Not that this is any harder than any other wheel to repair, but it blows my mind that they have that slot to access the control board on top yet they can't make it an inch wider so that you don't have to 100% teardown the wheel to replace it..
Should be simple enough to craft, after I skill up I'll try crafting some and stray up an American unocycle....pipe dream in today's economy considering I'm already self employed and broke asf...but I can think of a few ways to relatively easily and affordably build some. The trick is in the gyros and firmware...idk if I can handle that task.
I have two hobbies. Radio controlled helicopters and EUC's. In the modeling world, we regularly fly models which can extract 7500 watts from a motor, easily 3000 continuous , and 150 amps continuous draw with spikes as high as 300 amps. The esc's used are NOT some huge and heavy package. EUC speed control design in comparison is utterly archaic and little better than what we were flying close to a decade ago. The esc in my model will automatically pull back power if current reaches threshold of safety. NOT shut down and NOT burn up. It will do the same for temp. It self monitors all of this. The wiring gauge used in these wheels to supply the motor and from batteries to control board in EUC's is laughable as well relative the what the wheel had to endure on overheat hill. The technology needed to completely avoid these kinds of failures is well established. All the wheel mfg's need to look around and get into the 21st century. Every time I ride I have to go into denial because I otherwise know what a comparative POS the speed control is between my feet and that I am forced to trust my limbs to something of quality and design that I wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole in one of my models. Want to see how to design and build an esc.......look up Kontronik/Sobek drives or YGE or Scorpion power systems You'll see why it's such a shame we are forced to ride with/on such crap comparatively speaking.
Yes, schematics of modern drones ESC's is much better. But speaking about all the restraining circuitry: "automatically pull back power if current reaches threshold of safety", etc. Is it acceptable in EUC? The answer is NO. The only restraining scheme EUC can have safely is signal to the rider, or pedal angle change. Any limitation in power will result as overlean and faceplant of the rider.
I’m starting to like you a little more now. I like ur honesty I like you don’t have to keep ur mouth shut with a review wheel that was given to you. This board is an issues and I’m glad yiu did sugar coat it like others would like koji does. Yiu and Mickey are on point. Keep it up. You could save someone life find these flaws and making the company aware of it and make them fix it before selling them to us. Thank you. I hope you keep this up with other wheels too. If a company won’t send you a wheel to test because you will be honest. Set up a Patreon and I will donate enough money so you can speak ur mind and not have to worry about companies not wanting to send you wheels.
This is kinda like an AvE BOLTR ‘vigeo’ with some great insights into Veteran quality. Certainly better built than earlier GW efforts. Good on them for working with you on this! I don’t know what we would do without you Marty, very professional and much appreciated ! I’m still holding out hope that a quality company (IM?) would sign you up and design the “M B touring special edition EUC“. In the meantime there is NO doubt in the community that you’ve helped move quality forward in the industry. Great Stuff!
Lol I just watched a video of Vee doing 52mph on the Veteran Sherman. If this thing shows a tendency to fry I don’t think anybody will be riding too fast on this big boy. Excellent video.
Thanks Marty, I really appreciated your honest appraisal, it's something that is really needed in the youtube EUC community. It can only help manufacturers and buyers.
Hi, thanks for sharing! I received the 2021 model two weeks ago and whatever happened to yours, happened to mine this weekend. I actually managed to get it out as I pressed the handlebars all the way down. ✌️
Incredible and compelling video. This may be your finest week in terms of being a test pilot, then showing what you know and teaching us how it all works (or doesn't, in this case). Thank you!
Very Interesting Marty! I really enjoyed watching the breakdown process. A great resource for us all. I’ll be interested to see if they make any changes on the board. Thanks for documenting this.
Observations: 1. Need to separate the motor driver electronics from the controller circuitry. Yes, this may take up more space, but a separated and stacked board can still fit in the housing using stand offs 2. The motor driver electronics would need much wider and thicker traces (PCB stackup of FT4) and the mosfets spaced out to support them and a heat sink dedicated to that much power under maximum load 3. Thermal cut-off circuitry can be added to the motor driver circuitry to prevent catastrophic failure. Triacs or SCRs could be used to do this and cut power temporarily under maximum load conditions. PWM driver circuits can also do this with negative feedback loops using a microcontrolled circuit 4. Much bigger DC filter capacitors should be used to handle the larger power. These could be smaller in size but put in parallel with adequate traces to handle the power consumption and reduce the physical size 5. The PCB should be symmetrical in layout for the mosfets, capacitors and main driver components to ensure even and balanced distribution of power and thermal dissipation throughout the entire circuit. This ensures no uneven power imbalances under load because current leads voltage at initial load of the DC motor driver. Equal lengths of wire and symmetrical layout of components will help keep things balanced. That's my 2.49249795383 cents. I love the aftermath of destructive power electronics circuit testing! It's a lot of fun and a great way to learn from failure.
Great video. Good comments and observations from everyone too. This is a fantastic channel. Some of the other EUC channels seem a bit more like advertisements.
I think it's impressive that it burned like that since you are a light weight rider, Marty. Your friend kept going up without issues and he is larger than you. By the way, you should create the seal Marty Backe Firehazard Proof for the wheels you can't burn : ) Real nice job!
Super informative! Thank you for the thorough teardown. Seems a little strange that the fans are at the rear of the control board; you’d think it’d be convenient to take advantage of some passive airflow to accelerate cooling fore to aft. Seems that there’s a lack of air circulating to the control board in general being clam-shelled as it is...
