Hey guys. A thread in the Sherline/Taig forum has got me thinking, can a brushless motor from the RC industry be used as a replacement for the stock X2 motor? It would (of course) have to be the large sized outrunner variety. I think I have found one for a reasonable price for experimentation.
http://www.hobbypartz.com/mo1602brmo.html
and this for an ESC:
http://www.rctoys.com/rc-toys-and-pa...NTROLLERS.html
These motors are insane. 2700W!! It would have to be cooled with either some kind of impeller mounted to the top or a little fan. This one has a 10mm shaft diameter, and is capable of handling 43V. 245 RPM/V so that would be about 10,500 rpm no load.
Now, there are better ones made by AXI, but those are much more expensive (<$250)
The only problem I can see is interfacing the ESC with Mach3 for speed control. You can use a servo tester for manual operation, but beyond that we would have to bribe some of the resident electronics wizards to build some kind of circuit to take either Mach's pwm output and convert it to 1-2 ms pulse or use Mach's step/dir.
Another problem could be the power supply. 43v @ 60A .... ehhhh. yeah.
this guy's site shows how large some of these motors are (hes using one to drive a bike):
http://www.recumbents.com/WISIL/shumaker/default.htm