Shawn Palmer

Hey everyone!

Sorry about the spotty communication here the last few weeks. Clearing up SchuieUSA and then gearing up the Speed Passion USA support office has had me tied up 24/7 for 3 weeks straight, and I just had my first real day off this last weekend

SO....
If you haven't seen the news, interviews and such on the web yet, let me introduce myself. I am now heading up the new King Golden USA Support Office here just outside Tampa FL. King Golden is the parent company to the brands of Speed Passion electronics, Speed Power batteries, East Coast Bodies, and Pro Drive hop-up parts.

If you have immediate support needs, please email me (spam proof version in signature below) or call our toll free line from 9am to 6pm Eastern time: 866-369-0636

I'll be here to answer general questions when I have time, but I can't be here all day everyday, so again - for immediate support, use one of the above methods please.

We will be rolling out the Speed Power direct online buying for USA customers very soon - could be as soon as tomorrow. When we've got all the back-end bugs worked out there, the USA side of Speed Passion will be activated for USA consumer purchasing.

The Speed Passion model is simple - we are factory direct now, which makes for better pricing for you the consumer AND for our dealers. The website price will be the new retail price, and you can then buy it for that price regardless of where you buy from - online direct, online from a USA web shop, or right from your LHS shelf. We are in process of getting USA dealers set up right now, so if you run a shop and want to bring on the line (and trust me you do) - contact me and we can get you going pronto.

I've been doing a lot of back-end web text and marketing work the last week, so I'm not 100% up to speed on "when is X going to be released?" just yet, but I'll be getting into that this week. I'll have an all new Cirtix 8th system in my hot little hands tomorrow for final testing before release. I've been waiting just as long as you guys have to run my 8th buggies again, and I've got my fingers crossed they've finally got it right. We'll know very soon.

Some of you here have been waiting on 8th replacements from Schuie USA. The list of everyone waiting went to Mark in the UK office - your replacement or resolution will come from him directly. If you need UK contact info, please email me and I'll get you sorted.

Between all the brands, we have some AWESOME stuff in the deep skunkworks, and some almost ready to break publicly as my workload settles down in the coming weeks - stay tuned!

I'll use this post as a "break point", and do my best to answer everything AFTER this one as time allows. Thanks for your patience guys - good days are close at hand for Speed Passion in the USA!

reracer

iTrader: (4)

Shawn, just as a suggestion, I'd like to see the US site have better info for the products. The main site has no product info for the 1/8 scale stuff.

Shawn Palmer

reracer:
Already in progress. I just got the login for the SP site today, and I'll be filling in all the product details where there are none, adding to those that need more, or editing/checking the ones that already do.

LOTS to be done across 4 websites

malik

iTrader: (19)

Well I got with Mark from the UK office who is awesome, and he hooked me up with the rest of the stuff to clear my credit. I am a happy camper now, I wish I could have wited to see what they came up with for the v2 but already bought 2 esc's for this summer so I just got a few motors to run with them.

JSR

iTrader: (18)

I'm curious about the 8th Cirtix motors. They're advertised as being for both buggies and truggies, but the last I spoke to someone at Schuie, they said the motors were 36x63, same size as the SA V2, which is pretty small for a truggy. Just wondering if SP USA will continue to market those motors for truggies as I think there may be a lot of overheated/overstressed motors for SP USA to deal with then. I think keeping the target market for the Cirtix motors to buggies would be better.

malik

iTrader: (19)

Just from what I have seen I think the Cirtix are lower on the totem pole then the V2 SA motors, they dont have the solder post wiring thingy's lol. Plus when I asked what the pricing will be on them I was told the same as the SA motors or even a few buks less but who knows. I am curious about them for sure and if they were aailible now I would have got a 9.5 V2 and a 2200 Cirtix but they wont be avail for like 2 more months. I dont dislike the looks of the Cirtix 8th esc but would rather have had the caps internal. All that stuff outside the esc body just isnt something i would like to deal with. I am going to be pizzed if the SA esc is similar to the xerun because I just ordered 1 for a back up and would much rather have had a SP version just for their programming.

By the way I have a 10th scale Ultra Sportsman V2 8.5 motor for $50 shipped if anyone is interested. And a 9.2 v2 SA for $85 shipped. PM me if anyone is interested.

yyhayyim

iTrader: (26)

Can't wait...Shawn Palmer provides great customer service and has huge amount of experience with brushless and lipo and stands by his product. THe new SP 1/8 systems will be superb

malik

iTrader: (19)

The Citix R8 buzz has started, lets see when they are on the street here.

