liveforphysics
100 TW
I will share my experiences running both the 5kW version and 10kW version, with lots of dyno tuning and real-world racing experience with both.
Pros:
Quite durable for things with short bursts of power, followed by long periods of cooling off. Mechanically the bearing/shaft setup is pretty robust. Never lost a magnet on one, even when they were hot enough to be making all sorts of foul smells. When they become plasma, neither one locked the rotor up, which is a nice safety benefit.
Cons:
They have pretty bad efficiency and make a ton of heat as a result. They saturate pretty quickly when you start pumping serious phase current into them. They have an abysmal thermal path to get the heat out, you can have the windings so hot the varnish is off-gassing, and the heat-sink fins on the case are room temperature, so all the heat sinking fins you see are just dead weight in my experience, because they don't have an adequate connection to the parts that get warm.
Pros:
Quite durable for things with short bursts of power, followed by long periods of cooling off. Mechanically the bearing/shaft setup is pretty robust. Never lost a magnet on one, even when they were hot enough to be making all sorts of foul smells. When they become plasma, neither one locked the rotor up, which is a nice safety benefit.
Cons:
They have pretty bad efficiency and make a ton of heat as a result. They saturate pretty quickly when you start pumping serious phase current into them. They have an abysmal thermal path to get the heat out, you can have the windings so hot the varnish is off-gassing, and the heat-sink fins on the case are room temperature, so all the heat sinking fins you see are just dead weight in my experience, because they don't have an adequate connection to the parts that get warm.