I have a brushless motor on my RC plane. After connecting it to an ESC and testing it I've found that it is spinning in the wrong direction.
How can I reverse the direction the prop is spinning?
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Sign up to join this communityI have a brushless motor on my RC plane. After connecting it to an ESC and testing it I've found that it is spinning in the wrong direction.
How can I reverse the direction the prop is spinning?
Swapping any two of the wires connecting a brushless DC motor to its ESC will reverse the direction it spins.
Despite the name BLDC which implies that the motor runs on DC power, each of the three wires (connected to one of the three phases in the motor) is driven by the ESC with a phase-shifted AC waveform. Each wire's waveform is shifted by 120 degrees from the other two.
This offset is what allows the swapping of two wires to reverse the direction of the motor's rotation.
Because nothing special is required to reverse the motor direction, it is also possible to fix this by editing the software configuration, which will do the same thing but in software. e.g. in the BLHELI32SUITE software for ESCs with the BLHELI_32 firmware installed
Swap any two of the wires between the ESC and the motor. Alternatively, use the configurator on your computer for whatever firmware your ESC runs and switch the direction via the software.
For example, if it is a BLHeli_32 ESC, you can go to the BLHeli_32 Suite and reverse the motor direction from there.
Two useful ways: Swap any pair of wires running to the ESC. Software configuration for the ESC (a BLHeli Configurator tool) and swap the Normal/Reversed state.
You could technically rewind the entire motor to achieve the same result, but it's usually easiest to do one of the above, and swapping a pair of motor wires with a soldering iron is quite easy.