Cain

iTrader: (294)

I would like to see the speed passion site updated to have a section for discontinued products like the orange guys have.

Also, will there be a true Silver Arrow 2, or, is the Cirtix going to be that?

Shawn Palmer

JSR/malik - the 8th Cirtix motors are totally the way to go for Buggy or Truggy. The power handling is much greater than even the new SA II motors - by a whole bunch.

Just keep it to the 2200kv motor, and you'll have all the power, speed and punch you could ever wnt for a buggy or truggy on 4s.

yyhayyim - thanks for the kind words!

malik - got my Cirtix R8 running and it's everything it needs to be. Tyler Vic is a new 8th signer for Speed Passion and he's impressed and happy with the product too. We'll be working together for further refinements and improvements on the 8th product line. I an EXTREMELY happy with the new Cirtix R8 - all the Cirtix stuff is a break from HW and is made in our own factory so the QC issues of the past are exactly that - in the past.

Cain - yes, there potentially will be a SA II ESC - that will be the corrected (finally) HW unit if they ever get it right. Still not looking good...

Expanded product info is coming over the next week or so for the SP site. I've been doing it for the East Coast, Pro Drive, and Speed Power sites the last few weeks because they are "going live" first, Plus a lot of back-end work on the main King Golden distribution site. Sorry the SP site is last, but that's where the priorities had to be.

Tyler and I will be giving the final thumbs up on the Cirtix ESCs and motors extremely soon - watch for them to start showing up for sale fairly quickly.

Gents - it's been a long road to this point, and I'm so happy we're back in the 8th game with a stable ESC and kick-@$$ motor. My sincere thanks to those of you who have stuck it out so far in faith that SP will deliver. You are going to love the smoothness, cool running, power and control of the Cirtix ESC and motors - and you don't know how good it makes me feel that I can finally say that after first hand testing and running of what's coming very soon.

Cain

iTrader: (294)

with the new setup for Speed Passion, will there be a warranty period change to match the current leader, Castle Creations? (1 year).

reracer

iTrader: (4)

I would like to see more of a selection in the Cirtix 8th scale motors. Maybe at least a 1900kv, since he new ESC can only handle 4S. And what is slotless anyway? Does that just mean that the can is sealed?

Shawn Palmer

Actually, Adam and I had exceeded that at Schuie USA for SP products for quite some time.

But as far as "official" policy goes - yes, all electronics (speedos, boxes, analysis) will be covered for a year against mfr defects.

And in all fairness, and since you mentioned them - I managed and helped develop the warranty policies/support staff at Castle for many years - that same philosophy has never left me. Time periods on a piece of paper or posted on a website are meaningless to me. I or the company I represent will do the right thing for the customer regardless of 7 days, 6 months, 13 months or whenever. Customer service should never have a "time limit". You bought the product right? Why should it matter if you spent your hard earned cash 3 minutes or 3 years ago? It's still the same investment of trust in a product, a company, and the people behind it.

<off soapbox - sorry for the rant!>

snellemin

iTrader: (16)

It's they way the motor coils are wound inside the motor.

2 pole slotted motor


2 pole slotless motor

Shawn Palmer

All brushless motors are not the same animal. What I call "the ROAR build" typical racing brushless motors we're all familiar with are a slotted style motor. When you take the backplate off of one, you can see that the wire is wound around three "teeth" that point toward the rotor in the center of the motor. These are the "slots" built into the steel laminations of a slotted style motor, and thus the name. If you can imagine an E clip that is a complete circle, with the little ears on the inside of it extending further toward the middle, that is the cross section of the laminations or "back iron" within the motor.

When you look at a slotless style motor with the backplate removed, moving out from the center you see the rotor, the wires, and if you look closely between the wires and the inside of the motor can, you see just a circle of steel laminations. There are no extensions of them pointing toward the rotor for the wire to wrap around. they are essentially washers with the inside diameter just barely smaller than the outside diameter. We'll get to the advantages of this method a little further down.

As most everyone knows, racing and power always seems to center around motor heat. If you're geared too fast, the motor gets hot and can be damaged or destroyed.

