4QD Ltd

Just got to share this gorgeous picture of Mike's MU setup. Between the two of us, it took quite a while to get the MU set up dialled in, but it was a good learning experience for us, and we've now added some "bring-up" sequence notes to the DHB section of our knowledgebase.

Colin brought his fighting robot Talio in to the workshop today. He wanted to try out a couple of our Pro-100s to see if they would sharpen up the control response compared to the old DNO-10s. The Pro-100s don't use relays, so we could wind the deceleration time down to 100mS. We also showed him how to use elevon mixing, and exponential rate control. We ended up with a robot that accelerates like a ferret up a drain pipe and turns and stops on a dime. Looking forward to seeing it in action soon!

Here's a semi-custom Pro-160 that we've done for a commercial customer. We've added a water-cooled heatsink, removed the LCD, and fitted a blank cover.

We've been working on a chatbot for our site, it's very much in the beta stage at the moment but if you'd like to have a play it's here... https://www.4qd.co.uk/chatbot/

Congratulations to the team from Derby University on a strong 2nd place in the IMechE Railway Challenge. Using our controllers and some automation in the energy recovery system they managed 25.9m in that task which is pretty impressive.

Really pleased to have been able to supply our controllers to this project...

Loughborough University initiative wins green energy prize A Loughborough University led initiative, which aims to bring affordable green energy and food security to communities across Africa, has won a major, global prize.

This has to be one of my favourite pictures.... here is Dale running a double-headed snow plough set-up at Train Mountain.

As we're both graduates of Loughborough Uni, Erica & I were delighted to be able to supply a couple of our new Pro-100s for the prototype stage of this project.

Solar micro tractors set to revolutionise communities in Africa Aftrak is an accessible, economic solution to energy access in sub-Saharan Africa, which deploys green solar microgrids in communities allowing energy access...

How about this then? A warehouse handling machine using one of our Pro-360s.

Steve Smith on LinkedIn: #motor The guys at Advanced Automated Systems came up with a neat way to use one of our Pro-360s to control both the forward / reverse, and the transverse operation…

As it's getting toward the cold and rainy season, our thoughts turned towards making a weatherproof control box. Here's a version of our shunter box that should keep the wheels turning through the odd shower. It'll be called the RHT-102 and will be on the website soon. It's got robust 10A switches with waterproof covers. There will be an option to upgrade the potentiometer to our long life 2M operation version.

Most of the time our controllers go into relatively small scale projects. But every now and then something bigger comes along. This one takes the biscuit for the largest to date... there is a Pro-360 hanging off the end of the 4000 tonne crane on this wind turbine installation vessel. It's driving a hydraulic pump that operates a clamping system.

Keith from Phoenix made these lovely replicas of the Isle of Man Groudle Glen engines. Here, he and Ivan are setting them up to run double headed. Following what we learned from this we've posted an updated guide on how to do it in our knowledgebase. The link is in the comments below.

Another movie credit for our stuff... a Pro-160 rubbing shoulders with the stars driving a loco on the set of Asteroid City.

Here's a Turbo Caddy golf buggy in the middle of a controller replacement operation. One of our Pro-160s went in a treat, and the patient is up and running again. We found a design flaw with the original wiring, the battery plugs are not colour coded, it's easy to reverse them and apply reverse polarity to the electronics!😡

Another great project that we're chuffed to be involved with. The guys at www.SeaweedGeneration.com are using seaweed to capture and store CO2. We supplied one of our Pro-160s to control the winch on this prototype catamaran in Antigua. Shame they didn't need on site tech support though!

Hey Barbie fans….we've got some exciting news, while we can’t be too specific about the details….some say that Barbies' car in the latest movie might just be sporting some 4QD gear! All we know is that it's very pink

Just supplied a Pro-160 to these guys - it's going in what must be the ultimate scale truck for your kids - the quality of the build looks stunning!

Many of you will know that I tend to bang on about motor noise suppression, my stern lectures are often met with a resigned smile and promises to fit some in the future. Well this week we had a really interesting case that highlighted the importance of taking this seriously.
The Lord Raglan is a tourist boat running on the Brecon Canal. It is unusual in that it has a rudder, motor, and propeller at each end, it doesn’t turn around in the narrow canal, the helmsman just turns off one motor, locks one rudder and goes to the other end to drive back.
It has a single battery bank feeding one Pro-360-HV and Lynch LEM-200 motor at each end. At one end the installation has been fine, but at the other end there have been three controller failures. We spent a day there this week looking to figure out what was causing the problems.
As soon as we opened the engine bay at the problem end the cause was apparent – there were no noise suppression components fitted to the motor. However, these were also missing from the other end which did not have problems, so what was the difference?
Looking into the routing of the motor wires we found that they had been run directly on top of the battery wires feeding the problem controller. The motor wires are carrying a large current that is being switched on and off very quickly, this, along with the lack of noise suppression was inducing noise into the battery wires for the controller and causing mosfet latch-up to occur.
The solution was to fit an extra section of trunking to allow the motor wires to be routed away from the battery wires, and also to fit noise suppression components to both motors.
Looking forward to going for a cruise now that it is back working as it should.

Phil brought his electric Hyabusa in for some diagnostic work today. It's running a Lynch LEM 200, a Pro-360HV, and batteries from a BMW i3. The quality of the build is amazing! We found that the gearing was a bit off and was not letting the motor reach its peak efficiency RPM. Looking forward to a test ride when it's been changed.