How this tiny PCB Motor Survived 1.6 BILLION SPINS

[@SimbiontS95]

Good to see actual inventors at work, hope your project will be used in many awesome real-world applications, it deserves recognition

[@VEC7ORlt]

'inventors' I hate this word with passion. This is not an invention, just a garden variety BLDC motor with an unusual winding.

[@SimbiontS95]

Well, it's blue diode that took most time and effort to develop and overall brought us into the modern LED world, but with such logic you can't say that was a real invention since there were already red and green ones

[@VEC7ORlt]

@@SimbiontS95 the F are you even talking about, BLDC motor field is mature established industry, and this motor is nothing spectacular, interesting or out of the ordinary, blue LED by comparison required decades of refinement and netted a Nobel prize. 'Invention', blergh, this word just cheapens engineering effort.

[@tvcomputer1321]

@@VEC7ORlt yeah a brushless dc motor that is literally printed into a circuit board, not an invention and required no engineering or thought. ffs get real

[@Argosh]

​@@tvcomputer1321it required plenty of engineering and thought. Just not much inventiveness. It's an interesting engineering challenge withoutmany applications as of yet.

[@LaurenceVonThomas]

"I decided to study PCB stators on my honeymoon" 😂😅

[@КириллГамазков]

A girl who is OK with that is truly a dream one )

[@ccflan]

you dirty minda I'm watching you 😅

[@PiDsPagePrototypes]

@@ccflan Make for a set of gloves with vibrating fingertips.... Happy wife, happy life methodology.

[@KangJangkrik]

Plot twist his wife suddenly become a geek after first night lol

[@Epitath6045]

I mean going by this guys content yeah no it sounds like she’s the right one for him. I bet she supported it

[@martinleska4292]

Your aluminium rotors are black which means they are anodized. Anodization make surface spongy and make dimensions little bit bigger. Final dimension is unstable after anodization. Not only every batch, but every run in anodizing bath gives you another results. It expands aluminium because raw aluminium is converted in new chemical compound. If you want exact tolarance, you should make hole smaller, anodize part and resurface critical dimension up to desired tolerance. You really need dynamic balancing after completing rotors.

[@ekon01cz]

Great point!

[@RooMan93]

I wonder if it outweighed by the slight boost in heatsinking efficiency the black coating gives.

[@inkrpen]

Could have gotten a reamer to fix the size also

[@pauls5745]

I was thinking this, and also eliminate the bearing to use a bushing. Tolerance can be more controlled, reliability and longevity increase, can have a much lower rotor height too.

[@martinleska4292]

@@inkrpen It will work but only few times. Aluminium oxide is very hard and dulls standard HSS hand tools very quickly.

[@colbyjohnson2344]

Well done! I was wondering when we would see this. Totally worth the wait.

[@CarlBugeja]

Thanks! It was really hard to summarise everything into one enjoyable video but I'm happy with how it turned out!

[@vaisakh_km]

​@@CarlBugejaReally impressed by the results, i def buy it in the future if our startup works out

[@BlenderGuy1]

When you showed the price I said, out loud, "Holy shit that's cheap". I can't believe you got the price that low for such a small scale product. You are doing amazing work!

[@Anon-te6uq]

Those are 13 dollars each. You can buy normal motors for less than that.

[@BlenderGuy1]

@ I don’t think his product is outlandishly great on its own, but I was surprised at the price because he isn’t a million dollar company. Usually small scale products like this are a lot more expensive.

[@linusgoblin]

That is the greatest PCBWay ad i ever seen. the amount of designs you pump out is truly incredible.

