The reasons why LEGO doesn't make small motors?

[Omikron]

We have all kind of motors exept the small ones.

Can any official TLG staff comment please?

Edited August 24, 2013 by Omikron

[Marcel1980]

probably that they cant produce enough power.

[mahjqa]

They don't need to.

[le60head]

That's a good question. I guess medium or large sized motors are generally more useful. IMHO there hasn't been a real need so far for a small motor in official Technic sets, so that's why.

So i guess, that it is just cheaper for TLG to produce lets say a medium or big sized technic set with 1 medium motor instead of multiple. With a gear box all the set's functions can be powered by the same motor. If they had to put a second smaller motor to power some of the functions, that would raise the production costs noticeably.

Still, there are sets in the recent past that had a lot of motors: 9398, 8043. So i suppose we have to ask ourselves this: what LEGO set would benefit the most from a small motor, so that TLG actually produce it.

[Cwetqo]

Nothing official (yet). But they are considering it.

[Marcel1980]

Nothing official (yet). But they are considering it.

Nice, a small motor to handle a gear box would be nice

[Foggy]

Or to operate a bucket or a fork turntable so we need just the wire connection and not an axle...

[matthewclso]

Are you wanting a modern Power Functions replacement of the Lego 9V Micro Motor?

[Technyk32231]

Oh man, you posted that as I was typing it...

[piterx]

yeah that would be so cool to use in small scale models :)

[Junpei]

http://www.eurobrick...opic=62097&st=0

Support it here.

Edited August 24, 2013 by TwentyLeggedHen

[allanp]

Nothing official (yet). But they are considering it.

Thanks for the reply.

[paul_delahaye]

I guess the challenge is finding a small motor which kids can stall if they overload it, without killing the motor

[Sariel]

Can any official TLG staff comment please?

Never knew we had any official TLG staff here.

When I was in the Power Functions project group, I have learned that there is indeed a prototype of a PF S motor, but it will not be introduced until there is a set which makes use of it. In other words, until a designer working on a new set decides that no other motor can work for it, there is no way we'll see the S motor.

Edited August 24, 2013 by Sariel

[Alasdair Ryan]

Never knew we had any official TLG staff here.

We have two lego rep's....Kim T as well as Grohl.

[Marcel1980]

Never knew we had any official TLG staff here.

When I was in the Power Functions project group, I have learned that there is indeed a prototype of a PF S motor, but it will not be introduced until there is a set which makes use of it. In other words, until a designer working on a new set decides that no other motor can work for it, there is no way we'll see the S motor.

Start working sariel! ;)

[Aqualize]

Yes it can be hard to make a large enough model (for PF) that really need a small motor. It is self-defeating to throw away the gearboxes and put a motor at the end instead - technic is a lot about the gearboxes.

[andythenorth]

I supported the xs motor project on cuusoo

[Cwetqo]

We have two lego rep's....Kim T as well as Grohl.

I dont know if they have time to check all this. If you have any questions you could open topic in Embassy subforum or contact Copmike or any other ambassador present here, including me (since I dont believe that Mike reads all this technic stuff).

Never knew we had any official TLG staff here.

When I was in the Power Functions project group, I have learned that there is indeed a prototype of a PF S motor, but it will not be introduced until there is a set which makes use of it. In other words, until a designer working on a new set decides that no other motor can work for it, there is no way we'll see the S motor.

I heard something similar too.

[Junpei]

I supported the xs motor project on cuusoo

Good job! Though I wish cuusoo didn't make me want to

[allanp]

The small motor would probably not be used very much in technic. The previous micromotor was only used in two technic sets and I can think of many other new parts that would open up more possibilities and bring more coolness in general to technic. Plus we already have 3 standard motors to choose from, I guess that's why it hasn't been released yet.

Wait, I take that back, we may have three motors to choose from, but we don't have three options to choose from. The three standard motors are all big and they're all geared and turn very slowly so we really don't have much choice. You can choose to have your motor big, geared and slow, or bigger, even more geared and slower. That's no choice at all! So, yeah, I really don't know why they haven't released a small motor yet. Ideally we would have two or three better thought out options to choose from, one of them being a tiny, very much geared down motor.