So what exactly causes a motor to get hot?
In electronics, amps = heat. The overly simplified version is this: When a motor draws X amps, it gets warm. When it draws X times 2 amps, it gets hot. When it draws X times 3 amps it heats to the point of destruction very soon.

So what's causing all those amps (heat)?
One of the most basic attributes of any motor (brushed or brushless) is that when you apply a certain voltage to it, it wants to use that voltage times it's Kv to get to a certain RPM. If you put 7v to a 3000 Kv motor, the motor "wants" to get to 21,000 rpm. If there's no load on the motor, then it's easy for it to reach it's rpm, and it doesn't have to draw many amps to do it.

The more load you put on the motor though, (just like shifting gears on a ten speed bike - you go faster, but it's harder to pedal) the harder it has to work to get up to it's desired rpm, and it draws more amps to do that harder work. Continuing with the example of you pedaling a bike - if you have bodybuilder style muscular legs, then you have more torque to push the pedals than your skinny legged 10yr old daughter. With more torque, it takes less effort for you to push the pedals. A motor works the same way - with more torque, it draws less amps doing the same "work" as a motor with less torque does. So the more "effort" (amps) required of the motor to get to it's desired Kv is also related to torque.

So we know that a motor drawing a lot of amps gets hot, and now we know that heat is caused by amps, and amp draw is related to how much torque the motor has. But there's one last thing that's important to this discussion - the wires inside the motor itself (windings).

The motor windings are what's carrying all those amps, and they are what's actually getting hot inside the motor. The more amps you put through a wire, the hotter it gets. But also - the same amps going through two different thicknesses of wire will show different temperatures. The thicker wire will be cooler than the thinner wire when both are handling the same amps.

Now we can get to the advantages of a slotless motor design for racing:
The first one is in the name itself - without the steel lamination "teeth" extending toward the rotor, there is more room in the motor for thicker wire, or more strands of wire to accomplish the same Kv. As above - thicker wire runs cooler than thinner wire.

Secondly, (and again being a little overly simplistic here), the magnetic "circle" from the rotor, through the windings, to the laminations, back through the wire and back to the rotor to complete the circle is cleaner and less disturbed in a slotless motor than a slotted one. The "teeth" in a slotted motor disfigures somewhat that "clean path". The direct benefit here is somewhat nebulous, but involves a little bit of added torque and also the concept of efficiency (efficiency = more work for less amps).

So the end result, is that slotless motors will run cooler, use less amps, and therefore make your ESC and battery run happier (and cooler) as well. They will also be much more difficult to overheat/damage than the old-style slotted motors.

Another large difference between slotted and slotless motors, is that generally slotless motors have very little or no resistance to spinning the shaft by hand. A slotted motor can have very heavy resistance, or low resistance depending on the intent of the design, but they all have some form of inherent "drag brake" when the car is coasting that you can't take out of the motor. Slotless designs have almost none, so it allows YOU to dial exactly how much or little you actually want to have for your application.

So why haven't we seen slotless motors dominate racing already if they're so much better?
Up until now, a slotless style motors had to run with a sensorless ESC. We are the first to combine sensor technology with the superior design of a slotless motor, to allow it to be run with any sensored racing ESC.

Where do slotted vs slotless motors fit into the rest of the RC power industry?
Generally speaking (and excluding outrunner style motors), the typical "ROAR build" slotted motors have basically no use within the electric airplane, boat and heli markets. They make far less power with far more heat than the "norm" of a slotless motor (and always driven by a sensorless ESC). Aircraft are very sensitive to weight, and power is king in that domain, therefore the more efficient and powerful slotless motors are dominant.

Some of you may be familiar with Neu motors, and yes - some of them are slotted designs, but they are far more refined and efficient than any of our typical ROAR build designs, as well as generally being a multi-pole (bonded) rotor design instead of the traditional two pole solid sintered rotors within both slotless and ROAR style car motors. Multi pole (bonded) rotor designs have issues with high rpms, and thus have to be "bandaged" with carbon or kevlar in order to not disintegrate at high rpms common in the racing world.

Motor design is a fascinating, but also fantastically complex set of multiple trade-offs in order to get the specific performance desired. I hope I've answered more questions than will be raised about this new motor line, and helped everyone understand a bit more about how they'll help take your 8th racing up a level of performance and durability, and ease your mind as well!