Hi all,

I've been looking at electric motors for use in small autonomous flying
vehicles (I do research in these at Cornell University) for some time. I
have been using the ratio of maximum rated output power per gram of weight
as a figure of merit for motors. Typical high-end RC electric flight hobby
motors (like the Pelikan AXI motors or Astroflight motors) achieve around 2
Watts/gram. The best high-quality industrial motors I can find (like those
from Maxon or Micro-Mo) achieve about 10 times less (0.2 W/gram)! I have
been trying (to no avail) to find out why there is this discrepancy. I am
an RC hobbyist myself and I have a great respect for what is achieved in
the hobby world, but I do find it hard to believe that the hobby world is
able to achieve motors that outperform the best industrial motors by a
factor of 10 in some regard. I'd like to find out if perhaps there is some
other drawback to the hobby motors or if perhaps they arrive at their
maximum rated power spec differently which would explain part of the factor
of 10.

Thanks!

Sean


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