[@christopherd.winnan8701]

This would be a great time to pitch JLCPCB and the other half dozen mainland manufacturers for sponsorship in an area that is clearly going to explode like GLP-1 analogs

[@PCBWay]

You do never stop to amaze us, Carl! We just can't thank you enough for your support throughout the years❤! Happy Holiday🎄🎄🎄

[@chimpo131]

what a pathetic corporate message LOL

[@buhingkalbaryo]

​Oh i see a communist triggered. north korea is a nice place​ to live @chimpo131

[@josephkariba8676]

Relax bro ​@@chimpo131

[@zawadtahmid9076]

Reduce shipping cost in asia, come on, do something

[@jkuebler89]

Are you a patreon? Are you supporting Carl's projects? If not, save it. ​@@chimpo131

[@MarinusMakesStuff]

Did you ever look at Hard Disk Drive motor bushings? These also do not use a locknut as the magnetic field keeps it in place. Bushings are probably even better than bearings in this case.

[@joefish6091]

Sintered bronze impregnated with oil.

[@Humbulla93]

Either that or magnetic/ air bushings which have zero contact between surfaces

[@MarinusMakesStuff]

@@joefish6091 Exactly! This is the key in my opinion. Does require a hard chrome smooth shaft though for longevity.

[@dosgos]

A Japanese company dominated that space. I don't know if they still are in business but that gets you started.

[@netorodrigs2100]

FD bearings

[@roboman2444]

I think this could be very useful for integrating small fans onto existing PCB designs. Place it right next to your heatsink or hot parts. Just need a good "fan rotor" now.

[@christopherd.winnan8701]

@roboman2444 6 hours ago - There are already multiple KZbin channnels focussed on PC fan design contests. How long before we see a similar motorcell fan competition?

[@DanN-x9v]

not sure why we'd use that obsolete crap considering we already have solid state chips that blow air.

[@zach4505]

Amazing work, Thanks for showing some of the R&D details. It showcases the rigor of creating a good product.

[@everythingdigital1]

As another person who attempted spinning things for a long ass time. My suggestion instead of a bearing with multiple balls with points of failure like dust and just wear use a needle and a jewl like in a mechanical watch or a screw for the pivot on the disc. The disc pivot can be a screw just make sure its a similar metal to the needle so galvanic reactions don't occur with it balanced right and up dust cant fall into it plus the only wear would be the needle it would take forever though and even if it wore out it would keep going and just be rounded off. Plus this approach still would keep your idea of a pcb motor intact all you would have to solder into place is a needle. "I know there would be like no torque nor can it be used like a wheel but if you just wanna spin something kinda fast and upright its a old school method but it works." Don't mean to talk about my build but plan to have a video on the thing I described soon too if my comment is a bit confusing to read.

[@machinemaker2248]

The jewel bearings is a great idea.

[@fagear]

11:55 not really "new". I have a cassette player from 2001 which motor has its coils printed onto PCB. It was done in mass production ~20 years ago.

[@marekrawluk]

IRB60 and IRB6 - one of first industrial robots, made by Swedish ASEA (ABB) - they used solid magnets in rotors and flat coils in stators, the same construction - 1972! Technics RS-B100 deck 1984 - the same idea. Nihil novi sub sole ...

[@graxxor]

This is peak KZbin! Showing young inventors and engineers creating the future right in front of our eyes. I’m currently working on ESP32 based platforms so will look into purchasing a few of your motors to have a play with!

[@ghosttheoremproductions5469]

Move from knurled to toothed so you can have gear reduction. There's enough diameter change available to get a considerable torque multiplication. The added mass and frictional losses will hurt performance of course but there's always tradeoffs. Alternatively, 4 motors could be placed centrally with a reduction belt drive to radially placed rotors. Though, you might find it difficult to minimize PCB flex due to the required belt tension.

[@Crushonius]

to get a torque increase you would need an much bigger second wheel / gear which would make this entire thing pointless as the whole appeal is the very small package size to get a 5x increase in torque you would need 5 times more teeth on the secondary gear and that would be very big indeed

[@SianaGearz]

@@Crushonius What if it was a planetary and the rotor was the sun gear.

[@Crushonius]

@@SianaGearz yes that should be possible provided one can make all the parts for a reasonable price with reasonable accuracy it would still cost 3-4 more to make unless there is an off the shelf planetary that could be adapted to this application .

[@lelsewherelelsewhere9435]

Even better, harmonic drive. This has insane gear ratio, and is super simple.

