Gate X-Asr Intermittent Firing Issues

[Hatchet]

Morning all,

I've recently installed a Gate X-ASR into an M249 gearbox and am experiencing some issues.

Everything appears to be wired up correctly with the signal wire and positive going to the microswitch, the negative going directly to negative motor terminal.

LEDs blink green on battery connection and gun fires when trigger is pulled. However, intermittently it will stop firing with the LED's flashing red/green. According to the help card, this is the trigger wire being connected to the negative motor wire. Obviously it's not.

Leaving the trigger alone for a few seconds and the lights go out and firing can resume, but the same thing will recur.

I wondered if this could be an overheating issue, even though the light pattern on the card suggests otherwise. Nothing's obviously hot and the shimming seemed good when tested - gears spinning smoothly in an assembled box. This is on a 22TPA motor with 13:1 gears that's pulling something like a M100 spring, so should be well within the operating tolerances of the X-ASR.

Anyone come across this before or have any suggestions? I vaguely recall having similar issues with a 249 and different Gate mosfet in the past, but put it down to a bad mosfet since when I swapped it for a cheetah all was fine.

 

[Speedbird_666]

Funnily enough, my son's Specna Edge's Gate X-ASR has just developed an identical issue to you. The gun is well shimmed, stock gears, SHS Hi-torque motor. Never really gets hot, and only uses 7.4v LiPos.

It'll fire a few a few shots, stop and blink red/green for a 3-4 seconds. Try shooting again and the same happens. Google-fu indicates that it could be a due to being a bit of a shit mosfet. Gate themselves say if it happens to contact customer support.

I've bought a Gate Nano-ASR instead - so if it goes bad I can just pull it off and replace it with a spare from my kit box and the wiring setup allows for an easy upgrade to a WarFET later.

 

[Hatchet]

Useful to know, thanks.

I've emailed Gate and we'll see what they have to say. I have to say, if this is my 2nd bad experience with them I can't imagine dropping serious cash onto something like a Titan.

I'm hoping a friend might be able to find the aforementioned Cheetah that's not being used so I can swap to that as it was always ultra reliable,  but I'll update if there's any progress with this.

 

[Hatchet]

Update on this. Got a response from gate that said basically "your wiring looks dodgy".

This is probably largely due to it also being wired to run a box mag, per the second diagram attached. Running this setup didn't seem to work. I got no additional signal from the signal wire and my electronics is weak so I didn't understand why.

Ultimately, there was a lot of rebuilding/rewiring anyway and during the course of this I changed the signal wire setup to dual wire on the switch rather than single + power. This was largely so I could swap out mosfet at a later date if I wanted. Unfortunately the X-ASR is single signal wire only, so I switched to an old Gate one from the parts box.

Which also doesn't work reliably. Probably the same one I used last time.

In a last throw of the dice I've ordered a NanoHard which definitely is supposed to deal with trigger bounce. I can only guess that might be the issue since the 249 uses a microswitch. If it's not that, perhaps the box mag is interfering somehow, but since it's now wired directly off the motor contacts so it triggers when that does (and isn't involved with the signal wires at all), I'm not sure why that would have an effect.

Much head scratching.

Kind of hoping this will resolve it.

View attachment 72292

 

[Predator EAT-14]

If I remember rightly I had the same thing after fitting one to my valken, from what I can recall of the 3 wires coming out of the x-asr I swapped the positive and negative wires and it's been fine since. I may have wired it wrong initially but didn't think I had, May be worth a try?

 

[Iceni]

Could be the box mag causing the issues.

Disconnect the trigger to mag wire and test.

If it clears it up a diode on the trigger to mag wire in the correct orientation may stop the issue.

I'm suspecting the ASR looks for a constant + signal from the trigger. But the mag and more importantly the motor on the mag have a circuit that allows the commutation of the motor to get seen by the ASR, Effectively letting it see a pulsing ADC waveform. A diode will allow the trigger + to go to the mag, but will also stop any mag - getting back up to the ASR.

It's worth a shot just to clip that wire and run a few hundred BB's with the mag on manual wind. If it works then trying a diode could be the solution, but equally it would depend on the ASR  even with a diode it may still generate issues.

Also don't worry about soldering. The car market produces 10 amp diodes for isolating dash lamps in cars/motorbikes where you want one lamp for 2 different circuits.

Something like this with spade connectors already on will work as well as a soldered solution.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/10A-50V-In-Line-Diode-12V-14V-24V-36V-10-A-AMP-10AMP-12-14-24-36-50-V-VOLT-/400689716228

 

[Hatchet]

That's useful, thanks. I am out of my depth on this one.

Well, Nanohard arrived and... same issue.  Mnngh.

I have removed the box mag for testing and currently am still getting cut outs. There does seem to be some diagnostics on the nanohard suggest low voltage/High Resistance and current too high. I'm just fully charging up a battery to double check, since the ones I've been using previously should be good, but I want to rule it out. The problem is still there without the box mag but not as pronounced (i.e. I can do a 15-20 second burst before it cuts out). I'm wondering if the draw from the box mag motor is enough to throw it off/trigger low voltage warning but I'm just speculating.

Have made sure to set battery monitoring for correct voltage and will retest with fresh battery.

Incidentally, is the wiring in the 2nd picture actually possible? I'm assuming the box mag also has its own mosfet within it and was trying to get my head round 2 mosfets being driven by the same signal wire.

 

[Lozart]

Not sure why the box mag would have a mosfet in it?

I'm also confused as to how you can be getting low voltage, high resistance AND high current. I'd try checking what current the motor is actually pulling though as it may be higher than you're expecting.

 

[Hatchet]

In theory, the box mag is wired direct to the battery and also has a signal wire. It's got a manual feed button on the side (mostly for priming) but should fire when the trigger is pulled (per the diagram). I assumed this indicated a mosfet, however see previous comments about this not being my area.

I also have no idea on the other info, I'm just going based on what the light flash diagnostics on the NanoHard are suggesting. I don't have any way to actually check the current that's being pulled. However, given the box mag wiring is about 20/22AWG I feel like it's not going to be that much.

 

[Lozart]

In theory, the box mag is wired direct to the battery and also has a signal wire. It's got a manual feed button on the side (mostly for priming) but should fire when the trigger is pulled (per the diagram). I assumed this indicated a mosfet, however see previous comments about this not being my area.

I also have no idea on the other info, I'm just going based on what the light flash diagnostics on the NanoHard are suggesting. I don't have any way to actually check the current that's being pulled. However, given the box mag wiring is about 20/22AWG I feel like it's not going to be that much.

As far as 22 AWG goes:

A 22 ga wire can handle 10A, if it's run through free air at 30C, and has insulation which can handle temperatures above 105C. It will handle about 40 amps before the copper melts (fusing capacity).

So yeah, it could easily be pulling high currents. Thing is that to get high current you need a low resistance or a higher voltage, both of which are contradicted by the other fault you seem to be getting. I'd disconnect the box mag and see what it does without it.

 

[Hatchet]

Well, I thought I was making progress after some reshimming (which legitimately seemed ok to me before, but perhaps something shifted or I got muddled after the 200th takedown and put a shim back wrong).

Fired out of the box beautifully. Got it to site and... jams, crunchy noise, etc.

Currently in small pieces, again. Updates on state of mosfet to follow once I get the rest of the gun working again. F*** my entire life tbh.