The fans are in the front of the wheel pushing air flowing in from the front of the wheel past the control board and out the back. They are not at the rear of the board.
there has to be a 2nd cap somewhere in the enclosure there were two before. i dont know the wiring but it looks like that they use the caps in parrallel over the mosfet bride. The first cap has less resistance and gets used more.The heat shrink melted from both caps meaning that they got really hot before the accident because they are completly drained for long periods of time. they only use 1120µF as input buffer. For a Vesc it's recomended to use at least 2000µF. Of cause the wiring got really hot pushing the limit and melted the solder of the first cap shortend it and boom Cap takes all the mosfets with it. Just a theory of an long time vesc abuser ;)
@@ElectricUnicycles yes sorry 9:50 i have to admit i was skipping :-) but with the caps in "good shape" it's still possible that more µF and or a bypass to the second cap could solve the overheat problem. Or just a tempreture cutoff in software. I love that you are willing to show this failure to the community so that everybody can form their own opinion of this product, most people only show the good side's and don't push the limit!!! Thank you so much
That right there don't deter me from still wanting this wheel. I won't be riding like that extreme up a hill that the wheel is not meant for, and plus with the great testing that you did. I'm sure Veteran engineers will improve it with their next line of product batch. Another great review Marty. I hope I got your name right.
@@ElectricUnicycles since you have it all apart you should get a Lacroix Stormcore 100V VESC and try out the self balance feature. I'm sure viewers of this video would find that interesting.
Mine is on the way, I'm not cancelling it. The range, functional trolley handle compared to my msp, modular lights and roll cage are enough reason for me. Besides we don't have hills in abu dhabi. Very informative video. I think you can getaway without removing any cables from the board when changing tires just like msx/msp.
For real. I also preordered and this doesn’t sway me at all. Every wheel has its issues, but at least I know I’m not gonna be pushing mine up any huge hills. Good video Marty, hope they maybe make some sort of current cutoff for the control boards on the next batch.
This, of course, was another great piece of Intel sir, but I think you scrambled me eggs a bit, yeah? Reading through some of the comments posted here, I see you don't HAVE to be an Engineer to do a tear down and replacement - but it sure wouldn't hurt! Scrolling through a few of the comments is like trying to read Mandarin! I don't think I'd ever heard of MOSFETS before you said it in one of your previous vids where on a group ride one of the other guys blew his (can't recall if it was on Ol' Overheat or not though🤔) Good information to have and be able to refer back on once my Sherman pre-order is available (though HOPEFULLY they'll have settled this issue by then) Thanks for putting in the road work and opening up the class room...for us AND Veteran 🤓 "Anutha One" 👍🏽👌🏽🤙🏽🙌🏾🙏🏽
The development of emerging technologies likely always involves such destructive testing. Makes me wonder how many of the first telephones, calculators, and microwave ovens self destructed before they found a design that was good enough for the average user. It will be interesting to see how mainstream these become as more people decide that personal electric vehicles are the way to go.
We can actually look at old telephones and microwave ovens and find they were insanely overbuilt and expensive. So the priorities were "make it safe and working, hope it's affordable to make". Nowadays it's "this is the price point and features we need to hit. Make it happen." Sadly a backwards way of design.
In this form it will not succeed en masse. The reason why some love it is that it requires a bit of art. And that is the same reason why others will not want to accept it.
Ok marty. Now it would seem prudent for a fuse at the load incoming load wire to save the board and be accessible to the rider so when we are stress resting these rides there is a way to not make toast of them. I may now put one on my tesla now and keep close watch on the amps through the euc app. Thanks for the post mortem.
How I see it, is that if you can separate the control board from the heatsink, you won't have to split the housing. However, from a assembly perspective, the heatsink and board is pre-assembled and is slotted in first. Hence when toy try to remove it, it comes out in one block. Its a bit of an oversight.
Removing and installing the board on the heat sink would be tricky procedure (each screw through the 12 MOSFET's has an associated tiny plastic insulation spacer that has to be placed. Even with my experience I would rather split the shell.
I'm going to guess current=heat. Which melted the solder and let the main power leads drop onto the heatsink. Not much that could be done about that. Maybe using bolts and crimped ring terminals for connection to the PCB?
This is very bad optics for a supposedly new EUC company to burst onto the stage with and not only that this is the most expensive EUC on earth. The design is half-baked (no pun intended) and rushed to market and if I had one on pre-order I'd definitely be cancelling. If the developers of the Sherman are truly ex-Gotway employees then Gotway themselves must be believers in karma. Maybe the fix could be as simple as a software revision that gradually limits the motor power as it nears maximum operating temperature. Maybe this functionality already exists but the upper operating limit is set too high.
BTW: The Current that is drawn from the battery.....and the current that is pushed through Mosfets/Motorwire are not the same. Actually on a situation like here, very low speed, much torque needed, the amperage might easy be way, way over 200-300amps. And the Veteran config can provide double as much amps as the actual GW’s... What is more concerning is that the Motor and firmware configuration of the sherman -even beside all the battery power available- was not able to push Marty easily up the hill. Seams they are using a very “old” version of firmware....
Yeah, I'm actually much more concerned about this design than I was two days ago. I've never seen board damage like this. Sure, MOSFETs blown, etc.. But delaminated circuit boards with a vaporized hole? This means you could probably damage the board with just a few seconds of stress, but the wheel would still work. But it would be weakened which could cause a failure later. I'm not convinced this is just a firmware issue.
@@ElectricUnicycles As I wrote. I don't understand the absence of temperature sensing. Something can always go wrong and rising temperature is a common side effect that can help you prevent a critical failure if you watch it.
@@pavelsulc2617 There is temperature sensing. They have since modified how they are using the data to help prevent this from happening in the future. I'm getting the new firmware.
