BG is the Novak 25v 2700uf cap going to work on 6s or should do you have a link to a 35v cap... Anyone know which caps the MMM uses? I thank you

6s right off the charger is 25.2v, so no. It'll work, but I don't think for long. Not to mention the EMF spikes when braking will exceed this by quite a bit. I believe the MMM uses 35v caps, which gives a little leeway, plus you never want to run a cap right at its working voltage. Also, that Novak cap has a pretty high rating for its size and I think would heat up quite a bit.

I would use several smaller 35v or 50v caps in parallel - something around 330uF-470uF each. Obviously, you'd need low-ESR caps, so look for the 105*C rating. eBay has them sometimes pretty cheap (don't know about the quality), or electronic supply places have them too, but they usually require a large order.

What length of warranty do the MMM's come with? I won't be able to get mine up and going for probably another month as still require parts to get my buggy going :oh:

One whole year, can beat that with a stick! :whip: (or a whip)

hi joe
in my country, thailand, there are 3 MMMs. All 3 owners are my friends. I would like to know,.can we send all 3 failure MMMs in one mail box to CC if all 3 are fail?

I think the failure rate is much higher. Eric locally. Killed one, and was testing his second Sunday at the track. He had to work and arrived late to race so wanted to test a few laps with his new monster after racing. I had to work that night and packed up after racing. As I was driving out I see Eric carrying his buggy to his car and he said he was allready showing signs of intermittant problems after a few minutes of running. Last I heard, he'd killed MMM #2 that day and waslooking for another MM to put in.

finfin - I'm sure it will be fine - They wouldn't know they weren't all yours!

You can send them all in one package. We will ship back to whoever sends the package in.

Darn my second MMM died.I switched my 1515/1.5 4s for my 1515/1d on 3s 6000.It just stopped like the first one.The 1515/1D max amps is 200A.The system wasnt even warm.It ran flawless yesterday with the Tekno Neu 1515/1.5d.I should not have swapped the motors:diablo:




Losi 8T MMM? Tekno Neu 1515/1.5/f 4s 6000/Neu 1515/1d/s 3s 6000
Crt.5 Quark 80B Neu 1512/1d/s 3S 6000

Probley was going to die soon anyway, by swaping motor/batteries, just showed the esc was a bad one..

that does suck though:diablo:

So, if i get a Monster, is it guarenteed to fail:diablo:? Or should i be ok, i guess if it does fail Castle will be glad to fix it right?:intello: Do they know what causes the problems yet?

BrianG and myself are waiting for everything to nice and ready before we jump in. I've been around the electronics scene for a while and I learned never to jump in first. Keep in mind that Castle's failure rate is one of the best I've seen. Castle also has what might be the best service in this industry.

That's OK for you and brian who already have high power handling escs. People like me who have a quark 33a and some other tiny esc have nothing to loose.

Hey, I want a MMM just as bad as anyone else. I also want a SMMM :lol:.

Yeah, I kinda figured there would be some minor issues to iron out. Everyone else can be testers. :smile:

So the ones that stuff up get the new BEC put in and sent back to the owner?

:lol:. Hey, I asked Patrick if I could put one through some tests, but I gues they felt the inhouse testers were good enough for the Monster.

<Pure Speculation>

I wonder if Castle is regretting not running a wide beta program for the Monster like they did with the Mamba?

</Pure Speculation>

Even if they did run more beta testers, the batch of bad parts they received would probably have still caused issues.

The idea of running a beta is to catch problems with the product before it ships to the paying public. I have every confidence that Castle will (or maybe has) resolve (d) the issues but it leaves a very bad taste in your mouth. Lack of confidence in the product...until the Rev 2.0 units come out. Maybe not all of the first batch are bad or have a problem but who knows when a first batch MMM will die, maybe it will be in the first 5 minutes or maybe it will be as you round the last corner on your way to a victory...then it puffs and you DNF...not fun.

I agree, if the issue is what we/they think it is.

Beta testing and product development has nothing to do with a bad component from a supplier.

True...they could've beta-tested until the cows came home, and still received a roll of bad components on the first production run. Just bad luck really. It sounds like they did a LOT of testing on the MMM anyway to me, even if it was in-house. Castle aren't going to release such a hotly anticipated product without making sure the design's virtually flawless IMO.

My point is that they could not control the quality of part that is causing the issue. Beta or not, they are not the manufacturer for the problematic part. How many beta testers would it have taken to spot the QC issue? 100? 200? That would put them 400 units behind just to break even, 200 betas and 200 production for all of the testers. That is a LOT of money, and would cost more than fixing this issue on all of the originally produced ESCs- damn near cost as much as the original production run just to make the betas and pay the testers!

