Devising a “Standard” for Performance testing

[Aaron]

Hi Everyone,

I’ve been thinking for a while about trying to devise a ‘standard’ method for testign and comparing electronic and engine performance of 1/28th scale racers. As I near the design phase of a engine dyno and rolling road simulator with complete PC control and logging it’s becoming apparent that the ‘Standard’ shoudl govern the design of the test hardware, NOT the test hardware govern the standard.

Current Practice[/quote]

At the moment it seems the only test is to drop a chassis onto a Tamiya Mini4wd Speed Checker and report on the mods tot he electronics and motor complete with a top speed.

To me this has several problems, the first being a lack of consistency when repeated with the same electronics and motor but different battery packs, different ways of ‘loading’ the motor assembly onto the Speed Checker rollers etc.

The testing does prove the performance of combos compared to other setups when conducted by the same user under the same conditions, and still represents a great (and cheap) way to tune and select the performance of your own fleet.

New Ideas:

[/quote]

1. Using Speed Checker:[/quote]
2. Build a ‘dummy’ pod that can accept a range of motors. I believe this shoudl be alloy ‘cage-type’ to alloy any motor to be tested. The motor should then drive a Stock Kyosho Gear diff that has been ‘locked’ with glue. Wheels and tyres should be narrow (8.5mm) and a medium or ‘regular’ compound.
3. The dummy pod should then be mounted with motor on a long swing arm to the front of the speed checker. This is just neater than a chassis and ensures exact placement for each test. The arm and pod assembly will be weighted to present the same end weight as a stock MR01 chassis fitted with batteries etc. The ensures a consistent loss due to friction at the drive wheels. As our pod is in a fixed mounting position the test rig doesn’t waver from side-side like a chassis can.
4. Tests should cover:
5. Peak speed on fixed supply to motor (fixed voltage provided by external supply not batteries)
6. Peak Speed using Rx Electronics fed from fixed external supply (not batteries)
7. Elapsed Time to cover the 300m ‘drag’ with Fixed motor voltage
8. Elapsed Time to cover the 300m ‘drag’ using Rx Electronics with fixed external input voltage.

I would suggest that three runs be conducted under each condition and the results averaged to give the published result.

The use of Fixed external supply gives a great baseline that’s not dependant on battery outputs. Obviously if we’re testing battery performance then we’ve also got a baseline comparison point.
[*]Goal of the proceedures is to give a baseline for each area.

[/list]

[*]Using a Standard Motor Dyno

[/quote]Obviously we need to make the dyno first 🙂
[/list]

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Site Owner Guy.

[z-beam]

nice concept Aaron! are you thinking of constucting this set-up?

((did you call me today?))

[peteWah]

I know Dave’s been trying to call you on and of…

[Aaron]

Nah I haven’t called anyone 🙁 Been hiding in a hole of crappy work life at the moment.

Yes I’ll be building the entire rig for the exact purposes of testing and publishing comparison performance information.

What a lot of modders (and ausmicro.com customers) want to know are things like how does part ‘X’ compare to part ‘Y’. For electronics, batteries, pinions and other parts. My biggest concern is how picking and choosing batteries can affect results, do a test of product ‘X’ with the crappy batteries, then test product ‘Y’ with a way better set to emphasise the difference.

I know there’s no-one selling stuff here that would be so shonky, but elsewhere who knows.

I aim to make the build design very simple, and easy for others to replicate. Especially the thingo to put on top of the Speed Checker. At around AUD30 they’re a terrific quick and easy comparison test tool.

The motor dyno project is likely to cost around $500 in parts to make, and then needs to have custom software written so it’s a way off yet….

A..

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Site Owner Guy.

[Aaron]

Good News! I’ve thought of a ‘better way’ to do the dyno 🙂 Work shall commence ASAP!

A.

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Site Owner Guy.

[Aaron]

OK got the flywheels for the Dyno now. They will bolt to the standard Mini-Z axle and also fit directly tot he motor shaft.

More testing to come!

A.

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Site Owner Guy.

[Author]

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