Keep in mind that this is an older video. There are a lot (thousands) of Sherman owners really enjoying their wheel. Veteran made changes after this incident which improved it. Still probably the best wheel in its category right now, early 2021.
@@ElectricUnicycles thanks much apreciated for the information. I really want one but I paid 2800 for my car lol and paying the same price for one wheel it better be a perfect product. Lol especially if I gotta put 1000 down and wait weeks for one. Again thank u
Hi Marty, I wonder how many lives you just saved by exposing the weak point in that board. I'm glad you know what you're doing, because to me it looked like you were fiddling around with the inside of an a.m. radio from the 1970s, LOL.
Now that's a cooked circuit board. Man!!!! I personally had my own experiences of accidentally short circuiting.........accidentally connecting wrong terminals........over voltage and the only result I had was a small burn on the board or a blown capacitor and they just would not work anymore. Those circuit boards are so damn sensitive. They need to make them much more tolerant
Hey Marty. I've seen much of this in one of my older, now late passion, for drone racing. Burnt boards, motors, etc. Mostly ESCs which lead many times to darkened or even burnt motor stator wires with the motor still functioning yet at reduced performance. The motor would get hotter than the others. To prove the failure of one of the ESCs, I bought a iPad oscilloscope and studied the waveforms of good motors and ESCs. I found that one of the quad's ESCs had a "dirty", and non trapizoidal image. It was fascinating to watch and study how these AC multiphase controllers and motors work. Have you thought of opening the motor to inspect the windings? Just a thought. Keep up the great work. I'm really taking in the detailed ride and wheel information you provide. Thanks! Peace from Maine...Guy
Totally different class of wheel and use case. I suppose if you still don't like the Sherman the Monster or Monster Pro may be the nearest alternative (long range cruiser). The S18 is for short rides.
@@ElectricUnicycles I just like the suspension(or idea of) on the s18, I wish it had a longer range. Or the Sherman had a suspension, but I really like the range of the Sherman. I was leaning towards the Sherman due to the range and speed and stability despite the price. But the s18 is sexy, and is presumably super comfy....and I havent seen it fry itself yet. Sherman needs work before I can invest that much into something and risk my wife slaying me like a dragon for a bad buy...for that price it needs to be bloody perfect and comfy.
@@ElectricUnicycles do you reckon they will fix that issue? Maybe add fuses? Maybe add liquid cooling? More mosfets? Need 12 or 10 gauge wire from battery and to motor, individual heat shielding. Suspension should be implemented, and that roll cage should indeed be thicker walled.. Sorry for blowing up chat. Thanks again
If you don't want to disconnect any of the cabling from the control board then you would have to split the shell. But if you're okay disconnecting the motor wires and hall sensor cable from the control board then you do not have to split the shell - you can slide the tire out the bottom.
@@ElectricUnicycles I killed my friends board by accident as I was making some changes for him and I need some components on a broken board, can you give me your dead board. I really need your help.
It looks like the fans are an after thought, that's why the whole control assembly can't be removed. I bet they thought the heat sink was enough. The fans don't seem to be very effective from what I can tell.
wow. it seems the designers don’t talk to one another. to have to take the wheel apart to replace the most likely part that is going to fail just shows no real for thought. i’m pretty sure we the riders wouldn’t mind paying more money if they would upgrade their circuit boards to a more industrial grade boards. thank you marty for your continuous work for our community.
What I found interesting is that you CAN take the whole wheel apart. This seems to mean that you should always be able to repair your Sherman, provided parts are available from Veteran. Do other EUCs work the same way? I was under the impression they were not as modular.
All wheels are modular. Because the Sherman doesn't have speakers and ring lights it's actually easier to disassemble then many other wheels. I like it's construction (except for the fact that you have to take the shell apart to fix the control board).
I'd hate to to think people will trust that circuitry at high speed against the wind or up a hill. I wonder if the current was so high that a solder joint failed on a battery lead, causing a direct short on the board.
Great obduction doctor :-) You said it was cool running wheel, but going uphill the Sherman ran hotter with you than the MSP with the much Heavier guy. Only time Sherman went cooler was downhill (from what i heard on the video). Could you elaborate? :-) Love teardown videos, the are allways useful and show strengths and weaknesses. On the Sherman i was really amazed that there are only 6 screws up top holding the shell together and on the bottom only the pedal hanger screws. That means all the stress from things hitting the rim cage at the bottom, will transfer to the screws at the bottom at the Pedal hangers and allready on gotway those holes shows hair line cracks on wheels. Also means you basically cant remove the roll cage and ride without it, should you want to for some reason (clearance, weight loss). How much does the roll cage weigh (now that you have it off)?
One roll cage weight 1.6 pounds. So the total is 3.2 pounds, not including the lights. From my experience riding lots of wheels, the Sherman was mostly at ~45-degrees Celsius while riding, which is a typical cool temperature.
Well so much for not wanting to tinker with wheels eh? 😃 Anyways, thanks! Also, when talking about wire gauges you lost me with the whole"inches" and what not, I'm sure you meant to talk about these in metric all along but just a friendly pointer 😁
@ElectricUnicycles, I killed my friends board by accident as I was making some changes for him and I need some components on a broken board, can you give me your dead board. I really need your help.
I'll bet the mosfets fried first, it is common for them to spew out molten guts where the leads are. If the battery is 100v that is close to arc welder voltage and currents so it then started arcing all over the mosfets leads like an electric welder, and finally the current/heat was high enough that it took out the battery wires and made that big hole in the PCB. That is the kind of thing that is normally saved by fusing the incoming battery leads... was there a fuse? Was it before the PCB, or on the PCB? Also the mosfets should be further apart on the PCB because the arc happens between the high side mosfets and the low side mosfets. If they are spaced further apart there is less chance of a full battery arc, that goes from B+ to B-. Anyway improved PCB design and improved fusing need to be done. And always beware of 100v electric battery systems because risk of arcing is much higher than a 63v or 84v vehicle.
