I made some progress.

First, using an ESC designed for fixed wing planes allows for complete elimination of the "braking" issue. You simply turn off braking, and there is no braking at all under any circumstances. These ESC's, unfortunately, no matter how you fiddled with the settings, were not able to get the weapon to start spinning. Simply no torque at low rpm. (ZTW Beatles, and Red Brick ESC)

The Flycolor X-cross, however, really does well with torque at low RPM

So, I went back to that.

I was able to make some progress by adjusting the throttle settings on BL Heli

Minimum Throttle 901
Center Throttle 901
Maximum Throttle 2100

With a Spektrum DXe air transmitter, I was able to adjust things so that the only way you can get braking is if you fiddle with the trim settings for the throttle. I can just put duct tape over that, so the kids cannot adjust it.

I did try to get this to work with a Spektrum Pistol grip, but I was not able to get the 'failsafe" to cooperate. If I tried the throttle settings as above, I was able to get full forward to be full speed on the weapon, and full backward was stop. (Slowly coasting to a stop that is.)
Unfortunately this left the point at which the throttle was in the middle position as half power, and the failsafe was set accordingly.
Thus, any time the bot is powered on, and someone turns off the transmitter, the weapon would spin up to half speed. Can't have this, as its a serious safety issue.

Okay,

I have been trying to set a Flycolor ESC so that it can be used with a combat robot weapon motor.  If you remember, any sort of braking at all throws so much energy back at the ESC and battery that the ESC explodes.

So, I have it all figured out.  I am such a noob.  

The "Error Beeps" I was hearing are not really error beeps.  You see, there is this thing called "throttle calibration...."

(I am sure you all know about that, by the way... me... not so much.)

Also, no matter how much you try to read the user manuals for pistol grip radios, they won't give you the error beep information.  This is probably because the throttle calibration is a function of the ESC.  If you read the BLHeli_32 manual, it is all right there.

So, after learning how to do the calibration process, it is super simple.  

Just set the motor direction for Normal.
Turn off all braking.
Set "Non-damped mode" to On.

Then, if you go through the calibration process, the setup works perfectly.  Under no circumstances can a student activate any sort of braking, so the ESC can only be overheated by too much current during the motor weapon startup process, and the temperature protection set at 140 degrees prevents any sort of damage even if a student keeps on the throttle when the weapon is jammed.  Having "Stall Protection" on provides even more protection.

Everything works fine now.

Thank you to everyone who helped me with this.  

I now know what "active freewheeling" is too, and how this makes it possible for such a tiny ESC to handle such a big job without every really even getting more than warm.  


I have made an attachment of the settings I am using.
   

Glad you got it working. Ever since most of use in the quad hobby moved to DSHOT, none of use do ESC calibration anymore. Probably an unfamiliar sound most of the new guys here.

"Child, movies usually come on these things call Blu-ray disc, not Netflix."