Bad Pwm cables

[Greg Needel]

so we were hooking up the the controls to the kit bot today and found 2 bad pwm cables (new from the kit) I just was wondering if anyone else has encountered a bad set of pwm cables in there set.


I guess you can also heed this as a warning if something is not working from your initial setup check the cables.

[KenWittlief]

Ive definately seen bad PWM cables before. I cant say whether they were bad out of the box, but its something everyone shoud keep in mind

and check with an ohm meter if you have any doubt.

the connector pins are crimped on - sometimes they dont make electrical contact.

[Rickertsen2]

Originally Posted by Greg Needel

so we were hooking up the the controls to the kit bot today and found 2 bad pwm cables (new from the kit) I just was wondering if anyone else has encountered a bad set of pwm cables in there set.


I guess you can also heed this as a warning if something is not working from your initial setup check the cables.

The PWM cables have always had a problem and are i feel the weekest point of the control system.

[Travis Hoffman]

I assume you checked the continuity of the cable with a meter, but FYI, in recent years we've found that the male end of the PWM cable sometimes engages very poorly with the connector on the speed controller, even if it seems the connector has been inserted all the way. We've had to pull them out and reseat them several times to get everything to work. Luckily, once seated properly, we haven't observed any intermittent problems after that.

[Andrew Blair]

Yes, the new Victors can be real pains as far as getting a PWM into them. We had to completely omit using some of them; they simply wouldn't do anything after seemingly seating the PWM. Some would work, some wouldn't. I hope IFI has fixed this...

[Mike Martus]

Before you throw the cable away and blame them take a look at the speed controller where they plug in. I was shown by the guys at Innovation FIRST that a small piece of flashing (thin plastic) is sometimes in the hole during the manufacture of the speed controller. Taking a thin sharp object you can remove this and the PWM wire will seat correctly.

We found this to be the case on many of the speed controllers.

This is a basic check we make on all controllers using a magnifying head gear to replace my old eyes.

[Al Skierkiewicz]

This has been the case for several years. It comes with practice but the PWM connector does not always seat all the way into the speed controller. If you take a look at a working controller and compare it to one with a suspected bad cable you will see the difference, about 1/8" less engagement on the bad one.

[Uberbots]

yes we have had that problem before.
sometimes a litlle bit of solder (or auder whatever the spelling is) where the crimps are supposed to be helps a bit where the wires dont make contact.

but we have had dead wires before (non-connection-based)... and were too lazy to fix them so we make sure we order a lot of PWM cables.