Awesome. I was going tobuild a HV electric go kart, but the companies that were going to supply me with the brushless motor and ESC backed out. I was only going for 44kW and 70 N.m. and it spins at 24000rpm max. I think the only kart that could keep up would be the motorcycle powered beast seen in youtube.

You might be thinking of Aveox. Now would be a great time for them to make a comeback. I think Castle had more sales then Traxxas did in 2007 so they aren't as small as we think. New and great stuff is what I'm looking for. Great ideas.

When you want to go to Brasil, let me know. I could be a great translater for you :lol:.

Graphics card companies (ATI and Nvidia) tend to do the same thing. There's only I think three different boards/basic designs for the 8 series Nvidia cards, but there's the 8400, 8500, 8600, 8700, and the 8800, and then all of their variants (GS, GT, GTS, GTX, Ultra, etc.). So you're looking at at least 10 different cards from three basic platforms. All they do is either lock some pipelines, change the GPU, the Vram varies from card to card, and maybe a few other tweaks like bios. Other than that, you can unlock something like say even a 7200 up to a 7400 spec (sometimes...).

It's a good business practice, and it helps tremendously in cutting down on cost for different product lines. The only down side is that for graphics cards, sometimes people figure out how to get a new bios on the card, unlock some pipelines, or whatever, and so they essentially have a card that sells for at least 50 bucks more for free. ESCs are probably harder to do that with though...:whistle:

I don't know if we had more sales than Traxxas -- just don't know how much Traxxas did.

Between our Industrial, Hobby, and Military controllers we build between 20,000 and 30,000 controllers a month. Hobby is about 85% of our business (but industrial and military are growing.)

My biggest issue is getting time to work on hobby controllers and projects -- too much other stuff always taking my time...

Yes, $7 million in sales for 2007 is not bad. I'm sure that number might be off, but it was just a quick search I did. I just can't stop scratching my head and seeing the Europeans having some HV fun with their cars. I know the airplane and boat market are big, but I see many more vehicles being sold a LHS than I do planes. My LHS for example (Xtreme RC Addicts) mainly deals with cars. They have a nice indoor track and it would be great for Castle to have a little gathering there.

Traxxas had $3.5mil in sales for 2007 and Castle had $7mil. and that not bad at all. I know how it is. I'm not making much money now because my time is mostly for my daughter. I just started this to geather ideas and see what people would do. It's been a dream of my, but I'm not an engineer so I'll keep dreaming. Your company sure beats the hell out of Schulze when it comes to service and customer support.

Also, pretty much everyone reuses PCBs. The power board that was originally designed for the Phoenix-80 is also used for the Phoenix-60, Phx-125, Phx-180, Phx-45HV, Phx-85HV, Phx-110HV, Phx-160HV, Hydra-120, 240, 60HV, 120HV, 180HV, 240HV, etc.

That board is a 6oz / layer, 6 layer board -- for approx .060" copper -- VERY EXPENSIVE circuit board. The next heaviest board I've seen in the industry uses 3oz copper, eight layers -- 24oz vrs 36oz for our power board.

Hmmmmm... how do you know that?

I was a stock broker and I learned a few things here and there about getting some info. Sometimes they are not accurate, but they are close.

Yeah, that number is low -- but not that far off. . .

I win!!! I win!!!

:party::lol:

Patrick, why go to Jamaica when you got that cute little Lotus you can drive all over the place? C'mon....that's GOTTA be a fun little car! (I dare you to throw a supercharger or turbo on it.....:mdr:)

And DAMN. You had double the amount of sales as Traxxas did if Lutach's numbers are even somewhat close! Whew! Looks like I should take that part out of my post now huh? Haha!

So Patrick; ever thought about getting into the Electric Vehicle market? I bet you could make a pretty kickass controller for the next gen Tesla Roadster eh?

Patrick, help me understand one thing. You have mentioned the the hardware from the controllers mentioned above are not compatible with the Mamba software right? Please explain to me in terms that a non engineer guy can understand? I see other companies transform their aircraft controllers into car controllers and I would love to get my HV110 and possibly a SHV with a car software, not the Mamba, but something simple that would allow me to use a pistol radio and be able to use a car brake as I don't have many cars with mechanical brakes. I always thought it was just as simple as changing the software.

Well, it's the hardware on the control board that isn't compatible with the car software.

I designed the airplane controllers before the car controllers, and the car controller have some SERIOUS advancements over the airplane controllers in the sensitivity of the back-EMF circuit. (there is a patent on it too -- just got finalized.) http://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2007/0029956.html

So the car software just won't work on the airplane hardware -- different type of back-EMF sensing.

To run car software on the airplane power boards, I'd have to design a new control board for them.

But airplane power boards are really designed for airplanes - - not for the types of loads that cars put on a controller -- our car controllers ALSO use very heavy copper (6/6 on the MM, 6/6 + 4/3 on the MMM) but are designed to handle short term overload currents better than the airplane controllers. The MMM has the same number of FETs as the Phx-80, but handles over double the surge current and over double the continuous current. Part of that difference is the fan/heatsink, but the majority is the copper layout and current path copper total. The Phx-80 was designed to be light weight and compact, the MMM was designed to handle serious current surge and power.

Dude, I live in Kansas --- I don't think there is a curvy piece of road to drive my Lotus on in the entire state. It's sad, but I haven't had the Lotus out since March... :*(

We've been looking at the EV market very closely. There is a lot of potential there. :)