datahar said:
Does anyone have any knowledge/experience with wheelchair motors?
A fair bit--look at my early CrazyBike2 thread for it's powertrain (and the old http://electricle.blogspot.com for earlier stuff)
I have a DC Klaxon motor that was coupled to an 8" motor via 2 reductions,
I am guessing you mean 8" *wheel*, rather than *motor*.
the motor with the first part of the reduction certainly looks promising for a mid drive, but I can't find any information on it, the label has either faded other time or was just never stamped, the only information it came with was that it was 24v
.
Most of these motors are brushed, and only 250-300W, and very high RPM wihtout their reductions--too high to use without those reductions for the typical ebike, without overloading hte motors.
Some (often the 4-pole types, with 4 brushes instead of 2) are 500-700W, and typically much larger than the others.
With the reductions they are often just about perfect for driving the pedal-drivetrain, with massive torque available (enough to totally destroy the drivetrain, chain, sprockets and wheel! if you have alignment issues and the chain jams or jumps off the sprocket, wraps around, etc...go look at hte early CB2 stuff for examples).
Often you can drive them with "36V" (40+V fully charged usually) and they'll still work fine, though brush life is reduced, and you can't expect them to survive continuous max power at that voltage (while you might at their original voltage). RPM is also increased, making it even more important to keep the reductions.
In theory it should have a decent amount of torque (I know I've lost a large amount as the second stage reduction was the most dramatic) and be rated to operate for long periods of time.
With the reductions intact, then it may work ok, but without them, probably not. You'll likely end up having to add your own similar reduction in there again, so it is usually easier just to use the one already in there.
As fpr whether they'll work with your project or not, it entirely depends on what you need them to do--what your expected speeds are, load, start/stop amounts, terrain, etc.
Basically you need to know all of that first, then use the various simulators listed in the ES wiki to find out your power needs, and THEN you can figure out if the motors might work.
Or you can do what I did when I started ebike stuff and just try motors until they burn out, and waste a lot of time getting bigger and bigger ones until they finally start surviving what I put them thru. :lol:
If that pic is the dirtbike or motorcycle it looks like, I hope you don't expect to get that sort of performance from this tiny of a motor. You'd probably need a dozen or two of these to run that in the way it's ICE did.
Note that you'll also need a controller, probably brushed, to run these. It's unlikely you'll want to use the powerchair controller, as it's usually got sensors you ahve to defeat, voltage limits of probably about 28-29V max, etc. *could* be used with a fair bit of hacking, but easier to just get or even build your own brushed controller.
