If I was the owner, what would I do?
 

Well guys, I've been wondering the same thing. If any of you guys were the owner of Castle Creations, what would you do to make this hobby more exciting for everyone?

I'm going to say, I would do what Schulze does and just make good controllers that cover the whole spectrum of the hobby. I would make anything from 10A up to 1000A (If possible :lol:) and make them handle up to 100V. A lot of controllers out there are capable of doing it all. I have a few that I can use in my cars, but if I decide to get a boat I can use it in it or take it to the sky. I have tons of ideas for ESC and if I had a factory, I can't imagine what goodies I would be working on. I'm just waiting for the day voice command hit the BL ESC market :oh:. What about programming your controller right on it using a small LCD and a few buttons (Keyence Rapida Pro anyone http://hobby.keyence.co.jp/english/speed.html#rap). That's just me, but I would love to get all of your opinion. Man if I had a factory :yes:.

Well considering that CC is a relatively young company, I am sure Patrick is trying to build his business. He is wading in largely untested waters, and every decision is potentially capable of making or breaking him. I am sure that CC will develop more products, but they do have to sell this stuff, and more is better. They seem to have the air market covered. Patrick even mentioned that the boat market is barely big enough to keep his boat controlers viable.

The car market is growing, and CC appear to have the best tech and product development. Higher voltage is becoming more popular. I feel that as the mfgs produce more large scale electric vehicles, and the market grows, we will see more HV car controllers. We here are but a handful of people, and not really capable of buying enough equipment to make it worthwhile to CC.

Patrick did say that he could make an 8s car esc, which sould great to me! I want one, lets start pestering him for it! (Sorry Patrick!)

What if you owned it, what would you be making for us?

I would build the business for the mainstream and offer the lowest price possible and make the money on volume of sales...otherwise if you do what you are suggesting your product will be expensive trying to sell to a very small market(Mostley adult men who have the resources to buy the ESC.) My goal would be to become the Traxxas of the ESC market and try to get more kids involved asking thier parents to buy the product for Xmas/birthday

I think azjc answered it very well. I really like the idea of hv but I totally understand its not for everyone do mostly to the price.

I would focus more on the car market, and most likely develop more motors. I expect that is what Patrick is doing. He has neu in his pocket, and a factory in china. I am sure that he is overhauling most of his products at the moment, and developing other stuff that will sell well (main point of any business).

I am sure that we will see some interesting products in the near future. Once the development and qc of the current products calms down, I think some interesting stuff will be available.

Personally, I am a car guy. I want a Hv car esc. Capable of 6-12s lipo, properly heatsinked, with a ubec integrated in the case. I would not integrate the bec with the brain board, but would like it in the esc case to clean up wiring. The size of the esc would be bigger, but most chassis can accomodate a quark 125b size esc. I am sure that it would be taller, but that is ok. Computer programming would be required, and a seperate programming box could be sold seperately for those that desire that (racers that are away from home for example). Something with 150 amps capability should cover most applications up to 5th scale. Maybe make a smaller model, say around 60 amps, that would be for smaller vehicles like a 10th MT.

I would develop a few more RC car products, higher voltage mostly. Then I would get into electric scooter/motorcycle power systems. They could be built just as fast as 49CC scooters, but with much better lifespan and cost/mile

Doesn't castle have a stake in military stuff somewhat? I coulda swore they built some heavy duty controllers for military electric motor applications or something. Maybe I'm thinking Medusa though.

Anyways, if I owned CC, I would take an approach not unlike azjc's. Becoming the Traxxas of the ESC industry would mean tons of money, and more money means more potential to expand into other ventures. So once the company because something of that caliber, I would expand into Electric Vehicle controllers (1:1) and induction motors (1:1). I'd also continue to keep producing new and great stuff for RC cars, boats, and planes, and also possibly venture into some battery technology if possible.

Yes, good one. That is one of the concepts I learned a while ago when I used the be a Stock Broker. I now use the same in my business. You will find some posts that I've made here and in other forums saying the same thing. I make more money selling more electronic components and I don't like making less profit selling at a higher price. This is what I'm trying to get from anyone who post.

