Brushless motors for trains? Feasible?

[GoCanes]

Anyone ever thought of putting a brushless motor in a locomotive? (Ho, N or any gauge)

Much faster, more efficient, and lasts longer than their brushed counterparts.

I wonder if it is feasible?  It is an easy thing to install, but would it be worth it, I wonder?

I got the idea when I repaired a guy's G scale, propane and live steam powered locomotive, which had a reciever in the coal tender, and was controlled by 2.4 radio system.

I also wonder if  it would be compatable with DCC (the brushless system with ESC)?

Anyhoo, one thing is for sure, the locos top speed would be unlimited, for all intents and purposes.

[poliss]

Marklin tried them in 2007. They seem to have been a failure because of poor running under DC.

[richg]

A Coreless motor is very good but there are issues when trying to use them with DCC.

http://www.solarbotics.net/starting/200111_dcmotor/200111_dcmotor2.html

http://www.nscale.net/forums/showthread.php?10736-coreless-motors

http://www.awrr.com/dccintro1.html

All kinds of motor info below if bored.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_motor.

Rich

[richg]

My stepson has a standard 26 inch wheel bike with a 450 watt induction, brush less motor in the front wheel hub for assist on hills. Ebikes are being used by some for bicycle commuting.
The motor technology is evolving. We will see this in model railroad motors but expect the motors to be more expensive until production cost comes down.
With DCC today, the motors have to be designed to handle the pulse power that is delivered by all decoders.

Rich

[Jim Banner]

Coreless motors can work with ultrasonic (silent) decoders but don't try them with lower frequency ones.  And don't try running them without a decoder even if your DCC system can drive dc locomotives.  Coreless motors have very low inductance so the DCC type ac sails right through them, overheating them in very short time.

But keep in mind that coreless motors normally have brushes.  They are not the brushless motors the OP is asking about.  One type of brushless motor spins a permanent magnet armature inside a number of fixed electromagnets, just like a stepping motor.  But unlike stepping motors which require some fairly complex electronics to sequence the electromagnets, they rely on feedback of the armature's position, often by Hall effect devices.

Stepping motors, in my opinion, will be the next big step forward in model locomotive control.  Integrating the multiphase control circuits into a decoder would seem to be pretty straight forward.  As stepping motors respond to the number of pulses fed to them, there would be no need to shuffle back and forth between analogue and digital in the control chain from throttle knob to locomotive wheels.

Jim

[GoCanes]

OK, my research shows:

-The brushed motors in our locos do not wear out often, and when they do, are cheap to replace

-Unless someone wants a 2,000 scale mph train, the brushless is overkill

-brushless systems are expensive (would be about $200 to install a motor and ESC

Chalk it up to another great idea that isn't so great   

[richg]

Brushless motor also require digital control.
The one on my stepson's eBike which fits inside the front wheel hub is 450 watts and powered by  compact 24 volt battery with the required electronics. You cannot do a brushless motor without electronics.
Look at the below link to see what is being used today.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brushless_DC_electric_motor

They are great in small RC helicopters, airplanes, etc.

All the OP had to do is a Google seach for brushless dc motors.

Rich

[GoCanes]

All the OP had to do is a Google seach for brushless dc motors.

Rich

No, that's not what I only had to do.  Had some extremely knowledgeable brushless motor experts tell me exactly how to set an N or HO loco up brushless.  The non feasiblity copnclusion was done after analysis.  Google didn't do doodley squat for me.   

[Doneldon]

Google didn't do doodley squat for me.   

FL Fan-

You're right. It's a well-traveled and unfortunate myth that all knowledge and answers are on the Inet via Google. It makes the Google-shy feel like dummies and it encourages condescension from the Google literati. Frankly, I'm a little disgusted with it (the condescension, not Google.
                                                                                                                                                                    -- D