[@jhopkins1515]

Generally an amazing step forward in micro mechanical technology. You did an amazing job documenting the journey and giving us an excellent idea were we can take this. Thank you for all this hard work and I look forward to improvement and any of your next projects.

[@ChainsawFPV]

That light motor would be great with a light propeller, on a paper airplane. Use a small CAP for power, charge with USB. Kids would have a blast in class with those. Would be a good STEM experience for kids.

[@GelloMello-j9z]

Not the right dimensions for a paper plane.

[@ker6349]

​​@@GelloMello-j9zwell, pack it up then, not like there are any engineers around here that can change form factor of a motor

[@martinbabl1635]

Have you thought of using it to drive a flywheel for Cube Sats.

[@sgtbrown4273]

good idea.

[@spencereaston8292]

I remember back in 2000 a buddy designed a highly controllable micron scale oscillator . He was seriously thinking about a vibrating toothbrush as his first product when someone mentioned that fiber optic wires were really hard to align. That idea alone took the project in a completely different direction.

[@paulroberto2286]

Could also work as a control moment gyro. Even if the torque is low, over time it'll be able to spin up a decent mass to high speeds. Then you could use a higher power servo to rotate the entire PCB

[@VEC7ORlt]

Why do you even need flywheels for - just use a magnetorquer.

[@paulroberto2286]

@VEC7ORlt I'd argue having both would be useful. You could use the reaction wheels or CMGs for quick large movements, and use the magnetorquer to desaturate.

[@lelsewherelelsewhere9435]

Connect a small harmonic gear drive to it to increase the torque! It is super simple, like 3 pieces, its inline with the axis, and has a crazy high gear ratio!

[@LakeTile_Productions]

I actually came across with PCB motors when I bought supersmall 10x10mm fans, they use exact same motor design

[@Guywithahat123]

Hope to see the drone soon!

[@NorT1nxD]

Probably, we'll never see a flying drone with pcb motors because they have low energy conversion efficiency due to lack of a metal core directing magnetic fields from windings

[@KimForsberg]

Love to see this done. Amazing work!

[@hansroemerszoonvanderbrikk7626]

it's incredible how much engineer could involve just an haptic little motor and how much strive you have to overcome to setup little details like bearings and tolerances, good job!

[@EarthlingNews]

Thank you for helping humanity inch forward on our technological journey, you are doing important work my friend!

[@russellzauner]

(not an affiliate) Igus has triibological materials that are long wear life and self lubricating - and they also make a lot of them in 3D printer filament as well as bar/sheet stock, tapes, and powders for sintering applications. They make a big point of replacing traditional bearings in heavy industrial applications, so they'll probably work great in smaller applications. I've used them in interesting ways to make components that really simplify and strengthen designs/projects/automation fixturing in the lab at work and they've super attentive sales/field engineers who enjoy working on interesting projects.

[@Gersberms]

That sound at the end, of the motors spinning down, that's super cool!

[@garry5280]

PCB motors have been in existence for decades. Floppy disk drives used them, video cassette recorders used them on the head drums, CD players among other things. They're not as new as you suggest. Nevertheless you're doing some interesting stuff. Good luck with your projects.

[@roribune8162]

+/- 0.05 is crazy for a press for like that on a bearing with radial clearances in the microns. There is no reason you can't get +/-0.01 on a 5mm bore economically. I also don't see why your other dimensions are so tightly toleranced, that's potentially adding unnecessary cost.

[@LanceThumping]

That's a good point, boring the center is easier than getting tight tolerances on the outsides but there is no real need for the outside to be that tight since it's just getting a 3D print slapped over it anyways.

[@macmaccourt]

0:32 Bless you both! Romance is not dead!

[@Lardzor]

I'm sure you've already thought about this, but what about mulit-layer PCBs so the coils can be stacked one on top of another for more windings and a stronger magnetic field.

