What's a good sensored 4082 brushless motor?

[Jon Watte]

TLDR: I'm asking for where to find good, correct-size, sensored brushless motors for a new chassis. A the bottom of the message. If you like videos of rovers, there's something to look at inbetween.

I did pretty well at yesterday's "diyrobocars" meetup in Oakland; placing 2 out of 20.

The money pit was doing about as well as can be expected of it -- at this point, I'm limited by the power of my motors.

Currently, I use RoboClaw motor controllers with Pololu 37D motors/encoders/gearboxes at 50:1 gearing.

I've tried 35:1 gearing with the same motors, but that ends up in burned-out motors when going uphill, so I'm already at the limit.

Here's a training run:

https://goo.gl/photos/2P1EroYgZ89LkdGk9

I ended up able to turn up the speed/gain a little bit so it was slightly smoother/faster during competition -- 1.5 m/s is its max, though, with current motors.

I can buy some 2 kilowatt brushless motors and some fancy Roboteq sensored brushless controllers and still direct drive the wheels, but that'll cost like $2k!

Or I can get six RC-style ESCs, and six RC-style sensored brushless motors with low kV and high turn count, and tap into the sensors for my encoder feedback. RC motors are 2 pole or 4 pole, so with 4 poles, 6 commutations, that gives me 24 ticks per revolution. My current encoders give me 3200 cpr, and I'd love to at least get 300. Maybe some other encoder solution can be rigged up, with either a printed encoder band on the inside of the wheels, or a separate shaft to an external encoder, but it's getting quite messy at that point.

There are also BLDC gimbal motors with built-in absolute encoders -- but I know of no ESC/motor controller that knows how to read those for propulsion, as opposed to gimbal stabilization.

So, I could build my own motor controllers ...

Yeah, no, or I can buy a freakin' RC chassis if I want to go fast, and keep the rover for going rugged, which it's good at:

https://goo.gl/photos/k3Uxytr2QAQ2y2dk7

NOW FOR THE QUESTION:

This chassis looks nice:

https://hobbyking.com/en_us/1-8-racing-truggy-kit.html

It's documented as needing 4082 motors.

I can only find non-sensored 4082 motors on the hobbyking or hobbypartz sites. There are 540/550-size sensored motors, and 4270 motors:

https://hobbyking.com/en_us/turnigy-trackstar-1-8th-sensored-brushless-motor-1900kv.html


Do you think I could jam a 4270 in there? Or do you know of a good source of 4082 motors with sensors?


Sincerely,

Jon Watte


--
"I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have." -- Thomas Jefferson