Quote:
Originally Posted by squirrel
Do you have any idea what caused the shorts? Had the motors been run hard enough to melt insulation, or is there just a mechanical problem with the terminal mounting? pics of what is shorted would be nice
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The motors had not been run hard; they had hardly been run - very gentile testing was all we had done.
It is definitely a mechanical problem with terminal mounting lugs. They wiggle in their plastic housing enough to cause an internal short. We are using them in a double-double rack and pinion lift for placing tubes. The motors move up and down with the racks. We used a similar system for Triple Play with FP motors and gearboxes - the FP terminals had no problems. But this year we're using our FP motors in our 6 motor 6WD, so we don't have the option of using anything but the 540.
We just discovered the source of the problem yesterday evening, and decided it'd be a good time to call it a day. Right now the plan is to find the happy place for those terminals and epoxy them in place. We're already using double strain relief to secure the wiring - but we'll take a look at making it better.
The bottom line is that our failure to notice the weakness of those terminals cost us one, maybe two, Victors. We hope that this post will prevent it from happening to sombody else.