That I can understand as being some sort of "reasonable life expectancy" for a product. For instance there is no warranty for clothing (or at least non that I know of in the uk) but a pair of trousers once ripped on me down the back from bending forward (lol) and I took them back to the shop and explained that it is unreasonable to purchase such trousers (were of medium price) and for them to break in only 3 months. The manager agreed and offered me a full refund since they no longer had them in stock to replace them for me. I can see a similar case being made for something like the motor failing on an ffb wheel again not too long after being previously replaced just prior to a 2 year warranty ending but I'd be so surprised if the 2 year warranty started all over again. That flies in the face of my understanding of how warranties work...to guarantee a working product to the consumer for the stated amount of time and if it breaks within that period, to have the manufacturer replace or fix the item for the consumer as many times as needed until the end of the warranty period. My best ever warranty experience was with a 700watt thermaltake power supply I bought about 8 years ago off an eBay seller. Last year it broke just before it reached 7 years of use which happened to be its warranty period I found out after checking it's box. I contacted the eBay seller and they contacted thermaltake. Thermaltake told them to just refund me the money I paid for the power supply sone 7 years earlier at £85 and that I should just bin the power supply. How cool is that?
No just in a few peoples experience. No way do all wheels cheaper than $1500 do this. My CSW is still blowing cool air out, used for at least 2 hours a day. Are you sure you have not got an over tight belt? How much are these motors and how come you need to change the cooling system from what's there now?
tighter belt shouldn't affect motor temperature. The motor axis are held by 2 bearings and the commutator held by a spring.
Everybody who compared forces when motors are cold and hot either by the IRacing wheelcheck program or by using a fish scale measured this effect. Buy a fish scale ( I did) and measure yourself. Even the firmware scales FFB force down to 80% after some temperature threshold. (AFAIK this wasn't in the first firmware versions and added later, around summer 2012, to prolong the motors life). See these graphs: http://www.gtplanet.net/forum/threads/fanatec-csw-csr-elite-modders-thread-update-february-2014.274631/page-8#post-8260160 When motors get hotter, the effect gets worse. People measure even a drop to half the power. What bothers me even more is that I clearly feel that the FFB gets sluggish when motors are hot, I first always thought this is because the simulation tires degrade or got hot .., but it's the motors. I want to do endurance racing (dreaming of simulating 24h nordschleife), this is a no go for me. But if you are happy, there is no reason to change anything. The Bühler motors cost: $70 per motor ($140 for the pair), if 30+ are ordered, $85 per motor ($170 for the pair), if 15-30 are ordered, $120 per motor ($240 for the pair), if only 1-15 are ordered Well, they are not cheap .. Edit: Because the Bühler motors get hot too inside (motor amature ..) when only cooled by using heatsink and fans. So the power fades too. Cooling from inside prevents this.
I'm just interested in getting to the bottom of it Vittorio, I should feel some warmth coming out the side of the wheelbase, but there is none, it doesn't get warm either not after hours of use. No alternative but to do some tests, I have some datalogging eqpt from my radio control junkpile that includes 2 thermocouples. I believe you but I can't say I have noticed any difference in the ffb strength after any length of time. I think I would notice with the karts and the way I run those. Even if it went to 80% I'm sure I would notice, but it has made me curious. Maybe I'm experincing 80% right away and never see a drop, wouldn't surprise me to find out they had done that in a firmware. Are there no alternative to the buhler motors? those price breaks are ridiculous. What wheels are there over $1500 that do not do this? Apart from a bodnar obviously. Otherwise you would have said everything under $4000 does this. No I'm never happy, always searching for better faster stronger like a daft punk. But a couple of nM for $300 (by the time you have made a custom cooling solution) doesn't seem like it could be worth it. Wouldn't you just custom cool the motors that are already in there so that they don't hit thermal overload? If you are going to have to do that with the buhlers you may as well try it with the fanatecs first?