@@ElectricUnicycles zero fuses is a very bad idea... wow. There is no reason for that, 30A, 50A etc fuses are cheap, common and well proven devices. Re the mosfets spacing, it does depend on the configuration. If the high and low side devices are placed HLHLHL (that is bad for arcing) or HHHLLL (better to reduce arcing but might be worse for current path layout). You can't always stop a mosfet blowing it's guts out, that happens sometimes, but if THAT causes the entire machine to fry it is a design flaw. Credit is due to you for finding this. 👍
Strong motor!!! You know you have a well built motor when the circuit board fails first and the motor is still intact.............😁😁 So I guess the folks at Veteran need to assemble a far more resilient circuit board that can resist the current on a constant basis
I agree w/ manuelrossum's comments but don't think I can afford to support U if it comes to that.....sorry. But I have a question; if the issue was that the board could not handle the battery power does that not call into question the modded Tesla w/ the 1480 battery?
@@ElectricUnicycles first time on one wheel, driving semi truck got 2000wats inverter 12v DC to 120v AC. Using for 120v auxiliary power for my Laptop charger . Can I charge KingSong S18 on it
could the board not just be screwed off of its heatsink if you needed to replace or work on it? i mean without taking the shell apart... because that seems completely ridiculous that you would need to do that.. and why do gotway/veteran refuse to put in safety precautions for the board so it wont kill itself in a spectacular manner??? fuse, firmware, whatever.. no other brands of euc would let you blow it up i cant understand this logic
Technically you could but I wouldn't. You'd have to remove all the screws that attach the MOSFET's to the heat sink and that's riskier when remounting the board. When you buy a replacement board it comes mounted on the heat sink.
First of all, that should never happen with a 3000$ unicycle to begin with. Isn't the output on this about 80 or 100 volts and about 3000 watts?? That's more than suffiencient power for hills.
How can you build a new device and not build the most important thing from all experience? The most important thing would be to build electronics that can withstand this performance. The second most important thing is to simply run a service. This includes the simplest expansion of a control system. To make replacing a tire very easy. What do i see here I see an ordinary Chinese product, absolutely careless in construction. And many who don't think about it and want it
Not that this is any harder than any other wheel to repair, but it blows my mind that they have that slot to access the control board on top yet they can't make it an inch wider so that you don't have to 100% teardown the wheel to replace it..
I wonder if this control board has already been enlarged since they first designed the wheel, hence the tight fitment?!
Would be a class A upgrade to make it wider
Chinese design. Close enough. Chabuduo.
@@thechumpsbeendumped.7797 Yeah, they are all sued out of existence.
Should be simple enough to craft, after I skill up I'll try crafting some and stray up an American unocycle....pipe dream in today's economy considering I'm already self employed and broke asf...but I can think of a few ways to relatively easily and affordably build some. The trick is in the gyros and firmware...idk if I can handle that task.
I have two hobbies. Radio controlled helicopters and EUC's. In the modeling world, we regularly fly models which can extract 7500 watts from a motor, easily 3000 continuous , and 150 amps continuous draw with spikes as high as 300 amps. The esc's used are NOT some huge and heavy package. EUC speed control design in comparison is utterly archaic and little better than what we were flying close to a decade ago. The esc in my model will automatically pull back power if current reaches threshold of safety. NOT shut down and NOT burn up. It will do the same for temp. It self monitors all of this. The wiring gauge used in these wheels to supply the motor and from batteries to control board in EUC's is laughable as well relative the what the wheel had to endure on overheat hill. The technology needed to completely avoid these kinds of failures is well established. All the wheel mfg's need to look around and get into the 21st century. Every time I ride I have to go into denial because I otherwise know what a comparative POS the speed control is between my feet and that I am forced to trust my limbs to something of quality and design that I wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole in one of my models. Want to see how to design and build an esc.......look up Kontronik/Sobek drives or YGE or Scorpion power systems You'll see why it's such a shame we are forced to ride with/on such crap comparatively speaking.
Duh.. it's Chinese you know 😁
So true. I fly 700 size RC Heli’s drawing a lot of power and never had a speed controller issue. Blows my mind.
Yes, schematics of modern drones ESC's is much better. But speaking about all the restraining circuitry: "automatically pull back power if current reaches threshold of safety", etc. Is it acceptable in EUC? The answer is NO. The only restraining scheme EUC can have safely is signal to the rider, or pedal angle change. Any limitation in power will result as overlean and faceplant of the rider.
I’m starting to like you a little more now. I like ur honesty I like you don’t have to keep ur mouth shut with a review wheel that was given to you. This board is an issues and I’m glad yiu did sugar coat it like others would like koji does. Yiu and Mickey are on point. Keep it up. You could save someone life find these flaws and making the company aware of it and make them fix it before selling them to us. Thank you. I hope you keep this up with other wheels too. If a company won’t send you a wheel to test because you will be honest. Set up a Patreon and I will donate enough money so you can speak ur mind and not have to worry about companies not wanting to send you wheels.
Thank you. I appreciate your comments :-)
ElectricUnicycles so are you still going to buy one yourself, or wait for a batch much later down the line?
this man is the backbone holding the engineers together for all of the community
Yes Marty that was Interesting AF! Please find more bugs to help make next copy Better for us! Thanks again.
This is kinda like an AvE BOLTR ‘vigeo’ with some great insights into Veteran quality. Certainly better built than earlier GW efforts. Good on them for working with you on this!
