ZTW Beast Pro 220a ESC anyone run it?

[suchtragedy]

Well, I cooked this thing the other day. In the middle of a run the car stopped, no steering or throttle. I figured it thermaled. Checked the temps on the esc and it was around 160f which is far from the middle setting of 205f where I had it set... Anyway I turned the car off and ran the k8s for a few minutes and went back to see if it would work. I noticed with the switch off the esc continued to heat up without me knowing. Temp was 235f! Unplugged it and continued my playtime with the k8s and 6s.

Tonight for fun I plugged in a battery. The esc will turn on but I only get steering and nothing else. The esc gets nuclear in seconds so it’s toast. Oh well, I really wanted to like these as they are so nicely made, seem to have good specs, tons of programming, sensored and will fit almost anything. Oh well, there you go, back to the blx system in the talion for now...

When I first saw these escs on eBay did some YouTube and Google searching and found reports from people that theirs had burned up like this. They were kinda older posts/vids so I had no clue if that was still an issue or not, seems like it still might be the case

 

[IRONWORKER]

Jim Bob i hate to hear your ZTW took a dump. I’ve been told they’re good about fixing or replacing ESCs if you can get someone who can truly speak English.

So far mines been awesome, i hope it keep going strong! ?

 

[avis]

This is a quote taken from a Castle rep who had posted in an older RC forum:
"
"Ok this answer is going to be a little bit technical and a little bit diplomatic, but I'll try to answer it as best I can.

We publish current ratings for our air ESCs but we never publish an official number for our surface ESC's because it's much harder to generate a meaningful number. This is because of the way the current spikes and settles under hard acceleration. On aircraft the throttle is usually much more consistent, so a continuous number makes more sense. Cars are typically hard on the throttle for a short burst and then hard on the brakes. You typically spend very little time at a constant speed or amp draw.

In our air ESC's our standard test uses a coupled pair of motors, one being driven by the ESC(in 5mph airflow), the other hooked up to a modified controller that provides a constant braking force onto the drive motor. These motors are spun up to 100% throttle and then a braking load is applied. The input current is measured with a calibrated current clamp and then once a desired current is found the setup is then run at a constant current for 5 minutes. If the ESC makes it the full 5 minutes, then it is cooled to room temperature and then tested again at a slightly higher constant current. If the ESC goes into thermal shutdown before the 5 minutes is up then it fails and we use a lower number for our rating.

We do this same test for our car controllers so we know how they compare to each other, but we don't publish these numbers because they are not a comparable number to what the rest of the market publishes. This is the main reason we don't publish these numbers. If we marketed it as what we call it internally, everyone would think we had a inferior product. We don't want to have to lie to our customers by publishing an inflated number to appear competitive. We have performed our standard test on some other brand ESCs to know how they compare and typically their numbers are pretty far off. We tested a 'Stock' ESC that was rated as a 60amp continuous, 280 amp peak; Our continuous number for it was something like 24 amps, and the ESC blew up when we hit it with a short burst of 120 amps.

What really matters is the number of MOSFETs that are used in the construction of the ESC. The more MOSFETs, the more power it can handle because of lower resistance and the more surface area to pull the heat from them. Like the Mamba Max Pro the Mamba X ESC has 18 MOSFETs, a Mamba Micro X has 6, a Sidewinder SV3 has 12, a Mamba Monster X has 30, and a Mamba XLX has 48. All 'Stock' spec ESC's that I have seen have 6 MOSFETs. Most 'Mod' spec ESC's have 12. We also use large copper bus bars on our boards to lower the resistance of the board, and potting the controller help by providing a thermal mass and in this ESC thermally linking the board to the aluminum case for better cooling. These help raise the current handling capabilities of the ESC. For example, the Mamba Monster 2 has 36 MOSFETS, but didn't have any bus bars on it, because of this the 30 MOSFET Monster X has the same current handling capability. If we followed the ratings that our competitors use, the Mamba X would probably be a 180-200 amp continuous controller, but we would never call it that.

I have seen this ESC paired with our 1512 1800kv and 2650kv sensored motors in a 1/8 scale buggy run complete packs to low voltage cutoff on a outdoor track on an 80 degree day. When pulled into the pits, the motor was warmer than the ESC. Running in a 1/8th scale buggy on 4s is an approved setup for this ESC. The Mamba X should be plenty capable of running pretty much any 1/10th scale setup(provided a good motor, gearing and voltage is selected). We like to think this is one of the few ESC's that you could using in your 1/8th scale buggy in the summer months and then swap it into your stadium truck or buggy for running indoors in the winter."

This is a video that references the odd differences in Amp ratings shown in the data logs:

From what I have seen in real world tests the MM2 outperforms the BLX 185 esc. It will help you break into the 105-120mph range. From there the XL-X is the only ESC I have seen in the 120-178mph range.

-Liberty

hey silly quastion. whaere is the on off batten on that esc?