Falco e-Motors

[hcrider]

Liveforphysics: I'd like to back up to your comments regarding patented designs. I understand your desire for openness and the free exchange of ideas. It does remind me, though, of a now deceased man named Larry Burkett who gave financial seminars and was very free and open with the supporting materials he developed. In fact, he did not copyright the materials because he wanted to be helpful to as many as he could. What happened as a result was that another guy took Burkett's material, claimed it as his own, and had it copyrighted. Burkett, then could not use the his own materials.

 

[liveforphysics]

Liveforphysics: I'd like to back up to your comments regarding patented designs. I understand your desire for openness and the free exchange of ideas. It does remind me, though, of a now deceased man named Larry Burkett who gave financial seminars and was very free and open with the supporting materials he developed. In fact, he did not copyright the materials because he wanted to be helpful to as many as he could. What happened as a result was that another guy took Burkett's material, claimed it as his own, and had it copyrighted. Burkett, then could not use the his own materials.

What you're describing sounds like another excellent reason for people to choose to stop participating in this harm-causing system.

Remember, it's based on the fantasy that knowledge/idea is something that can be property, which is absolutely and concretely not a truth. For this reason, the moment a system comes under stress, enforcement for all the fantasy BS immediately vaporizes into the nothingness of people simply realizing it never was realer to begin with than some crooked lawyer was able to convince someone to believe.

The entire patent system is group of non-contributing parasites that ride on the backs of people making things, and who's only mechanism of action is to inflict harms and non-constructive, non-helpful barriers to development and the free exchange of knowledge and ideas.

Your example is a perfect demonstration.

 

[the_dude]

ouch I see Falco raised prices on the off road console by $100 to $250.

So you have to pay $200 to get an unlocked "open source" system ($50 speed limited console vs $250 off road).

Is there any reason for such a price discrepancy for an off road console other than most people probably prefer it?

 

[Miles]

And of course, you have noted the Zero resistance pedaling. That is quite a big deal in itself.

It's a great deal of BS.

 

[liveforphysics]

And of course, you have noted the Zero resistance pedaling. That is quite a big deal in itself.

It's a great deal of BS.

Of course it's BS. As well as being unrelated to cogging torque, which it was you personally who was kind enough to take the time to bestow the proof to me that cogging is not a loss back when I was more ignorant than my current state of still being ignorant.


It may have low core losses though, completely unrelated to cogging or the number of phases and all the other BS.

 

[miro13car]

the dude,
it was the case with Tidal Force and Eplus systems/ebikes /designed by the same USA company which designed FALCO/
that manufacturer charged hundreds for unrestricted models, it is completely normal to me if I consider development costs of bicycle electric drive.

Anyway I want to test 750W and 500W FALCO here which will require some travel.
I am excited.
For sure FALCO IS one of the best DD hub drives money can buy , no kidding.
I agree about some exaggeration in FALCO literature but paper on 5-phase design is excellent read.
And how about warranty on FALCO?
FIVE YEARS
how often you can get such warranty from electric motor manufacturer? zero times.

 

[liveforphysics]

Micro13car

I agree with you on all of what you said.

I think it's a very cool product.

All marketing BS needs to be corrected when it's not factual/possible, or it leads to mis-education, which isn't why we give our time to making ES awesome.

 

[FalcoeMotors]

So here is the story....

Why zero resistance pedaling is important?

It was 2008. We had developed the E-plus system. It was a natural evolution of Tidalforce. So in the Spring, there was a call from a famous Washington DC PBS anchor. He wanted to buy three E+ systems. One for himself, one for his wife and one for his son. They really wanted to be car free.

Now, cogging is never a big deal. Right? However, it did require some power to pedal the TidalForce and E+. It was not like pedaling the regular bike. Alright, so far so good. Now the man comes in and he rides the bike and absolutely loves it. Son rides it and loves it. The woman gets on it. Her first instinct was to pedal the bike without any power. She could not do it. She had to get off. She could not even balance it. She absolutely hated it. She was a petite woman and it was a big deal that she had the ability to pedal. That was a big eye opener. The family walked away without buying a single bike.

