Source for motors

At work I've used a few small brushless dc motors (10 oz-in) from Pittman (who now seems to be part of Ametek) and I was happy with the performance and very happy with the technical support when we were deciding on specs and choosing the motor. They make much bigger ones too:

Also, we just bought a brushless dc motor to test from Anaheim Automation, this one is 135 oz-in and again, they have much bigger ones: For us, low cogging isn't that important since we run fairly constant speed usually between 2 and 4000 rpm, but getting the driver electronics onboard was nice for our packaging, and, of course, cheap is vital :-). I got a price from Moog and the motor may have been great quality but the price was over triple Anaheim's price.

Where do you look when you look for motors?

I'm looking for brushless motors in the 200-250oz-in (1.5-2Nm) range; something with fairly low friction and quite low cogging torque is preferred.

It's been a while since I've selected motors, and to date everything I've done is more in the Maxon sort of size range, so I'm not sure of the best places to look.

Moog makes really great stuff for aerospace: in fact, I've worked with them and have designed with their stuff.

But if you're not blithely machining weights out of tungsten, and non- conductive bearing mounts out of titanium, and making similar price/ performance tradeoffs, then Moog motors may be a bit out of your price range.

Did you look at the range of modeller motors, eg from the likes of

?

You might check out Keling (kelinginc.com) they have a line of BLS23 and BLS34 motors (NEMA size 23 and 34) that seem to work well.

Jon

They are definitely spendy, and brushed, but Kollmorgen makes some fine motors with zero cogging. We have used these in some research applications where this was paramount. I haven't looked to see if they make brushless versions.

Hobby King sells cheap Chinese stuff, which is hardly suitable.

Even good quality hobby motors aren't going to be suitable in a product

-- when you buy stuff intended for OEM use, it's usually pretty safe to assume that the part number you design in today will still be available five to ten years from now. You give up a bit on performance and weight

-- but that's not the most important consideration, and my customer wouldn't thank me if they had to come back every six months for a redesign with another piece of consumer equipment that wouldn't last long.

Thanks. I know of Kollmorgen -- it's one of those "it's on the tip of my tongue" names. You're right about them being spendy -- but I can check.

Thanks. This looks like an avenue to pursue.

Motors of all sorts here . They seem to be a good and knowledgeable company on many types.