Edited August 24, 2013 by allanp

[TasV]

I use the 9V micro motor (shown above) with NXT because it is very small, can be tucked away easily, can be end mounted, and the soft flexible cabling doesn't impede movement. I would love a micro-motor that has soft, pliable, retractable cabling to assist with tidying the cables even more... nothing spoils the swag of a good robot more than a bird's nest of cables. All that is needed is two adapter cables. It works well on 9V PF battery packs too and so long as you don't over-do it and expect it to do something it can't, slip isn't a problem. I think the idea of a technic micro-motor, with pin attachments instead of being studded, is excellent. Sometimes you just want to move something small, or move something in a small robot that changes position like a grabber on a forklift mechanism on a small robot. RoboCup rules state that I can't make a robot bigger than 18cm high and wide for Senior Rescue and 27cm high and wide in Premier Rescue and the longer a robot is the more it swings and the more chance it has of leaving the edge of the track. How would you open and close the grabber at either the top or the bottom of the fork's lift position if the motor wasn't mounted directly on the grabber so it lifted with the grabber? Putting the motor on the end is the only real option. For NXT, where size often must be kept to a minimum and sensors compete for mounting positions, a slow, geared, technic micro motor without encoders, would be very helpful.

[aol000xw]

4 medium motors in the excavator, a couple Large in the Crawler, one XL on that red truck... I always wondered where the small one was.

There is no point on calling something medium if there is not a small one right?

[Omikron]

Nothing official (yet). But they are considering it.

Thanks, that means a lot.

The small motor is needed not to replace gearboxes it is needed to save space in compact designs where you have less free space and the function does not require much torque.

The medium sized motors in this situation require additional gearing and space.

[LiamM32]

I would like to have a Power Functions S-motor. I have had visions of it since before the L-motor was unveiled, as well a my own vision of the L-motor. I have a feeling that there will sometime be one, due to the strange naming of PF motors since the first wave. While it would have fewer applications than it's 3 bigger siblings; I think that there could be enough to make it worth it, and many of the ideas that I could imagine would use multiple S-motors.

I once had a concept of a Lego high-speed train with tilting cars and self-propelled multiple unit motorization. This was before they made the horizon express. I figured that there wouldn't be enough space for M-motors, so there should be a new PF motor suited for the application, that would be half to two-thirds of the M-motors power. The old micromotor wouldn't work either, because it would be too tall.

I think that the S-motor should 2L wide and 2L (or 5 plates) tall, in the shape like a type of Technic brick. It should be 5L long, plus a part sticking-out at the rear with 2 thin cross-axle holes for Technic compatibility, making it 6L long in total like the other PF motors. There should also be inlets for studs at the side to attach the short pins with studs. There should be no internal gearing so that it would have significant power for it's small size, but that is something that I also advocate for in the other motors (http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=85907&hl=). I would probably use a worm gear for speed reduction.

For other applications; This might be good for building clocks which require very little energy. Small decorative moving features in system models.

That was about a small motor that would move continuously, but there could also be a small motor more dedicated to shifting switches. This should be a small stepper motor. Stepper motors could be used as lower-performance alternatives to servo motors, so it could be the little half-brother of the PF servo. I don't yet know much about how stepper motors work, but I know that they use electromagnets to give it one small shift of rotation whenever power is given. Unless if there would be a good way to let builders customize the stepper motor with multiple pieces, than it should be designed so that it could work for various common angles with a single gear connection. I am not as confident about this one as the above idea though, as I can't think of many applications other than Sheepo-sized cars with many motorized functions.

Now what are some other applications for these small motors?

Edit:

I guess the challenge is finding a small motor which kids can stall if they overload it, without killing the motor

It shouldn't be to hard to make a built-in clutch. Actually, they could just put the Technic axle hole overlapping the metal motor axle without glue, which could work as a clutch.

Also, a problem with a small motor is that the Technic gears may have too much friction to let a weak motor work efficiently. In my topic that I linked to, I advocated for the replacement of ABS Technic gears with new nylon gears, to reduce friction. That could solve it.

If the reason for the small motor is to power a small vehicle, than there should also be a small battery box. But I already want that part anyways.

Edited August 28, 2013 by LiamM32