Here, at Last!: TeamNovak Ballistic 8 motor

[NovakTwo]

Originally Posted by ta_man

Over what time period (calendar dates) was that when the price went from $1.40 to $8.00? (Curious what part of the Neo price curve this equates to.)

We have been working on this motor so long that I believe that the first neo quotes we got were @.70/segment!! I got these numbers from the folks here involved with sourcing our magnetic material. Each week the neo prices increase, so 8.00 probably is no longer viable.

Here are the neo charts I googled up and posted elsewhere:

Maybe, a picture (chart) is worth a 1000 words....
Neodymium is the blue line:

Neodymium Prices from March 2010

Here is an additional chart that begins at Jan 2012:

Neodymium metal prices, news and information

The price of the rare earth material, Neodymium, has sky-rocketed in the past few months. The Chinese government now controls all neo mining and also the price charged to all vendors using this substance in manufactured items.

ROAR specifies neo in the magnets for ROAR-approved motors and sets a 540 motor list price cap of $149.00, that mfgs of these motors must meet. So brushless motor manufacturers have difficult choices ahead: maintain the same quantity of neo in their magnet "recipes" and raise prices accordingly, use less of the metal and change the characteristics of the magnet, or switch to a different material completely. Neo prices increase each week.

All of the rotors that we are currently using have the same magnet recipes we have always offered; we have not changed our rotors due to this crisis.

Our rotor prices have quintupled in the past few months making the current motor prices unsustainable. We will be announcing price increases for both our 540/550 motors and the 540/550 systems in the next few days. We are also considering setting up a Rotor Return Program for our customers to send back old, weak (but not damaged) rotors for exchange. We have the ability to re-magnetize old rotors and make them as good as new.

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Re-magnetizing rotors is kind of labor intensive, but it does recycle the older rotors we get back from our customers with their motor exchanges back into the system. When we sell RMF motors to our customers (either through our exchange programs, or our RMF store) they always include a fresh rotor.

We are considering designing a Rotor Recycling program for old 540 and 550 Novak rotors. Start collecting all of your old, but un-damaged (no cracks or broken) Novak rotors----they are more valuable than ever...