NEO short circuit resources (killing Spark MAX)

When NEOs or NEO 550s are stalled or overpowered, they can melt and create a short circuit between the encoder wires and the power supply which can permanently destroy Spark MAXes. Our team compiled some resources on this:

Generally, we have a current limit of 40A for NEOs and 10A for 550s and try to avoid any situations where we are stalling motors. We lost a lot of money on dead motors and motor controllers before we figured this out.

6 Likes

Absolutely. When we lose a Spark Max, we change out the NEO as well. If not, you could end up frying multiple Spark Maxes. We just change both as a best practice.

2 Likes

This is a known issue but i forget it every year! Thanks for the reminder. Always impose “impossible” limits on your motor controllers!

Thanks for this info.

We went through 4 SparkMAXes at ONCMP after a taking a massive hit and replacing one of our NEO550s with a factory new one fresh from the box. That factory new motor then went on to eat 4 SparkMAXes until we caught on to what was going on. We then replaced it again with an already used one. Not the kind of environment you want to figure these things out, especially when you trust a factory new motor should be fine. Ended up having to play 3 matches defence.
We’re now always going to be taking the multimeter to any motor we’re installing before powering them up the first time.
Lesson learned :smiling_face_with_tear:

2 Likes

Got a chance to check the suspected bad, factory new motor with a multimeter. It has a short between the white phase wire and the yellow sensor wire.

1 Like

had this happen too, also measured with a multimeter, same exact result as you found, thankfully didn’t happen at competition, but still wasted a whole day of shop time, and $360 of motor controllers, thanks REV