There might be, though, as there is a lot of stuff i don't know about.

Hi Guys!

I have some problems with my setup. So i built exactly same setup as in start of this post using H-bridge drivers.
I think that i miss understand something or there is problem in software. I run Simtools and simutility app on the same computer. In sim utility app everything works as expected abd movement is correct ( smooth and solid ) But when i start simtools and try to adjust settings there the i have strabge problem in the middle of sliders.
For example roll axis , the 50% is middle the rig is centered if i put 51% it jumps about 10% of movement range and then goes lineary. Same from 50% to 0% BUT that one percent from 50% to 51% moves motor too much. Why is this? On both motors same thing, i tried simtools 2.6 and 3 same thing. I tried to change setting ik smc utility app with no luck.

So just to clarify my text rig moves lineary from 0-50% and from 51-100% but that one percent from 50-51 moves it too much. The cause is that that ”center ” shakes the whole rig like crazy.

Language simtools bug?

Can you open a little more this? If i understand the principle of working that simtools sending data straight to arduino using serial.

Same as smc utility.

I am not in the game yet, just using basic 2dof plugin (tried advanced 2dof abd 3dof same thing)

So if smc utility runs the rig normally it is not in arduino code or serial connection problem.
I tried different simtools versions with same result.
So it seems that it is not bug in program itself.
Hmm…

https://www.xsimulator.net/community/faq/simtools-language-setting-bug-change-to-english-local.233/

Thanks! I will try this! And report !

@Jan Hamalainen: Just to confirm: You have smooth, linear motion from 0 to 100 in SMC3util but get this jump from 50 to 51 in Simtools?

Yes that fixed the problem! Many thanks!

Yes, that was the problem. But thanks to Krzysztof Dej the problem was in my windows regional settings. For some reason simtools has a bug. Now when my regional setting is set to US all works like a charm!