That really led to the 5-phase and why having no cogging is so important.

It is vital.

Also, When you run of battery, You could not pedal the Tidalforce or E+. It was a killer on your knees.

With Falco, you truly have ZERO resistance.

It is vital to have that ZERO resistance pedaling.

 

[liveforphysics]

That really led to the 5-phase and why having no cogging is so important.

It is vital.

Also, When you run of battery, You could not pedal the Tidalforce or E+. It was a killer on your knees.

With Falco, you truly have ZERO resistance.

It is vital to have that ZERO resistance pedaling.

I totally agree that core-loss on a motor is no fun, and nobody wants to waste pedaling effort into heating their motor rather than pushing them forward.

It seems we need to start from zero and build a foundation of basic motor working for you my friend before you will see why the things you'e typing to us sound so silly to someone who understands the losses in a motor.

Let's start with the basics. Correct me if I'm wrong on any of these assumptions:

1. Your motor a magnet move passed a stator tooth when you pedal.
2. Your motor uses iron in it's stator.

If 1 and 2 are true (and correct me if I'm wrong on either of them), then your motor has losses when you pedal, no matter if you have 3p, 5p, or 50p, and irregardless of how balanced the magnet/tooth arrangement happens to be laid out.

Therefore, when you say something like,

With Falco, you truly have ZERO resistance.

It is vital to have that ZERO resistance pedaling.

It sounds preposterously absurd to anyone who has a basic level of motor function understanding. If you have anyone at Falco (or Tidalforce or whomever) who has at least a basic motor-function understanding, I highly recommend you promptly seek training to a level of grasping at least a bare minimum motor loss component understanding.

I think your product is good. The only thing about the product that doesn't look good is having someone market with obvious and blatantly impossible bullshit.

 

[neptronix]

Post up a video of it freewheeling after hitting maximum RPM, demonstrating how long the wheel spins afterwards to demonstrate this zero cogging claim.

I will post a video of my geared MAC motor freewheeling from 358rpm afterwards, and we can compare.

 

[FalcoeMotors]

If 1 and 2 are true (and correct me if I'm wrong on either of them), then your motor has losses when you pedal, no matter if you have 3p, 5p, or 50p, and irregardless of how balanced the magnet/tooth arrangement happens to be laid out.

Therefore, when you say something like,

With Falco, you truly have ZERO resistance.

It is vital to have that ZERO resistance pedaling.

It sounds preposterously absurd to anyone who has a basic level of motor function understanding. If you have anyone at Falco (or Tidalforce or whomever) who has at least a basic motor-function understanding, I highly recommend you promptly seek training to a level of grasping at least a bare minimum motor loss component understanding.

I think your product is good. The only thing about the product that doesn't look good is having someone market with obvious and blatantly impossible bullshit.

I would request you to refrain from using language which is inappropriate and insulting. You do not understand the claims that is fine. You do not understand the theory that is fine. You undermine the integrity of the people that is not fine and we will not respond to such queries.

Here are some answers for you: ( please research before answering further)

What is cogging

Cogging is the magnet and stator interaction at rest ( at zero speed). It has nothing to do with core losses. It manifests itself during pedaling when motor is not activated. Core losses are fairly negligible in direct drive eBike motors as electrical speed is fairly low.

 

[FalcoeMotors]

Post up a video of it freewheeling after hitting maximum RPM, demonstrating how long the wheel spins afterwards to demonstrate this zero cogging claim.

I will post a video of my geared MAC motor freewheeling from 358rpm afterwards, and we can compare.

Three comments I would like to make

1. The video idea is a good idea.
2. Cogging and zero resistance pedaling are more relevant at start of pedaling for end users.
3. Geared motors have no future including Bosch drive unless the plastic gear technology improves. With plastic gears, motor failure is guaranteed and the advantages of a geared motors are limited. Direct drive motors are the future. The motor failure is a serious problem for geared drives.

 

[Punx0r]

This ought to be entertaining

 

[Miles]

2. Cogging and zero resistance pedaling are more relevant at start of pedaling for end users

If all you are saying is that minimal cogging makes it easier to get started when pedaling without assistance, I don't think anyone would disagree with you. Apparently it's not, though, as you insist on there being "zero resistance"

 

[FalcoeMotors]

Project 1 is absolutely beautiful.