I don’t know what we would do without you Marty, very professional and much appreciated ! I’m still holding out hope that a quality company (IM?) would sign you up and design the “M B touring special edition EUC“. In the meantime there is NO doubt in the community that you’ve helped move quality forward in the industry. Great Stuff!
Thanks :-) Your comments are much appreciated!
Lol I just watched a video of Vee doing 52mph on the Veteran Sherman. If this thing shows a tendency to fry I don’t think anybody will be riding too fast on this big boy. Excellent video.
Yes Marty thank you for breaking it down and showing all of us the stress test of the hill and what it can do to each one of these wheels
Thanks to you and the other early testers for helping the rest of us get better wheels.
Thanks for doing this breakdown, Marty. Would never have guessed the roll cage was two separate pieces press fit together without your video.
Thanks Marty, I really appreciated your honest appraisal, it's something that is really needed in the youtube EUC community. It can only help manufacturers and buyers.
This turned into an ASMR video real quick, I love hearing you talk and take apart the motherboard
Hi, thanks for sharing!
I received the 2021 model two weeks ago and whatever happened to yours, happened to mine this weekend.
I actually managed to get it out as I pressed the handlebars all the way down. ✌️
Incredible and compelling video. This may be your finest week in terms of being a test pilot, then showing what you know and teaching us how it all works (or doesn't, in this case). Thank you!
Thanks again Larry!
You exhibit extraordinary patience. Veteran has to do major fixes and QC.
Very Interesting Marty! I really enjoyed watching the breakdown process. A great resource for us all. I’ll be interested to see if they make any changes on the board. Thanks for documenting this.
Hey Matt :-)
thank you for doing this.. I appreciate you
I love the smell of burned mosfets in the morning. Thank you for sharing Marty!
thank you Marty for sharing with the community! very informative video as always! you making me smarter everytime!🤙🏻😋
Observations:
1. Need to separate the motor driver electronics from the controller circuitry. Yes, this may take up more space, but a separated and stacked board can still fit in the housing using stand offs
2. The motor driver electronics would need much wider and thicker traces (PCB stackup of FT4) and the mosfets spaced out to support them and a heat sink dedicated to that much power under maximum load
3. Thermal cut-off circuitry can be added to the motor driver circuitry to prevent catastrophic failure. Triacs or SCRs could be used to do this and cut power temporarily under maximum load conditions. PWM driver circuits can also do this with negative feedback loops using a microcontrolled circuit
4. Much bigger DC filter capacitors should be used to handle the larger power. These could be smaller in size but put in parallel with adequate traces to handle the power consumption and reduce the physical size
5. The PCB should be symmetrical in layout for the mosfets, capacitors and main driver components to ensure even and balanced distribution of power and thermal dissipation throughout the entire circuit. This ensures no uneven power imbalances under load because current leads voltage at initial load of the DC motor driver. Equal lengths of wire and symmetrical layout of components will help keep things balanced.
That's my 2.49249795383 cents.
I love the aftermath of destructive power electronics circuit testing! It's a lot of fun and a great way to learn from failure.
I'm not sure anyone of significance (employee of Veteran) is reading these comments but I enjoy your thoughts on the matter.
Great video. Good comments and observations from everyone too. This is a fantastic channel. Some of the other EUC channels seem a bit more like advertisements.
I think it's impressive that it burned like that since you are a light weight rider, Marty. Your friend kept going up without issues and he is larger than you.
By the way, you should create the seal Marty Backe Firehazard Proof for the wheels you can't burn : ) Real nice job!
Hi Marty. The Veteran Sherman has grown from the fastest to the hottest thanks to you. I understand why you are protected like a RobotCop 👍
Super informative! Thank you for the thorough teardown. Seems a little strange that the fans are at the rear of the control board; you’d think it’d be convenient to take advantage of some passive airflow to accelerate cooling fore to aft. Seems that there’s a lack of air circulating to the control board in general being clam-shelled as it is...
The fans are in the front of the wheel pushing air flowing in from the front of the wheel past the control board and out the back. They are not at the rear of the board.
Totally stupid design that you have to go so far to remove a board because its missing 4mm of clearance.
there has to be a 2nd cap somewhere in the enclosure there were two before. i dont know the wiring but it looks like that they use the caps in parrallel over the mosfet bride. The first cap has less resistance and gets used more.The heat shrink melted from both caps meaning that they got really hot before the accident because they are completly drained for long periods of time. they only use 1120µF as input buffer. For a Vesc it's recomended to use at least 2000µF. Of cause the wiring got really hot pushing the limit and melted the solder of the first cap shortend it and boom Cap takes all the mosfets with it. Just a theory of an long time vesc abuser ;)
Yes, in the video I show the missing capacitor from the thumbnail picture.
@@ElectricUnicycles yes sorry 9:50 i have to admit i was skipping :-) but with the caps in "good shape" it's still possible that more µF and or a bypass to the second cap could solve the overheat problem. Or just a tempreture cutoff in software. I love that you are willing to show this failure to the community so that everybody can form their own opinion of this product, most people only show the good side's and don't push the limit!!! Thank you so much
That right there don't deter me from still wanting this wheel. I won't be riding like that extreme up a hill that the wheel is not meant for, and plus with the great testing that you did. I'm sure Veteran engineers will improve it with their next line of product batch. Another great review Marty. I hope I got your name right.
Thanks, and yes you did :-)
I actually enjoyed watching you take the Sherman apart, it's a great learning tool. Any ideas when you will be receiving the new boards?