When the firmware is in the 80% FFB mode the temperature threshold to get back to 100% is ridiculous low, IIRC it's 25°C motor temperature. I guess you need a very low room temperature and wait some time to get back to 100%. Switching the wheel OFF and ON gets back to 100%. The coming SimXperience AccuForce wheel (derived from the bodnar wheel) is said to cost <$2000. Thats why I said <$1500. It's more likely that the AccuForce wheel rips of your arm before fading power I would love to get one, but it's too expensive. I don't trust the cheap consumer electronic Mabuchi motors anymore. Bühler motors are used in more industrial kind of applications (like vending machines) and are more robust. I'm happy with my CSR-E except the motors, everything else is excellent. CSRE/CSW + changing motors (so they don't die and more power extra) + great cooling (so there's no fade in power and fidelity anymore) should result in a really great wheel. I now regret not to have bought the CSW because of the extra weight of the BMW rim and decided to get the CSRE. A CSW+BMW rim + this motor mod should be awesome! Edit: There are refurbished Bühler motors for $30 too, but it's not that easy to get some.
Brushless motors commonly have better thermal characteristics (and the one in the AccuForce was reported by ISR to be brushless). The windings are placed on the stator (the motor case = better heat dissipation) instead of the rotor meaning there's more space for more winding vs an identically sized brushed motor, this equals more power. Also no brush and commutator anymore, which otherwise put a restriction on the maximum motor speed and no friction which causes voltage drop thus torque/power degradation. All in all, cooler and more powerful motor but costs alot more for the added electronics needed to replace the job of the brush and commutator.
At the end of the OP: http://isiforums.net/f/showthread.p...-in-the-Zone-D?p=260089&viewfull=1#post260089
What do you mean by "Why not TX instead of T500RS?"? Yes it has a brushless motor and the wheel is cheaper but that does not have to mean that the motor was cheaper than a identically sized brushed equivalent. Looking at the TX and reviews from people with a T500RS aswell, we hear/see a significant difference in quality in the pedals which could explain whilst the TX uses a brushless motor why it is still cheaper than a T500RS. I also hear remarks that the TX is inferior in FFB strength which means that despite being a brushless, to maintain the motor cost they may have traded some motor power (i.e. used a smaller motor which reduces its cost) for the benefit of greater motor reliability with the brushless design. Having said that, there are said to be positives with the TX over the T500RS in the ffb experience and wheel smoothness despite being somewhat weaker and that it more than makes up for it.
Depending whether it's an in-runner or out-runner. The windings are always on the stator but on an out-runner the stator is in the middle and the magnets are on the case which itself spins. Looks like nobody has tried an out-runner yet, which is surprising as they are cheaper, they are never going to reverse direction as quick as in-runners, but maybe quick enough. The temperature of the motor in this application will be down to the quality (efficiency) of the speed controller used and how well it matches the motor (timings). I would only expect the motor to get hot if you tried to force it beyond the virtual endstop for any length of time, at which point any good speed controller would detect that and shutdown before damage occurs. Over current protection. So a brushless motor used properly (efficiency of the speed controller) will not get hot enough to fail, if they do it's pretty catastrophic (don't ask me how I know....) On the accuforce, it has been quite a while since the ISR review and we still don't have price or availability. Until we do, we might as well say it costs $10 or $10000 and will be available to buy in 2016...? The only way they can make it a lot cheaper than the Bodnar one is to use lesser components. That's only ok if the Bodnar one is overkill which it might be.
In this interview Berney Villers from SimXperience said (2:40) the AccuForce will be $1000 - $2000 and they are still working on the pricing.
