Originally Posted by
Niels007007
Howdy!
Thanks (RIP!) to RC Crew Chief's YouTube channel, I'm looking at torque curves, timing, boost, efficiency and getting slightly less confused.
But what does throttle mean? Say in default 'blinky' type modes, is throttle purely telling the ESC to try and supply between 0% and 100% of ESC rated current to the motor?
Lots of ESC's claim 150+ Ampere continuous, which would be a huge amount. Batteries might not do that, gears might not last, things overheat, cars spinning out..
So with a certain ESC and motor, what is the definition of full throttle?
The ESC controls throttle output using PWM - pulse width modulation. The percentage of the throttle dictates the percentage of the duty cycle. So a 50% throttle means the ESC is powering the motor half of the time and idle the other half. It switches really quickly, and most high end ESCs lets you specify how quickly, that's the drive frequency setting. It's typically between 2kHz and 32kHz.
Full throttle basically means it's on the whole time, and the drive frequency becomes irrelevant. The current rating of the ESC is just how much it can handle without failing. Peak current happens under hard acceleration from a dead stop. The ESC doesn't dictate how much current flows, the motor does.