I have been using 7.2 motors for my fast gun ships like the ones sold by Battlers. I noted that the big gun clubs use the Maxon motors in many of their ships. Would the Maxons be worth the money, somewhat expensive I saw online, for our ships and what are the pros and cons of utilizing them?
The nice thing about Maxon motors is that they are the most efficient motors that money can buy. These babies sip the power, not gulp it. For several years, the 7.2v 22mm maxon motor was THE standard propulsion system in my local club for battleships, destroyers, and just about every ship in between. The result was that even big, fast battleships like HMS hood drew less than 2 amps current with all motors stalled. However, it was soon discovered that the 22mm maxon motor doesn't have the torque to handle weeds, and ships would suffer noticeable distress with even slight interference from pond snot. Fortunately, the larger 26mm (I think) A-max motors that recently showed up in my local electronics surplus store are significantly more torque-ey. Two of those suckers turning 1-inch props moved a SoDak with the full extra inch of depth at its scale 28 knot speed, and larger props moved it significantly faster. Power consumption increased proportionally, though. The biggest downside that I see to using maxons is that suppliers for cheap surplus maxons are hard to come by. The motors currently at my local surplus shop are selling for $13.50 apiece, and they only have a limited stock. If one of my motors fails, there's a decent chance that there won't be a replacement, unless I buy direct from Maxon. I do not plan to use maxons in my ships, because I can get similar performance (and pricing) from a 280-size motor with 5:1 gear-down, which I can order from Tower Hobbies online any time I want.
Thanks Carl for the info. (I believe I met you and Ben once at your pond when I visited a battle in San Jose before.) And besides the Maxon site, are there any other sites online that offer them? And aren't they used in the railroad hobby to push the engines or am I mistaken? Anyway, good advice as I was going to try to save some space in my Gorgon during her refit this winter. Cheers! Steve
Last I heard, Maxon motors were used to drive robots across the surface of mars. There used to be a supplier on ebay that sold surplus maxon motors, but that source dried up. I don't know of any other online sources. I would suggest you consider using this: http://www3.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0001p?&I=LXWK50&P=0 plus this: http://www3.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0001p?&I=LXVY65&P=0 The combination of those two gives similar performance to a high-end Maxon A-Max motor, with slightly lower RPMs. It's still very power-efficient and provides lots of torque for dealing with weeds. And best of all, they're available relatively cheap online, so I never have to worry about the supply disappearing.
We were thinking of using using weed whacker line for props over in my area if weeds became an issue : P
I like the links to the T-280 motors and gearboxs as well as the price. And when we have battles up at the Reno pond, moss is a big problem during the warmer days. Thanks.
my local pond has a good amount of moss and weeds (no offense rob, your pond is awesome) and the BC motors work just find there. Unless your my dad and stick the back end right into the thicket and just keep pushing it forward...opps on his part : )