No idea
@@ElectricUnicycles since you have it all apart you should get a Lacroix Stormcore 100V VESC and try out the self balance feature. I'm sure viewers of this video would find that interesting.
quinn foster YEEEESSSSSSSS!
Mine is on the way, I'm not cancelling it. The range,
functional trolley handle compared to my msp, modular lights and roll cage are enough reason for me. Besides we don't have hills in abu dhabi. Very informative video. I think you can getaway without removing any cables from the board when changing tires just like msx/msp.
For real. I also preordered and this doesn’t sway me at all. Every wheel has its issues, but at least I know I’m not gonna be pushing mine up any huge hills. Good video Marty, hope they maybe make some sort of current cutoff for the control boards on the next batch.
Good luck Marty you sure know your way around wheels. 😇✌
Snap, Crackle, Pop! Great stuff Marty 🙂
as always great info from you Marty
This, of course, was another great piece of Intel sir, but I think you scrambled me eggs a bit, yeah? Reading through some of the comments posted here, I see you don't HAVE to be an Engineer to do a tear down and replacement - but it sure wouldn't hurt! Scrolling through a few of the comments is like trying to read Mandarin! I don't think I'd ever heard of MOSFETS before you said it in one of your previous vids where on a group ride one of the other guys blew his (can't recall if it was on Ol' Overheat or not though🤔) Good information to have and be able to refer back on once my Sherman pre-order is available (though HOPEFULLY they'll have settled this issue by then) Thanks for putting in the road work and opening up the class room...for us AND Veteran 🤓 "Anutha One" 👍🏽👌🏽🤙🏽🙌🏾🙏🏽
The development of emerging technologies likely always involves such destructive testing. Makes me wonder how many of the first telephones, calculators, and microwave ovens self destructed before they found a design that was good enough for the average user. It will be interesting to see how mainstream these become as more people decide that personal electric vehicles are the way to go.
We can actually look at old telephones and microwave ovens and find they were insanely overbuilt and expensive. So the priorities were "make it safe and working, hope it's affordable to make".
Nowadays it's "this is the price point and features we need to hit. Make it happen." Sadly a backwards way of design.
In this form it will not succeed en masse. The reason why some love it is that it requires a bit of art. And that is the same reason why others will not want to accept it.
I was this close of saving up for this wheel myself. But after seeing this, I'll focus on getting the Inmotion V11.
The roll bar cage looks very promising.
Ok marty. Now it would seem prudent for a fuse at the load incoming load wire to save the board and be accessible to the rider so when we are stress resting these rides there is a way to not make toast of them. I may now put one on my tesla now and keep close watch on the amps through the euc app. Thanks for the post mortem.
Nice shop!
How I see it, is that if you can separate the control board from the heatsink, you won't have to split the housing. However, from a assembly perspective, the heatsink and board is pre-assembled and is slotted in first. Hence when toy try to remove it, it comes out in one block. Its a bit of an oversight.
Removing and installing the board on the heat sink would be tricky procedure (each screw through the 12 MOSFET's has an associated tiny plastic insulation spacer that has to be placed. Even with my experience I would rather split the shell.
I'm going to guess current=heat. Which melted the solder and let the main power leads drop onto the heatsink.
Not much that could be done about that. Maybe using bolts and crimped ring terminals for connection to the PCB?
This is very bad optics for a supposedly new EUC company to burst onto the stage with and not only that this is the most expensive EUC on earth. The design is half-baked (no pun intended) and rushed to market and if I had one on pre-order I'd definitely be cancelling. If the developers of the Sherman are truly ex-Gotway employees then Gotway themselves must be believers in karma. Maybe the fix could be as simple as a software revision that gradually limits the motor power as it nears maximum operating temperature. Maybe this functionality already exists but the upper operating limit is set too high.
motor no have thermo sensor! (source ecodrift)
BTW: The Current that is drawn from the battery.....and the current that is pushed through Mosfets/Motorwire are not the same.
Actually on a situation like here, very low speed, much torque needed, the amperage might easy be way, way over 200-300amps.
And the Veteran config can provide double as much amps as the actual GW’s...
What is more concerning is that the Motor and firmware configuration of the sherman -even beside all the battery power available- was not able to push Marty easily up the hill. Seams they are using a very “old” version of firmware....
Yeah, I'm actually much more concerned about this design than I was two days ago. I've never seen board damage like this. Sure, MOSFETs blown, etc.. But delaminated circuit boards with a vaporized hole? This means you could probably damage the board with just a few seconds of stress, but the wheel would still work. But it would be weakened which could cause a failure later. I'm not convinced this is just a firmware issue.
@@ElectricUnicycles As I wrote. I don't understand the absence of temperature sensing. Something can always go wrong and rising temperature is a common side effect that can help you prevent a critical failure if you watch it.
@@pavelsulc2617 There is temperature sensing. They have since modified how they are using the data to help prevent this from happening in the future. I'm getting the new firmware.
I was about to buy one of these than I thought what a pain in my ass just to see this lol I appreciate it
Keep in mind that this is an older video. There are a lot (thousands) of Sherman owners really enjoying their wheel. Veteran made changes after this incident which improved it. Still probably the best wheel in its category right now, early 2021.
@@ElectricUnicycles thanks much apreciated for the information. I really want one but I paid 2800 for my car lol and paying the same price for one wheel it better be a perfect product. Lol especially if I gotta put 1000 down and wait weeks for one. Again thank u
Hi Marty, I wonder how many lives you just saved by exposing the weak point in that board. I'm glad you know what you're doing, because to me it looked like you were fiddling around with the inside of an a.m. radio from the 1970s, LOL.
So funny :-)
I'm assuming there used to be a capacitor where that hole is.
