[Dr_C]

As part of my investigation of SENSORED brushless motors for digital slot car racing I bought a couple of Slot.it MB01 brushless motors. They of course are unsensored.


   

That said they are beautifully engineered and deserving of further consideration for sensored digital slot-car applications.

As may be apparent from other threads on slotracer.online, my preference is for SENSORED brushless motors… so the question … 

Can a Slot.it MB01 be modified to make it a sensored motor?

I plan to explore several potential options, the first being a diametrically polarised ring magnet attached to the drive axis, with three Hall sensor ICs at 120 degrees attached to the motor mount. Let’s see if this can be done?

If it can … this opens up some opportunities to drive a ‘sensorised’ MB01 motor from an oxygen O201c wireless decoder. The necessary electronic driver module has already been designed … so fingers crossed a SENSORISED MB01 and O2 wireless decoder combination can be made to function correctly … let’s see.

c

[Kevan]

Why not...if you can envisage it working you can make it work 

[Dr_C]

Why not...if you can envisage it working you can make it work 

Thanks Kevan,

I hope my ‘homework’ on this was done correctly - putting a correctly orientated diametric magnet ring onto the MB01 motor shaft appears to be the easiest starting point for ‘sensorising’ the motor. These magnets have an outer diameter of 6mm, an inner diameter of 3mm and a thickness of 1mm… so they should be perfect… and very importantly… they exist!

The plan is to fit the magnet rings onto a 2mm motor shaft, using a hollow liner which should still leave room on the motor shaft for the pinion to be positioned for correct meshing.

This approach might create a sensored MB01, or maybe not, but for certain I will learn more about the design of sensors for brushless motors. Given my belief that sensored brushless motors will be highly useful for future digital slotcars, some initial design learning can only be a good thing.

c