I have a 1500 watt 12VDC motor on the anchor windlass that I want to give all the power it needs. I also want to slow it down as the anchor comes onboard. I have built a little microcontroller program that counts the revolutions and calculates how much anchor rode is out. When the count gets less than 10' I want to start slowing the motor. The windlass has positive forward and reverse inputs and a single common so I assume the speed control should be on the low side. I figure adding a PWM routine to the PIC program would be the way to do it.
The motor will draw about 120 amps under full load (which will be rare) and about 30 amps retrieving the last few feet of anchor anchor rode when the PWM will be required. I have a pile of IRFZ48V MOSFETS that are good to 72 amps at 12 mOhms on resistance and wonder if they would be of use stacking 4 of them in parallel. It also appears that some sort of diodes would be required accross the motor terminals to protect the MOSFETs from voltage spikes the current stops.
The questions are, am I on the right track and if so, what do I use to drive the MOSFETs?