No. That hole is where the power from the batteries entered the board
Now that's a cooked circuit board. Man!!!!
I personally had my own experiences of accidentally short circuiting.........accidentally connecting wrong terminals........over voltage and the only result I had was a small burn on the board or a blown capacitor and they just would not work anymore. Those circuit boards are so damn sensitive. They need to make them much more tolerant
Surprisingly, the power electronics are not protected by something as cheap as a temperature sensor in critical areas
Hey Marty. I've seen much of this in one of my older, now late passion, for drone racing. Burnt boards, motors, etc. Mostly ESCs which lead many times to darkened or even burnt motor stator wires with the motor still functioning yet at reduced performance. The motor would get hotter than the others. To prove the failure of one of the ESCs, I bought a iPad oscilloscope and studied the waveforms of good motors and ESCs. I found that one of the quad's ESCs had a "dirty", and non trapizoidal image. It was fascinating to watch and study how these AC multiphase controllers and motors work. Have you thought of opening the motor to inspect the windings? Just a thought. Keep up the great work. I'm really taking in the detailed ride and wheel information you provide. Thanks! Peace from Maine...Guy
Interesting. No, I have not considered opening the motor. That's a more risky operation that I'm not willing to undertake. Perhaps others can.
Sorry about that Marty! I forgot. This wheel is not your wheel. I wouldn't either.
have you tried to remove the fans.. and see maybe if it would allow you to slide it out under angle
No, but that would not work. The heat sink is too long.
Maybe just take the board out, not with the heat sink? That possible?
Dang....that sucks...so, I reckon the ks s18 may be the way to roll
Totally different class of wheel and use case. I suppose if you still don't like the Sherman the Monster or Monster Pro may be the nearest alternative (long range cruiser). The S18 is for short rides.
@@ElectricUnicycles I just like the suspension(or idea of) on the s18, I wish it had a longer range. Or the Sherman had a suspension, but I really like the range of the Sherman. I was leaning towards the Sherman due to the range and speed and stability despite the price. But the s18 is sexy, and is presumably super comfy....and I havent seen it fry itself yet. Sherman needs work before I can invest that much into something and risk my wife slaying me like a dragon for a bad buy...for that price it needs to be bloody perfect and comfy.
@@ElectricUnicycles do you reckon they will fix that issue? Maybe add fuses? Maybe add liquid cooling? More mosfets? Need 12 or 10 gauge wire from battery and to motor, individual heat shielding. Suspension should be implemented, and that roll cage should indeed be thicker walled.. Sorry for blowing up chat. Thanks again
Putting back will be more fun.
Great video as always, how about when changing a tire, do you have to split it in two?
If you don't want to disconnect any of the cabling from the control board then you would have to split the shell. But if you're okay disconnecting the motor wires and hall sensor cable from the control board then you do not have to split the shell - you can slide the tire out the bottom.
@@ElectricUnicycles I killed my friends board by accident as I was making some changes for him and I need some components on a broken board, can you give me your dead board. I really need your help.
It looks like the fans are an after thought, that's why the whole control assembly can't be removed. I bet they thought the heat sink was enough. The fans don't seem to be very effective from what I can tell.
You could be right
An informative review!
The slowest rider burnt 🥵 out the V. Sherm lol 😂 those California hills 🥴
wow. it seems the designers don’t talk to one another. to have to take the wheel apart to replace the most likely part that is going to fail just shows no real for thought. i’m pretty sure we the riders wouldn’t mind paying more money if they would upgrade their circuit boards to a more industrial grade boards. thank you marty for your continuous work for our community.
Yeah, imagine swapping out the board on the Mt Wilson trail :-) Thanks Ray
ElectricUnicycles i still would do the swap vs walk out for 3 hours 😁
@@rayrokni Oh yeah, for sure
What I found interesting is that you CAN take the whole wheel apart. This seems to mean that you should always be able to repair your Sherman, provided parts are available from Veteran. Do other EUCs work the same way? I was under the impression they were not as modular.
All wheels are modular. Because the Sherman doesn't have speakers and ring lights it's actually easier to disassemble then many other wheels. I like it's construction (except for the fact that you have to take the shell apart to fix the control board).
I'd hate to to think people will trust that circuitry at high speed against the wind or up a hill. I wonder if the current was so high that a solder joint failed on a battery lead, causing a direct short on the board.
I see what you talked about now
Great obduction doctor :-)
You said it was cool running wheel, but going uphill the Sherman ran hotter with you than the MSP with the much Heavier guy. Only time Sherman went cooler was downhill (from what i heard on the video). Could you elaborate? :-)
Love teardown videos, the are allways useful and show strengths and weaknesses. On the Sherman i was really amazed that there are only 6 screws up top holding the shell together and on the bottom only the pedal hanger screws. That means all the stress from things hitting the rim cage at the bottom, will transfer to the screws at the bottom at the Pedal hangers and allready on gotway those holes shows hair line cracks on wheels. Also means you basically cant remove the roll cage and ride without it, should you want to for some reason (clearance, weight loss). How much does the roll cage weigh (now that you have it off)?
One roll cage weight 1.6 pounds. So the total is 3.2 pounds, not including the lights.
From my experience riding lots of wheels, the Sherman was mostly at ~45-degrees Celsius while riding, which is a typical cool temperature.
Well so much for not wanting to tinker with wheels eh? 😃 Anyways, thanks! Also, when talking about wire gauges you lost me with the whole"inches" and what not, I'm sure you meant to talk about these in metric all along but just a friendly pointer 😁
LOL
Marty, did they come back with a reason or solution on the fried board yet? And is there a V2 in the works.
Fixes were made to the firmware and the retest was successful.