[@4wdguydrivesby]

It would be a balancing act as stonger field results in more torque but reduces top speed by increasing back EMF. It will also increase resistive losses, and inductance, not sure about the ratios and where the sweet spot would be. Actually balancing act is not quite the right word, it's an act of matching the motor characteristics to your load case. Not many things need a 36 kRPM motor, so trading some top end for more torque would make sense for a lot of use cases.

[@Samiby]

I'd also query whether the coils are done on both sides with an additional magnet on the other side thats attached to chassis to see if double torque can be produced?

[@pineapple_productions]

potential use cases. fly wheels, mini drone motors, reaction wheel

[@thefirstsalty3055]

i love projects like this because its very obvious all the things this can change

[@markTheWoodlands]

Excellent work, great presentation/explanation. Please wear safety glasses. :)

[@CarlBugeja]

glad you enjoyed it - thank you!

[@platinum_mad4380]

If you're chasing tighter tolerances i would not measure them with the back of a caliper like that at 8:16 there is a flat side there that will interfere with getting a correct dimension. IMO you should consider investing in "small hole gauges" and using a micrometer as the gauges are rounded to get the very tangent of the hole. Best of luck in this project.

[@Jannie303]

That's epic man! Congratulations! I've been following your work on pcb actuators since you started, so wonderful to see what you've acheived

[@5haun1]

Incredible work! I would love to see a tiny self balancing demo. Seem like they would make good gyroscopes

[@han_pritcher]

It's an interesting idea. The Panasonic Twin Rotor Motor was a very slim motor, only a few millimetres in thickness, in compact cassette players made by Panasonic in the 90s, that had very similar looking PCB-based coils on them. While there isn't much information on them anymore, they appeared to operate in a similar way to yours.

[@danbrit9848]

thats not expensive atall ...im a starving artist and i could even get some at that price...also the inbeded driver is a godsend to me ...i cant code so making it as simple as possible is so nice

[@I_am_a_human_not_a_commodity]

This is really cool. Thank you for your hard work and time spent on making such a neat PCB motor and sharing the process with us! :D

[@BRUXXUS]

This whole series of videos has. Even incredible! The creativity, methodology, engineering, excitement... it's all so pleasing to me. So many cool potential applications. The idea of some fairly strong haptic feedback integrated right into a PCB is really interesting!

[@qualifiednot]

Ive seen youtubers sell cad files for more than this motor, AND the stator is open source??????? Gold standard! If I can think of something cool to build with it I'll have to make a video.

[@manyirons]

Dental tools have amazing bearings. 80k rpm is common. Have you looked into them?

[@martinleska4292]

Dental tools has far more than 80k rpm. Newest models can beat 500k! and dental drills are powered by air turbine.

[@sgtbrown4273]

Awesome work! These motors would be good for low profile gyroscopic drone controls or a micro flywheel battery. Or even make them water proof and use them in micro submersible ROVs, with no brushes and ease of water proofing they would be ideal.

[@jaredf6205]

I love seeing KZbinrs actually advance our technology.

[@Herbit-k4j]

It's crazy how tiny changes can make the difference between useless and useful

[@GeoffreySwales]

I notice in your application you use a conventional fan. You should look at centrifugal fans as their airflow is the square of their rotational speed. This is why Dyson uses miniature brushless motors to achieve VERY high airflow.

[@nabil2644]

I recently jumped to studying PCB design. I thought making a circuit more compact was the only way to utilize PCB. this video really opened my eyes to what PCB can do

[@wptaylor]

A few questions, if you have the time: - What does the back-EMF look like? Trapezoidal or sinusoidal? - It looks like you made early design decisions based on no-load RPM. Have you gone back and tried e.g. the 8-pole design with a load and measured dynamic response? - Have you considered sensorless FOC? If so, what made you choose trapezoidal? BOM cost?

[@christophersmith108]

Great work! It must have been very frustrating at times

[@CarlBugeja]

It was but I am proud with the end results 🙂

[@animehair05silently88]

for the aluminum rotors, if you have the ability to put the finish you need back on the surface (anodizing it or whatever), you could intentionally order rotors with a smaller inner diameter than you want and then just finish it up to a really tight tolerance yourself, and then you could have more flexibility in what manufacturers you can use

[@tetraquark2402]

Have you considered using the pcb motor with a built in cycloid gear to get more torque?