Remember the accuforce isn't going to be servo based ( eg it's a conventional motor as all other mainstream ffb wheels ) it's not fair on it to compare to a servo based wheel such as a bodnar however simexperience sells good gear ( I use some of it ) so I'm sure berney will do a fine job on this wheel although it's a standard ffb wheel, it is direct drive ( no cogs or pulleys ) which will make it more robust than logitech's / thrust masters etc I was really hoping it would use the sim commander software for it's forces, but this is not possible due to legal regulations within the windows-ffb devices market so it has to use the same base drivers as the rest of us p.s I'm perfectly happy with my bodnar wheel, but I like to keep up with new products entering the simulator market etc
also the bodnar (IMO ) being a servo is a bit of an overkill for sim racing, but that's exactly what I wanted due to the lifespans of my previous wheels , quality of clarity fading , increasing deadzone , clipping at fairly low forces , cogs becoming worn and a feeling of sluggishness when turning the wheel, heating issues the bodnar was a no brainer the bodnar costs a lot but it's a one time buy without any need to renew are even look at another ffb system, there's a lot of head room (it can be cranked up a lot higher no problems)it dosnt really clip, and it's bomb proof & offers a superior ffb experience that's only limited by the software title being used. servos are produced for high precision control systems (robotic arms on production lines, manufacturing machines etc) & manufactured to operate under heavy industrial conditions for long periods of time and are made to have a very long life, the performance does not degrade, +the performance is superior and also due to also having a built in encoder have a 2 way message system, the motor software always knows where the motor is ( eg the position of the actual wheel ) so it controls the forces dependant upon this as oppose to a convention motor which has only a one way message system -the forces keep getting delivered to the wheel regardless of position the cost of a servo is much more than a stand conventional motor due to the above, this is why they are used in professional f1 & race team simulators etc. there's one other I looked (servo ffb system) before buying the bodnar, a French company sells it but they charge a lot more than bodnar is asking there not a great deal of hype surrounding the bodnar wheel, all that one has to do is start to read about servo's and it quickly becomes clear what a servo ffb system is a separate thing entirely from the mainstream wheels people should read about these things before making comparisons that IMO are not fair to make ( like comparing the performance of a bicycle to a motorbike ) using one dosnt send you in to outer space in the ffb immersion dept, but it is of a noticeably higher pureness of clarity and represents directly the best of what the software title (the sim driving it at the time of use ) has to offer
I didn't about out-runner motors, thanks for mentioning it, interesting reading. But the windings do not have to be on the stator....they're not in the case of our wheel motors. The rotor shaft houses the coil windings in brushed motors which is why exactly why they are brushed motors. This does not have to be the case with brushless motors where it can be an out-runner with the stator in the center with the coil windings. But I don't think the brushless motors used in ffb wheels (TX included) are likely to be out-runners for a few reasons. Out-runner increases moment of inertia. Out-runner means you can't apply a heat-sink onto the motor case, unless there is plenty of space for it to spin with a heat sink on but this will increase the moment of inertia, degrading the motors responsiveness. I saw out-runners used for things such as RC planes where it can be easily cooled by air. When ISR tested the AccuForce they mentioned how silent it ran to the point of not knowind if it was even on or not and how cool/cold it was to the touch after hours of hard-core use. If it uses a very quit or no fan then i assume it must have the most efficient cooling possible which would be with the winding on the outside for easier heat dissipation. These are just my assumptions though, ofc. I don't know where the original quote was taken from but... http://www.racedepartment.com/forum/threads/simxperience-accuforce-wheel.81922/page-2#post-1677713 edit: haha, vittorio beat me to it.
Does anyone bought CSW lately? Thomas said burned motors case was due to faulty first batches Perhaps on recent CSW version, they are fine and no involved motor issues at all
All I know about this bad batch thing and history of my experience: * Got my CSR-E 04.2012 * Motors died ~07.2012 * Got a replacement wheel 11.2012 * Motors died ~01.2014 * Wheel got repaired 04.2014 Fanatec stated 01.2013: http://www.gtplanet.net/forum/threads/fanatec-announcements-updated-op.203494/page-275#post-7959883 Fanatec stated 05.2014: http://eu.fanatec.com/forum/discussion/77/the-new-classic-wheel-rim-for-your-clubsport-wheel/p2 A customer asking Fanatec got this infos: http://www.gtplanet.net/forum/threads/fanatec-clubsport-shifter-sq-review.288514/page-12#post-9628851
I've never had any issues with motors on csw, or any problems and have owned since around September 2012. I play anything from 5 to 12 hours a week usually couple hour's each session practising or league races +/- a couple hours depending on free time. Also it always has cool air coming out even after long sessions and haven't seen any noticeable drop ffb strength, always feels pretty consistent to me. EDIT I may have been lucky with the motors in my wheel also lol
