Thud said:
Ceramic ballz are the shiz for a 50k rpm gyroscope.......
After my bench testing the last couple days I am more concered with ultimate iron loss issues. My smaller 80/100-180s just don't like to spin more than 8-10k without starting a nasty spike in amp draw & unloaded heating. (no real data on the heating other than fingers

) I have not even begun to play with my CA120 motor yet. But reading the data sheets & seeing the issues a few others are having....I suspect we have found the limiting factors for "continuouse" ratings on HoBo's.
yes, i agree -heres what i found from testing the std turnigy 80-100-180kv motor skirt bearing at 7000rpm:
standard as delivered: 86w used at 20deg c, after 2 mins the grease heats it up to about 60degc and the loss drops to 45.3w.
clean it out, and run mobil 1 10w-30 engine oil (not too much though) and it drops to 15.4w (agian after 3mins of running to throw off the excess)
clean it out, and run wd-40(and plenty of it), and even with the steel covers on, so it stays there, only 3.4w lost! -straight away, and it now free spins for bloody ages after, almost frictionless.
put simply they put grease in bearings std for high loads and long life without further lubing, but at very high rpm grease becomes concrete, gets hot etc.
i know ceramic balls are better for high rpm, but if your pressed for time then i just dont think the 3.4w lost is the big player here, its the iron loss..
the pdf is a graph of the watts lost from a turnigy 80-100 motor from 0 to 11000 rpm at idle (cos the magnet cycle speed is what matters, 11000 on this curve is like under 7000 rpm for the collosus) and clearly this is not a happy place to be (850w lost on the turnigy and about 2000-3000w lost on the collosus)
i know the turnigy got scalding hot (even the magnets themselves from eddy currents??) within 5 seconds so im keen to see what people find here with the collosus -the bigger 120 black turnigy looks to get ugly a bit early at around 5000+ cos its got 24 magnets?
so these can all still be hugely impressive motors if we work on getting them up and running properly in their happy range.