Build your own motor
By Andrew Gregory. Posted
This article was originally published as part of HackSpace magazine, which has since been incorporated into Raspberry Pi Official Magazine.
This open-source PCB motor is a small, cheap, and easy-to-assemble micro brushless motor. What’s unique about this motor design is that the stator is printed on a four-layer PCB board. The six stator poles are spiral traces wound in a star configuration. Although these coils produce less torque compared to an iron core stator, the motor is still suitable for high‑speed applications.
Advertisement
Get started with Raspberry Pi – everything you need to know to start your journey!
Creating a brushless motor using a PCB is cheaper to manufacture, and allows the designer to easily tailor the design to their specific project. This design is lighter than standard brushless motors, which opens up countless opportunities for smaller, more delicate projects.
Carl Bugeja, the motor's creator, has a YouTube channel detailing how it works, and you can get the design file on it's Hackaday.io page.
Features Editor Andrew trawls the internet for Cool Stuff while keeping the magazine running smoothly.
Subscribe to Raspberry Pi Official Magazine
Save up to 37% off the cover price and get a FREE Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W with a subscription to Raspberry Pi Official Magazine.
More articles
New year, new projects
What ideas and experiments will 2026 bring?
Read more →
Get started with Raspberry Pi in Raspberry Pi Official Magazine 161
There’s loads going on in this issue: first of all, how about using a capacitive touch board and Raspberry Pi 5 to turn a quilt into an input device? Nicola King shows you how. If you’re more into sawing and drilling than needlework, Jo Hinchliffe has built an underwater rover out of plastic piping and […]
Read more →
Win one of three DreamHAT+ radars!
That’s right, an actual working radar for your Raspberry Pi. We reviewed it a few months ago and have since been amazed at some of the projects that have used it, like last month’s motion sensor from the movie Aliens. Sound good? Well we have a few to give away, and you can enter below. […]
Read more →