@ElectricUnicycles, I killed my friends board by accident as I was making some changes for him and I need some components on a broken board, can you give me your dead board. I really need your help.
it it was my unit i would cut out a section of the box so i would not have to remove the wheel
I'll bet the mosfets fried first, it is common for them to spew out molten guts where the leads are. If the battery is 100v that is close to arc welder voltage and currents so it then started arcing all over the mosfets leads like an electric welder, and finally the current/heat was high enough that it took out the battery wires and made that big hole in the PCB.
That is the kind of thing that is normally saved by fusing the incoming battery leads... was there a fuse? Was it before the PCB, or on the PCB?
Also the mosfets should be further apart on the PCB because the arc happens between the high side mosfets and the low side mosfets. If they are spaced further apart there is less chance of a full battery arc, that goes from B+ to B-.
Anyway improved PCB design and improved fusing need to be done. And always beware of 100v electric battery systems because risk of arcing is much higher than a 63v or 84v vehicle.
There are zero fuses anywhere on my version. The MOSFET placement (how close they are) is the same on every EUC made with these MOSFETs. FYI.
@@ElectricUnicycles zero fuses is a very bad idea... wow. There is no reason for that, 30A, 50A etc fuses are cheap, common and well proven devices.
Re the mosfets spacing, it does depend on the configuration. If the high and low side devices are placed HLHLHL (that is bad for arcing) or HHHLLL (better to reduce arcing but might be worse for current path layout).
You can't always stop a mosfet blowing it's guts out, that happens sometimes, but if THAT causes the entire machine to fry it is a design flaw.
Credit is due to you for finding this. 👍
Why is the board so wet?
I had cleaned some of the "soot" from the board with chemicals which had not dried yet.
Wish you had found out what that wheel wobble was before the torture test. Might have been a clue to the failure.
What wheel wobble are you referring to???
@@ElectricUnicycles The wheel vibrations you described in the previous video.
When are you expecting the new control board? Shipping from China?
I've had two new control boards for a couple of weeks. I've been waiting for a new motor which I now have. Am reassembling the Sherman today.
Strong motor!!! You know you have a well built motor when the circuit board fails first and the motor is still intact.............😁😁
So I guess the folks at Veteran need to assemble a far more resilient circuit board that can resist the current on a constant basis
I took the control off the heat sink....Then I took out the control board .
Yeah, that's an option. I really dislike that option though.
Biggest Downfall of this Wheel is too Heavy.It’s draws Heavy Current
OMG
How many miles before it fired?
There were about 600-miles on the wheel.
Talk about beta testing. This was a very informative video. :-)
Only thing missing is a hardness test from Jerry Rig Everything, LOL!! :D
There will always be a trade off of characteristics. Make the wheel better...difficult to change a pcb😃
I agree w/ manuelrossum's comments but don't think I can afford to support U if it comes to that.....sorry.
But I have a question; if the issue was that the board could not handle the battery power does that not call into question the modded Tesla w/ the 1480 battery?
The modded Tesla just has a bigger battery. That has nothing to do with how much power the control board or motor uses.
how did you damaged the board did you get water in it?
Go check the overheat hill test video
You don't need the board. Just connect the red and black wires and away you go....
It Is possible to charge of 2000 wats investor ? ( inverter )
I'm sorry, I don't understand the question
@@ElectricUnicycles first time on one wheel, driving semi truck got 2000wats inverter 12v DC to 120v AC. Using for 120v auxiliary power for my Laptop charger . Can I charge KingSong S18 on it
how much was a new board?
This is a development wheel. I'm not paying for anything.
could the board not just be screwed off of its heatsink if you needed to replace or work on it? i mean without taking the shell apart... because that seems completely ridiculous that you would need to do that.. and why do gotway/veteran refuse to put in safety precautions for the board so it wont kill itself in a spectacular manner??? fuse, firmware, whatever.. no other brands of euc would let you blow it up i cant understand this logic
Technically you could but I wouldn't. You'd have to remove all the screws that attach the MOSFET's to the heat sink and that's riskier when remounting the board. When you buy a replacement board it comes mounted on the heat sink.
@@ElectricUnicycles ah damn, thats so crazy how could they not consider this??
learn so much from these, thank you. still looks easier than changing my Nikola board.
Glad you like them Zen :-)
A simple fuse is too much to ask for in a $3500 wheel?
This is an old video. The Sherman's have been shipping with fuses since ~July 2020
@@ElectricUnicycles Good to know. Thanks for the reply!
First of all, that should never happen with a 3000$ unicycle to begin with.
Isn't the output on this about 80 or 100 volts and about 3000 watts?? That's more than suffiencient power for hills.
🤠👍
It looks like water damage
Those are left over chemicals that I used to clean some of the soot from the board
That is really a dumb thing.
Weak spot? Weak spot able to keep you working for hours? Not that weak then!!
How can you build a new device and not build the most important thing from all experience? The most important thing would be to build electronics that can withstand this performance. The second most important thing is to simply run a service. This includes the simplest expansion of a control system. To make replacing a tire very easy. What do i see here I see an ordinary Chinese product, absolutely careless in construction. And many who don't think about it and want it
You are the Sandy Munro of EUCs... You should sell your reports back to the manufacturers like he does.
Thanks :-)
A little disappointed with first version of Sherman. Very simple for my taste. It’s not bad in general, but there is no attention to detail at all.
One day he'll understand that you can burn any wheel that lets you ride till the end like the gotways. One day ...
First !
They done it by purpose so complicate to spend more money on service.
Very stupid concept.
King Song remain the King of unicycles
Why you say that? What has you so convinced? I'm a beginner and am stuck between the Sherman and S18.