Regarding ZERO resistance pedaling, please see this chart below:

It is a comparison with a 3-phase BionX motor. With BionX, you still have significant difficulty in pedaling. With Falco, the cogging torque frequency is much higher and the cogging torque drops 75%. That is pretty close to ZERO for all government purposes.

 

[neptronix]

1. The video idea is a good idea.
2. Cogging and zero resistance pedaling are more relevant at start of pedaling for end users.
3. Geared motors have no future including Bosch drive unless the plastic gear technology improves. With plastic gears, motor failure is guaranteed and the advantages of a geared motors are limited. Direct drive motors are the future. The motor failure is a serious problem for geared drives.

1. Okay, let's get a video. ( i don't know how to compare the graph you posted to other motors, since i don't have that data.
2. Well, if you have no battery, i think it matters all the time..
3. I can't disagree with that strongly enough; plastic can be incredibly strong. With cheap replaceable gears, it's no problem to swap them out every few years. It means that you have a lighter and smaller motor than a DD... that's a big advantage.

Let's see your video. Spin a motor up, laced to a wheel with tire to 350rpm and let's watch it coast down to 0rpm. I'll post up my video as soon as i see it.

 

[liveforphysics]

Your picture is exceedingly good evidence towards why cogging torque has no effect on the power to pedal a bike. The initial force to achieve wheel motion, yes, the power while riding, no effect.

Once again, if your motor requires low effort to pedal, that's awesome, it's part of why I like it, because it means low-core losses. The phase arrangement, and the torque-ripple quantity and balance are unrelated to pedaling effort of the bike in motion. Look at your own graph to show you why. Notice it's exactly balanced negative torque with positive torque. The area under the curve of a revolution of that wheel will always sum zero with respect to torque, equal portions helping as hindering balance to sum no effect on your pedaling in motion.

 

[Samd]

Kinda looks like a third of the Bionx resistance.

Amirite?

 

[liveforphysics]

Kinda looks like a third of the Bionx resistance.

Amirite?

Yes, perhaps even a quarter the area. This torque ripple is 100% unrelated to the pedaling effort to ride the bike once it's in motion.

You notice the inherently equal amount of that torque ripple is in the direction to be helping you as hinder you while pedaling.

The torque ripple is not a factor in the power needed for that bike to be in motion propelled by pedaling.

It effects only the force required to initiate wheel motion. From that moment, the mass and inertial damping of the rider/bike/wheel assembly is more than adquate, virtually no energy is lost or consumed from the PM induced torque ripple.

What makes a hubmotor difficult to pedal is the core losses.

I recall pedaling one of JohninCR's monster hubmotor bikes back after running it out of pack on the highway after I got stung in the nostril by a bee I partially aspirated moments before. It may have been > 100W of core loss at ~10mph pedaling unpowered on a highway with no shoulder, pouring sweat to make slow progress. Fortunately we figured out a way to tow each other (he had pack left).

Aside from being a awesome time, it was a profound moment in attempting to make pedaling when out of battery easier. I played with freewheels in various places on my drivetrain to isolate pedaling efforts. It works but it's complex, and involves added stages of power transfer (through gears/chains/etc), so it can not be as efficient or reliable as an optimally designed direct drive solution.

That's why I like direct hubs, despite the pedaling effort when unpowered. However, that effort to propell the bike down the road has no significant relationship with cogging torque ripple as explained a few times above already, and shown very clearly in there own graphic how it's balanced in helping your pedaly equally with hindering your pedaling.

 

[speedmd]

The chart shows smaller height bumps by approx. a third, but 3 times as many in the same amount or e rotation. Correct?

I am not sold on the positive and negative forces equaling out 100%. Is it truly only core losses we are dealing with. Certainly the most significant, but not convinced they are the only ones.