[@CarlBugeja]

i have but still not sure if its feasible

[@ReneSchickbauer]

Motors like this could be very useful in space applications, especially when weight constraint are one of the biggest problems. Think "reaction wheels in cubesats" or one time applications like extending booms and other deployment tasks after launch. With cheap motors like this that can be directly integrated into existing PCB designs (and similar inventions by other garden shed inventors), this will allow hobby groups and small universities to afford building more complex spacecraft within cubesat specs.

[@robofurr]

this would be SUPER useful for cubesat reaction wheels

[@galactica1980]

Pastizzi powa!! Well done.

[@Amayii]

How about Gyroscopes for low gravity? Also have you considered any gearing or combining/stacking of motors through a common shaft?

[@SpencerPaire]

This stuff is awesome! And I really, really advise looking into licensing this technology for commercial use. That is to say, in addition to parenting what you can, get a senior engineer from industry that can sell licenses of this tech to existing companies. Fans, robots, industrial equipment, HMI, and a hundred other companies would benefit from being able to buy permission to use what you've spent so much time and money learning how to do. Best of luck!

[@bas.botberg8238]

Looks very promising Carl. Interesting to apply in one of my prototype projects. Just ordered 2 pieces. Looking forward to get practical experience with them.

[@KangJangkrik]

This man single-handedly is making a PCB motor manufacturing company

[@InItForTheLoot]

These motors seem like a great option for a micro gyroscope, or for reaction wheels.

[@FFND16N]

Fantastic work and congratulations on your wedding! Now I'm eager to mate a couple of your motors onto a micro'Bot like you demonstrated, but with some feathers/tassels attached and possibly a chirping/tweeting piezo-speaker. My cat will go nuts over this! Hell, go ahead and market some of these as cat toys...you'd make a killing in no time.

[@ivanstrauss5824]

Get yourself some safety glasses with all this spinning things :) Crazy work, keep it up !

[@segment932]

I love this project. I think its fun and engaging. Looking forward to a 35mm drone in the future!

[@kempaswe4022]

At my last job, the predecessor had mounted ordinary ball bearings in the cnc tools. They said that the ball bearings break all the time, checked them and ordered high-speed bearings, they lasted for a few years instead of a few weeks. The right bearing with the right tolerance is important. He had also tried to put shims so that the bearings would fit where the old one had locked and spun, I don't need to tell you that I placed those tools in the scrap container. He had only looked at the price of bearings and taken the cheapest, but his poor knowledge cost the company a lot as the holders cost about 1800usd each. 6 holders were completely worn out due to locked bearings that spun on the holders. The right material for the right applications is important for durability and safety.

[@TannerCh]

This is incredible! I hope that your sales go well, and that we see some really cool applications for this!

[@EDU4519Computing1]

Simply fascinating stuff to just listen to you describe how you developed this tiny motor.

[@Xaymar]

I had hoped this could make fans thinner, so I'm looking forward to seeing future progress.

[@Nobe_Oddy]

BRO>>>> - 2 PCBs!!!! ONE on EACH SIDE!!!!!! - EVERYTHING DOUBLES!!!!! - MORE TORQUE, MORE SPEED!!! more control!

[@Drenov]

Or adding additional PCB layers and creating a stack of coils?

[@mylittleparody2277]

Very nice to see your advencement! Thanks for sharing

[@BassistInATutu]

Great work. Consider putting a stator on either side of the rota to double the torque. It would limit it's application but would still be useful in many areas.

[@7th_dwarf542]

quite the effort. thank you for the concise summary of this journey

[@jkuebler89]

I love seeing updates on your projects. Always fascinating. Great work!

[@SLAYERSARCH]

been following your work on low profile motors closely, thanks for sharing :)

[@grimhizzer]

Great job. I wish i had an application for this, so i will have to think about it for a while. Can't wait to see what you come up with next.

