Pushing Robot - Necessary to Disconnect Motor from SMC?

Support Motor controllers/drivers and motors
1

I’m planning on using a pair of 18V25 Simple Motor Controllers as ESC’s to drive 100w Scooter Motors from a 4S Lipo battery pack (~14v).
This arrangement will be powering an R2D2 robot (see astromech.net/) weighing between 50-75 lbs.
If there’s an operational problem, or the batteries run low, the droid might have to be pushed for some distance (too heavy to lift). Folks using other brands of Motor Controller have recommended disconnecting the Motor from the ESC to prevent damaging the ESC.
Is this necessary with the Pololu ESC’s?
I’ve gone over the documentation and have not found any information on the subject.

Frank Pirz
Media-Conversions
r2d2.media-conversions.net
r2d2-cnc.media-conversions.net

2

Hello.

When you push the robot, the motors are going to act like generators. If the motors end up spinning faster than they would at the full battery voltage, then the voltage they are producing can show up on the power rail and potentially damage the drivers if it gets higher than the SMC’s 30V limit, so disconnecting the motors is probably the safest way to go.

- Ben