First off, I have never said in any interview or the like I didn't know about outrunners or brushless in general. Not to toot my own horn, but last I checked I am fairly good at this entire motor thing, brushed or brushless. A lot of the stuff carries over between the two in design theory and such. I was simply stating the way brushless is made is much different than brushed. Brushless is pretty all done out of china. Very little is done here.....I could make an entire motor here in the USA........and you would be paying $200 for an Outrunner.
Outrunners are honestly the simplest of motors we use, brushed or brushless. No sensors, no brushes, no fancy parts or the like. Designing them isn't brain surgery.
Now, I will flat out say, I am not a big fan of outrunners. I hate the noise and I don't like not being able to do anything to them really before or after. I am a tinker by heart, and brushless, especially outrunners removes this element.
On a brushed motor, we do basically a majority of the motor here. Winding, welding, epoxy, balancing......can we glue in the magnets and zap them here. Motor is assembled, tested, tuned, etc all here. Much of it is in my hands, and I prefer that.
But, after a constant stream of emails, posts, dms, etc for like 5 years straight asking when the Brood outrunner was coming, with even Amain asking, I relented and went to work on one.
I contacted the company that produces my design for sensored brushless inrunners (which I use a combo of my parts/specs and theirs to make) and told them what I want to do. I knew they produced a series of outrunners I could likely use parts from. They told me what they had, I had them wind up some additional KVs and we tested them. There was flaws I didn't like. We ordered another batch, with some changes......motors were better, but still not to my liking of what I would sell. So we made more changes, another batch came. And we had something that worked well enough to sell. Most of this was documented on our facebook/instagram. Riots were in development for almost a year before we released them.
Yes, we used some parts from Surpass. Hot tip, everyone does this in the brushless game, even Holmes. Go look at his original revolvers, they still all had the plane mounting holes in them. Is there anything wrong with this? No......why, John wasn't really going to make a better part by spending a whole bunch to retool a part. You see this with servos as well......it's common and how the game is played. Now, Holmes has updated some parts on his revolvers over the years as funds became available to do it.
Now, there have been three batches of Riots made, we still have some select KVs left from batch 1 and 2....some versions sold way better than the others. The Riot S and SS outsell the Xl 20-1 with ease, even outsell the regular Riot 10-1 or so.
On the first batch, Surpass did not make a change they were supposed to make to one part and also did not include the magnet retainer ring like they were supposed to that I drew up. Batches 2 and 3 had both of these.
So, stuff that's different on our motor from the Surpass Airplane motors.
Magnets (different grade from a different supplier, along with a different shape)
Magnet Backing (steel type was changed to our spec)
Stator (same design as surpass, but uses our much higher end stator steel)
Shaft (shaft is ground to 1/8th for easy pinion access)
Front Plate (we removed the set of airplane mounting holes in favor of another 25mm pair)
Rear Plate (this was the change left out on batch 1, we removed airplane prop holes).
Magnet Retainer Ring (was left out on batch 1 even though the part was done, said part does not exist on airplane versions)
Wire (we used a wire with a different insulation to withstand heat better)
KV (we had them wind KVs they did not offer at all and we tweaked a couple they did. Some were already spot on though, so we stuck with those.)
Surpass offered to change the front and rear plates if I wanted, for a fee of course and a minimum order I could not meet. I simply didn't have the cash to order 5,000 motors at once for a niche market. I liked the way the housings looked and cooled the motor, so I stuck with the changes they were willing to do them.
The stator stamping die alone is a 8k tool. Changing to our better steel was a huge improvement in start up along with improvements in efficiency, torque and power while running about 10 degrees cooler on average. Last I checked, Holmes still uses the stator tool from his supplier, but again he changed the steel as well to his spec.
Sometime I wonder if people realize the cost in fully tooling up a product like this. It's not cheap and it's why there is part sharing to spread the cost out. A fully tooled up outrunner would likely eclipse $100 out the gate. I know John took a beating with his servos over the same stuff. I would hope, I would get as much benefit of the doubt that I am not just rebadging stuff.
