Is it legal to extend a Spark MAX’s power wires if they were cut too short? One of our mentors is good with soldering.
yes it is, be sure to use 12 awg or higher wire. What do you mean by too short though because if they will require soldering in the moter than I don’t think that is allowed
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To the extent of my knowledge, yes as long as you don’t disassemble the controller. You already have to crimp on your own power connectors, so soldering on wires isn’t very different at all.
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It’s cut so short that I cannot solder to them or crimp them. They are flush so I would need to open up the controller and replace the wires It says you are allowed to fix the controller I was wondering if I could make the wires extra long. Longer than stock wires which I don’t think it will be a problem just wanted to be sure. I will use 12awg silicone wire that’s the same type in the stock controller. It will preform the exact same as stock
I need to open up the controller to replace the input leads. I will use the exact same wire 12awg silicone to repair the controller
The obvious “I am not a LRI and can;t say it’s explicitly legal” comes into play, but it seems to be legal to repair it to give equivalent functionality per 2020-R66-M.
Devices may be repaired, provided the performance and specifications of the device after the repair are identical to those before the repair.
You definitely wouldn’t want to make the leads longer than factory, or use a thicker wire because then it wouldn’t be identical specs, they’d be better / more convenient.
Are you sure? I’m pretty sure there’s a rule against using motor controllers that have been opened and modified. I could be wrong, but I’d want to see the rule that says that is legal. If it’s legal, there should be no problems with soldering on new wires. If it is deemed illegal, I would still open it up and try to fix it. It’d be great for testing.
Just saw the post from tjf, looks like you wouldn’t want longer wires and that it could be legal.
I am using the same exact wire but I don’t see why while I’m at it, cutting the wires to length to fit in the robot perfectly. Its the same as fixing the controller and soldering an extension just safer and one less point of failure.
One less point of failure could be exactly argued as being better than as sold, and therefore, would not be a legal modification per 2020-R66.
yeah but I feel like its safer and better to just extend the wires without adding extensions like power poles
Ok thanks I will fix it by cutting the extensions I made and crimp power poles to the stock lengths
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See also this thread from last year:
Thank you. I will fix the ones that are too short and add connectors to them and will NOT change the factory length.
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