Articles

I had the opportunity to chat for a bit about motors with Joshua Bardwell on his channel a few weeks ago. There was some interesting stuff there, so I thought I'd re-post it here.

TLDR: Racewire does not significantly affect thrust or current values. Here is some data.

We are very happy to announce that the new 6S motor test system is finally ready to roll!

I wanted to make a few notes about some of the new props I've gotten in recently and been adding (or not adding) to the test sequences. There's some interesting information to be garnered here.

A brushless DC motor by itself is a relatively useless item. In reality it is only half of the equation to generate the mechanical energy that makes a mini-quad (or any brushless powered craft) move. For the purposes of this discussion I’m going to assume a certain base knowledge about how a 3 phase brushless motors achieves motion through the sequential magnetization of the phases in relation to the fixed magnets in the bell. We’re going to talk here in more detail about how that is achieved by the ESC, and how it impacts us as we combine motor and ESC.

When it comes to brushless motors there are a number of constants inherent to a given motor that define how that motor behaves, both electrically and mechanically. Let’s take a closer look at two of these constants: the velocity constant (kV) and the torque constant (kT.)

Over the last few months there's been a good deal of discussion about how to make a fast miniquad. It's been interesting to watch and I've mostly just been observing. I've seen a lot of interesting discussion. A few weeks ago I posted some thoughts on RCGroups, and I thought it was worth it to post them here as well.

The option for custom motor mixes in flight controller software has been around for a tremendously long time, since the early days of MultiWii, long before the current 32-bit revolution took over the flight controller market. There's a ton of information and theories out there, from old wive's tales, to handy web calculators to help an enterprising pilot with this feature, but what is the truth? Is it even necessary?

With the plethora of motors out there, the question of how to choose a motor that is right for you becomes ever more important. One of the most frequent questions I get asked is "what is the best motor?" and like so many other questions I get my primary answer is "it depends!" I will try make a more thorough explanation here of how to make a choice that will be best for you, as well as explain how to read the motor test results in a way that will give the answers needed.