The same argument can be made for a bumpy road. As you traverse it and a bump energy from pedals / momentum lifts you up, gravity will give it back on the far side. Simplistic example, but the reality is that the bumpy roads shakes of a ton of speed in real life, for a host of reasons certainly. Many similar reasons to the perceived effect caused by pedaling a dead dd motor possibly. Maybe that the load is tight on one side only and that the far side of cogging/feed back power goes mainly into taking out slack in the system or flexing components, there by dissipating most of the energy in it.

 

[liveforphysics]

If cogging losses in a revolution didn't sum zero, aside from being a violation of the conservation of mass and energy, the wheel would have to be storing the difference in energy somehow...

Think of the torque ripple like a circular roller coaster track. You can go up and down (attracting and repelling as it rotates), but if you're gonna end up looping back around to the same spot, you had a net zero change in energy.

 

[speedmd]

Think of the torque ripple like a circular roller coaster track. You can go up and down (attracting and repelling as it rotates), but if you're gonna end up looping back around to the same spot, you had a net zero change in energy.

Exactly! If it did do just that you would have a perpetual motion machine. You never get all the way up the the starting point. Lots of losses along the way.

 

[liveforphysics]

Think of the torque ripple like a circular roller coaster track. You can go up and down (attracting and repelling as it rotates), but if you're gonna end up looping back around to the same spot, you had a net zero change in energy.

Exactly! If it did do just that you would have a perpetual motion machine. You never get all the way up the the starting point. Lots of losses along the way.

Lots of losses along the way for a roller coaster of course, friction on the wheels and aero-drag etc.

For the motor cogging around, there are no loss components that aren't already going to be identical regardless of cogging torque ripple magnitude.

If the wheel moves a magnet passed iron, you have your core loss. Period. The moment a magnet moves passed the iron, it orients the material to align along the flux paths, and this incurs iron hysteresis losses (which are often the dominate loss component at the low speeds a human would be pedaling a motor).

If you position the magnets/teeth to make the biggest torque ripple you can, or lay them out to have zero torque ripple, your core losses will not be effected, and the power the human needs to input to move the bike will remain unchanged (because all the cogging related torque ripple was never a loss-source to begin with).




I do not doubt the motor is easy to pedal. I am a huge fan of easy to pedal motors. If a motor requires reduced power losses to pedal, it means it has reduced core losses. It is unrelated to it's cogging torque ripple (which always sums zero) or however many phases someone wants to wind it to have etc.

 

[liveforphysics]

For the dozen or so members who have had the chance to ride my current deathbike, you will find it also has virtually zero cogging. I would have to check it's data, but I think it's even lower than the torque ripple shown on the graphs for either of these hubmotors. This is something a motor designer can choose to do for any PMAC motor if they choose, and it certainly is unrelated to the number of phases or whatever nonsense someone may try to pitch to you.

Unfortunately for deathbike, cogging has zero effect on the energy needed to propel the bike by pedaling (other than making it easier to get initial wheel rotation), so deathbike is still a pig to pedal at more than walking speed due to the core losses that ever motor using iron and magnets incurs.

 

[liveforphysics]

I don't want to sound like having 5p drive is only a gimick. Its not.
It let's you share your drive current burden among 10fets in your power stage rather than 6. That's pretty huge for keeping an in-motor controller reliable. (Due to heat path limitations of in-motor control)

In theory it could be designed to have an almost immeasurably small improvement in drive torque ripple and efficiency.

In practice, we know with 3-phase drive its possible to have >98% efficiency, and of that 2% inefficiency left to improve upon, almost none of it can be reduced by going to 5p, or however many phases one may wish to use, but some tiny fraction that would be tricky to even measure could be improved theoretically if they choose to use the 5p topology to maximize winding factor.

The big and real benefit is distribution of the power stage over more components, and that's worth doing it for alone.

I like this motor. I think its killer the competent Tidalforce crew designed it.

However, ES is not the place for BS marketing to go unchecked for any product.

An ES vendors first step should be self-education to at minimum, an understanding of his products (types of core losses and there causes in a motor etc).

Then with your knowledge, you will be empowered to create marketing stuff that is factual, and doesn't require wasting folks kindly donated time to correct things to prevent spreading miseducation to members.

It works out better for everyone IMHO.