RCbenchmark dynamometer website
Please comment and send feedback below. A few months ago, I posted here asking if you would be interested in a dynamometer. I received quite a lot of comments. My colleague and I had the idea of a dynamometer for brushless motor after working over one month full time on a custom motor tester for our drone. We thought that there should be a better solution available on the market. Since there wasn’t anything, we have been working full time on that project, and we are ready to release the result of many iterations and prototypes!
Our dynamometer can fully characterize propellers, and brushless inrunners and outrunners up to 40A and 3kg of thrust. The tool measures thrust, torque, voltage, current, RPM, and it has a precision ohmeter to measure the motor's coils resistance. The data is saved to a CSV file manually or continuously. Here are the technical specs:
Voltage (0-35 V)
Current (0-40 A)
Thrust (±3 kg)
Torque (±1.5 Nm)
Rotations per minute (up to 190000 erpm)
Motor winding resistance (0.003 to 240 Ohm)
Accelerometer on PCB
See the datasheet (PDF) for more information.
Our software is open source (link to the gitlab repository), and we are actively developing it. We hope it will be hacked and improved! It has safety cut offs (reduce your chance of burning your motor), a calibration wizard, unit selection, CSV export, and much more. If you are curious, have a look at sample results of tests made with our dynamometer here.
At the time of writing we have 14 units left available at a reduced priced for the beta period. Please join us in this project and send us feedback in the comments below!
Cheers,
Charles and Dominic
Comments
@Mark: We have not experienced that problem even with larger props yet. We are however using relatively balanced props, and the vertical load cell is rated to 5KG (7.5KG before damage). We limit the thrust to 3KG in software, which is quite reasonable for 40 amps motors. The device would not be suitable for gasoline engine or unbalanced loads without modifications. As for the readings, there is a small low pass filter on the board.
Very cool product idea!
Great, thanks for posting. How did you go with the vibration causing the load cell to oscillate unacceptably when using it as part of the structure to support the motor?
Thanks
Mark
@Jason Thanks! It is definitely possible if there is enough interest. For now, you'd need to use your own load cells and an external current sensor.
Very nice! Definetly a market for this!
Any plans to come out with a larger one to handle more thrust? maybe the 10-15 kg of thrust range?
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