Also good, but one can learn from the Euro giants. They will use one PCB, but with different components for a higher voltage controller. Wan to see a good example: http://www.schulze-elektronik-gmbh.de/fut-val-e.htm. Scroll down and you will see the last 2 pictures. One is with the BEC (More components) and the other is Opto (Less components). The Opto will use higher voltage MOSFETs and they do cost more if you buy from catalogue distributors, but for me it doesn't make a difference, I get them cheap. One example is the NXP MOSFET I got for my controller, it was being sold at DigiKey for $1.50 each and I bought them for $0.45 each and I could've gotten them cheaper, but I only found one Reel. I know companies have big overheads, but lets leave that to the side for a little bit as it contributes to the price of a product much more than the components used.

Now we're talking.

If I was the owner, I'd spend a LOT MORE TIME in Jamaica.

You do know that Castle is bigger than Schultze and Kontronic combined right?

Patrick

hahaha Yah Mon!

:lol::lol::lol: not until i get my MMM back ! then Ill buy you the 1st round of daquiris

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. :)

Just make it brushless. :whistle:




If I was the owner of CC Id have someone look into the fans on the Monster Max. :wink: I have 2 and they both died in a matter of 30 minutes of track time.

We are looking into the fans -- they are causing a significant percentage of the failures (they run off the BEC, and some of the fan failures are killing the BEC.)

We're looking to change the fans -- these are having too high a failure rate.

:great:

Sweet. When you get it sorted send a couple my way. I have two Monsters running fanless.




Sorry for the thread jack......

Ok so it has to do with the back-EMF mainly and then the amount of copper. So the SHV is the same way? Now what if the intended use for the HV and SHV controllers were to just lower the amount of AMPs used? Could it be possible for just a simple car software?

I've been planning on building a electric race car for a long time now, but with the economy going the way it is, I'm having trouble finding some heavy hitter investors to jump in as well. I already found the motor, battery and a few chassis to use, but when the numbers came in I was like :gasp:.

No problem, I do it all the time :lol:.

Well, the main difference between the airplane and car hardware is the smooth startup under heavy loads, and the ability to change power levels very quickly without upset of the back-EMF detection. Ever notice how most other sensorless controller bog down after cornering under heavy braking (when going from heavy brake to heavy throttle), and the Mamba doesn't? The Mamba has clean smooth starting and excellent "punch" because of the back-EMF design. I'm just not willing to compromise that high performance that the Mamba has.

I know you want a higher voltage Mamba -- I am looking into doing a 12S version, in addition to the 8S version.

Tell me about it... Did a quick SWAG at cost for a 640hp peak, 80hp continuous motor, controller, and Lithium battery (190V, 400AH) for an application -- came up with almost $200K. :surprised:

The controller was the cheapest part.

LOL! Same thing here in Florida. When I was driving my '93 LX Mustang (with a few handling/chassis mods) I was ITCHIN' to find some twisty roads. BAH! There's not even a HILL in South Florida... Now where I go to school in Central Florida....there's actually some fun roads.:whistle:

Ah, so you have been looking at the EV market....you sneaky guy you! That'd be awesome to have a 1/10 RC vehicle powered by Castle, and then a 1:1 ALSO powered by Castle.:gasp:

Hey, quick question, but are induction motors possible for RC cars (IE- would they be a good option for them?). From what I understand, and induction motor is simply a brushless motor that doesn't have a magnet, but rather a steel or iron rotor that has a current induced in it from one of the surrounding coils. The Tesla uses it IIRC. I also remember that they're a bit tricky to drive from an ESC standpoint, and require some serious programming and start up skills.

Actually when I had the HV110 in my truggy, it was smooth really smooth on start up. I don't know how the brakes would've worked because it was disabled. If you want, I can send my HV110 in to be a test unit (It smoked on me a while back). I will have a project coming up if I get a 1/8 scale F1 and I'm planning on using 20S A123. I also have designed a extended truggy chassis to handle 20S lipos and it would be nice to also see a SHV car controller. And yes, I'm also waiting for the 12S or 8S Monster :lol:.