Have they said that the "problem" is a faulty component? Is there a way to ID that component in currently shipped units?

Yea but... they would have less annoyed customers right now. And could possibly have saved a TON of bad press on this new controller advertised as "bulletproof." How much is that worth? If you ask CC now I bet they would gladly trade 400 units to make this little problem as if it never happened.

I know that I'm not really loving the MMM Bingo game. I have mine installed and its running OK so far, but I certainly don't have much confidence that it will keep running. I still drag my old esc with me to the track every time I run it. You just never know when/if you are going to need it.

Hey, I just wanted to test the controller :lol:.

lol, we're never happy are we? We're upset that there are a few bad components. But then, if they had taken more time to do testing, people would be upset at the additional wait. They can't win. :lol:

IIRC, it was the BEC IC chip. Some were simply part of a bad batch.

IMO, we can't blame them at all for this bad batch of chips. If it turns out to be more than that... then we can talk about blaming CC. But that's a big leap at this point

Nobody is blaming them. Its just annoying.

It seems to me like the failure rate is pretty high. It seems everyone that bought multiple esc's had at least one go bad. thats not 6 bad esc's in 1000, thats dozens, at least. The point im trying to make is it would make sense, if they had realy tested alot of the esc that were going out. say one in every 10 esc's they actualy hooked it up to a load and ran it for 10-15 min. They would get significant failures on the test bench. Most of wich would be this bec issue, that seems to be the cause of most if not all failures. then they could stop production and find out that this was a bad "roll" of components. It seems like way too many got out. So yes it gives a company that has had tremendous quality history, a black eye. If they had an almost zero failure rate of the second batch and on, that would be the biggest help to gain there credability back. That and quickly replacing all the defective units that are coming back now(which it looks like they are doing there best)
Has anyone got there replacement esc's back?

Hindsight's 20/20. The guys at CC did the best they could and it just is what it is. Thank God they're the kind of company that will take care of the issue. I don't really see the need to speculate on this stuff as I'm sure we'll get the low down from Patrick or Joe when they nail down the problem. They're working on mine right now :mdr:

Guys.. this could have happened on any production run. The first shipments could have had zero problems,... but a future batch of bad components could have done the same thing a year from now.

Do you also expect Castle to test a bunch of every other product they make, from each and every production run?

If they did... the price would go way up on everything they sell.

Again... we have to assume that this problem is in fact due to a bad component.

If we find that it's something else in the design of the MMM that is causing the problem, THEN it falls back on CC. Either way... they will fix it.

I am not knocking Castle. Every brushless system I run is from Castle, aside from a Neu motor and am happy with everything.

I have an RC8 that I got long after the first run came out, but I still got an original kit from the lhs that required the service pack. Same thing happened to a driver at the track and he bent the defective part last weekend, but doesn't have a receipt to get the service pack and has to buy upgrades to fix the issue....

I bring this up for a point.... I hope that the hobby shops send the first run esc's back so some unsuspecting person doesn't get one of the originals 6 months from now and have these problems... maybe a general notice to all distributors to test each esc before it leaves the store to ensure, or Castle can put a little green dot or something on later releases so we can discern what version we are buying when going to the store

I understand these problems, as I am involved with an electronics mfg as a tester and advisor, and help design the new products. The owner is a freak for testing stuff and he likes to blow things up to test their limits, including competitors products (should have heard him bashing me for using a castle bec in my 8th scale and not one of the his hehe.... ya well, I wanted to play and couldn't wait for it to be released lol)

There is no blame here...just concern, if there was a bad batch of some component how can we identify if a given unit has that bad component short of it failing? Also, are new shipping units also subject to the same failure? I don't know if these things have serial numbers but perhaps that's a way to tell if a unit is possibly defective or known good.

If I remember rightly, Castle actually load-test each individual ESC as part of QC...but I bet that load test doesn't involve the BEC circuitry. They probably just test the power board as that's usually by far the most likely part of an ESC to have problems, not the brains board which is relatively tried and tested. They've made switching BECs before too, obviously, so there's probably little point in testing that part of the ESC (I mean, who's ever had the brains board on their MM go bad?).

Really is just rotten luck...if it is a bad component issue, then they could've received the faulty roll at any time. Just very unfortunate that it was right on the first production run.

Mac, I wish there was a way of knowing if we have a bad unit of or not, though I personally don't see how. Maybe there's a way of telling though (I hope so).