[@AK-vx4dy]

High respect for passion and sustainability in pursuit of perfect result 💪

[@AJB2K3]

These are looking cool, its nice seeing the R&D that goes into it.

[@alistairmurray626]

so much information per second! information overload! I definitely learnt something, just not sure what it was yet, my subconscious will tell me int he morning, i can't wait! Thanks!

[@bonamin]

I'm absolutely sure, I don't need anything like this. But I will buy one, because: a) It's really, really cool. b) To support your hard work. kudos bro.

[@billyjoe3309]

A very small version of this for haptic feedback seems like a great idea!

[@Epickalen]

I do enjoy seeing firsthand why certain items are expensive (the bearing) and how the quality actually does matter, even in "hobbyist" applications (aka I see it on KZbin instead of never hearing about it and it just goes into some military machine)

[@OuyaWoelders-hi9bn]

still doesn't beat my record. i have a motor running at about 5500 rpm for almost 10 years now, it rotated about 26 billion times

[@artursmihelsons415]

Excellent video as always! Nice to see progress with PCB motors. 👍Great job!

[@GeekDetour]

What a journey Carl! 🤯

[@simoncrabb]

HuGE amounts of work going on there, congrats on getting so far

[@WileHeCoyote]

AMAZING video guys!! Integrated driver is awesome! knurling was a brilliant solution! LIKED AND SUBSCRIBED!

[@enescankayhan8999]

It made me feel weird and kinda proud of seeing a research paper written by people from my country. Cheers to Middle East Technical University, Furkan Tokgöz, Gökhan Çakal and Ozan Keysan 🍻🍻

[@jupiterbjy]

keep on going! really love this project. Imagine a single pcb drone! must be able to go real flat as unlike radial flux motors which are long. well if arm breaks wont be an easy fix tho but love it

[@Franco__-]

OMG, I just watched a video here on KZbin about using analog signals to help boost clock speeds in digital applications as nano-manufacturing costs keep rising. Having a billion resolutions per second must have some exciting applications in this research. Small robots for espionage and exploration might actually become a reality!

[@Vaeloron]

Would be cool to see someone build a drone out of a single PCB with this style of motor.

[@AlexKaratzky]

A PCB drone would be so cool, super excited to see if you get one to work!

[@Baltojikale]

uuu dude take care of yourself !!! dont let age get to you. watching your videos for long time !!!

[@user-interestingguy]

crazy project and the results are even better i dont think the motor is expensive its cheap well done

[@johnniewalker3134]

Coolest videos ive seen in like a couple of weeks. Very interested to see where you go with this.

[@joshuagolembiewski5383]

Satisfying power-down sequence around 11 mins haha

[@nickwitha_k]

Your PCB motors remind me a lot of the approach that Fishman uses for their Fluence pickups (electric guitar pickups are pretty much just motors). They use stacks of 48 PCB coils, that I'm pretty sure are connected but vias or similar, wrapped around a ferromagnetic core.

[@Jbrimbelibap]

Bearings have a limited amount of turns in them, in maintenance we calculate how long they will life given their load, rpm and pre-load from the factory. Manufacturers have guides for this

[@The_SY-RSA]

These numbers makes my head spin, pun intended. If there was a revolving door at an airport to let every single person that lives on earth through at 30.000 RPM. It would take 5 months for the next flight.

[@deaneatsgreens]

You really just nonchalantly created the coolest little wrist disk launcher and pretended it wasn't the coolest toy every kid would want this christmas?

[@CodSlap]

Great work! I wish your future projects continued success! 😊

[@DustyGamma]

Internal thoughts: "I want it!" "What would I even use it for?" "I don't know, I want it!"

[@TechwithStefan]

super nice project and motor! i am glad how much you did evolved in the 3-4 years i've been watching you on KZbin :) PS: "happy marriage" we call it in Romania "Casa de piatra" and all good wishes!

[@oiooiioioiooioii5400]

I appreciate this very much. Thank you for sharing!