Every motor gets tested here by me before they go out. I can't do much if anything to them really, so I do what I can to at least put my stamp on it.
That being said, a Riot v2 is in the works. Some changes to the can and front/rear plates mostly.......mainly because this isn't the first "they are just a surpass motor" post I have seen. It grows tiresome having your products called into question.....especially when I rarely see these posts targeting other companies who do the EXACT same thing.
By all means though, grab a surpass..... ..and compare. Let me know when you find the Riot S 2000 equivalent motor they offer.
And the Hobbywing stuff isn't so good with any outrunner, doesn't matter who makes it. Castle stuff with the most updated hardware works best (SW4, Mamba X, Micro X, Copperhead). Some have gotten the tekin stuff to work decent, but the castle still outclasses it. The new Holmes ESC appears to work pretty well, but I have not ran one personally or seen one in action besides videos, as they are fairly hard to get.
And I still hate the way they sound...
Later EddieO
First off, I am not trying to spread or say anything bad about these motors, Because I absolutely don't have any desire to say bad things for no reason.
The only info I have seen on outrunner motors and brood racing was in a youtube interview with the guy from brood racing and I think one host, Part of the interview talked about how all the stuff thats good for brushed crawler motors was stuff brood tried years before in race motors but they were bad in race motors. But in a short part of that video brood said, or at least what I heard was that he didn't know or care about outrunner motors.
This could have been before he Decided to make outrunner motors, I am not sure, my memory is hazy.
Brood may have done some research before producing the brood motors.
It makes me curious though, how well a brood rior will preform to a similar sized holmes hobby motor which costs more, or to a similiar surpass hobby/hobbystar outrunner which is like half the price.
The hobby star motors are great but they come with large motor shafts 4mm and 5mm.
My point is I hope they are not just hobbystar/surpass helicopter motors with a smaller motor shaft and a 50% markup.
But I have no clue, so don't don't repeating that unless you know something I don't.
For that matter I have no Idea how much better if any, the holmes motors are either.
But it's convenient to get a motor with the right size shaft for 3.17mm pinions
If your ok with using a 5mm pinion though the surpass hobby/hobbystar motor have a bunch of torque too (maybe not as much, again I have no Idea, that are only $25-$30 though)
Edit: I am not associated with any manufacture, I only report this for what I see as the benefit of the community. or general awareness/knowledge
hopefully that comes across how I meant it. Again I have no beef with Brood motors.
Maybe this is the video I am thinking about. Time stamp included.
https://youtu.be/yv9DOr-iqaw?t=3333
I really thought the quote was specifically talking about outrunner motors, but this quote is brushless motors in general.
This is why I say, don't repeat this stuff, it's just information, but it doesn't mean anything, it's very vague. and this video is 2018, the riot motors aren't that old.
It is very possible the magnets and winding are all better quality then the surpass motors but still in the exact same housing as the surpass and hobbystar housing, which would justify an increase in price.
And hopefully its not just one of the cheaper motors with a turned down shaft for crawlers. This is the main point I am talking about.
It would be nice to see how all these motors compare on a dyno, but I don't have all the motors or a dino.
Personally I really like the outrunner design, they have so much torque, which is great for crawlers.
Now that I know some ways to run them quieter then without the castle esc's. Like the blheli32/am32 and crawlmaster esc's.
I never tried them on a hobbywing esc, I am curious how they sound there, but hobbywing is not know for a good startup in any of my limited testing.
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obviously brushless motors they're my
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design I do use some parts that have
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already been developed in in China I
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wasn't gonna pay 10 grand to re-engineer
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an aluminum can with heat sinking on it
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was stupid and so you know I used their
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can and it was available it was cheap it
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worked it didn't get any different thing
I am pretty sure though the stator in bothe the Riot xl and HH classic revolver are 28x26mm so if you plan in making a big, slow, heavy crawler. These motors would be awesome.
To be fair he never said these motors were not just surpass motors with a turned down shaft. They probably aren't.
It's just when I see 2 motors that look the same, I tend to think they are the same. Which I know isn't necessarily true.
