Maxon RE10 1017 prices

[reinhardtjh]

For those who buy them, what do you consider a good price for a Maxon RE10 118391 (1017) motor?  I am chatting back and forth with a person on Ebay about availability of such motors and curious what people think is a reasonable price.

[Kentuckian]

Good question. Have they recently become scarce? Seems like they are harder to find. I guess it just depends on how much original installation equipment is being scrapped at the particular time.

@metalworkertom recently sold some in the Trading Post for $25.00 each, I believe. I think this is a good price. If the motors did not need much work to get them installation ready and they didn’t have the stepper mechanism or whatever you call it as part of it, I would probably give around $50.00 in this post COVID world if I really needed it. Also depends on if I could get the 4:1 gearhead for it.

Faulhaber motors with the 4:1 gearheads are a little shorter, therefore better than the Maxon IMHO for most N scale installs. But they seem to be really hard to find, and therefore expensive, now.

I’m in my early 60’s and have accepted the fact that I will spend the rest of my life being continually amazed at prices. The above number may not be realistic at all.

[Chris333]

If they are brand new about $75 bucks.

[peteski]

. . .
I think this is a good price. If the motors did not need much work to get them installation ready and they didn’t have the stepper mechanism or whatever you call it as part of it, I would probably give around $50.00 in this post COVID world if I really needed it. Also depends on if I could get the 4:1 gearhead for it.

I have never encountered a stepper mechanism somehow attached to a typical DC coreless motor.
Faulhaber does make stepper motors, in addition to the coreless DC motors, and the steppers can also have a gearhaead attached. But stepper motors have at least 3 or 4 leads, and need a special stepper motor driver to make them spin.  Steppers are useless for using them in DC or DCC.

[wvgca]

Steppers are useless for using them in DC or DCC.

i don't know about DC but they do work rather well [with the proper driver] under DCC power.. i didn't fully implement the project as it was hard to find reasonable torque numbers in that small of a stepper motor, voltages should have been higher than the 15 volt norm on DCC, maybe up to fifty volts or so ..and there really wasn't enough room to add a buck converter as well as a stepper driver under a HO shell to gain the higher voltage for reasonable torque numbers, as well as reduced cogging on very slow motion ..

[peteski]

i don't know about DC but they do work rather well [with the proper driver] under DCC power.. i didn't fully implement the project as it was hard to find reasonable torque numbers in that small of a stepper motor, voltages should have been higher than the 15 volt norm on DCC, maybe up to fifty volts or so ..and there really wasn't enough room to add a buck converter as well as a stepper driver under a HO shell to gain the higher voltage for reasonable torque numbers, as well as reduced cogging on very slow motion ..

Sorry, I should have mentioned N scale DCC. I assumed since we are in the N scale forum  . . .
There is already barely enough room for a decoder, and a stepper controller would need more space.

Ideally a DCC decoder would have the DC H-bridge motor driver circuit replaced by stepper motor driver.  Where do you buy decoders like that, or do you have any info about a stepper driver which will take the PWM DC motor output from a conventional DCC decoder and convert it to stepper driver speed contol?

The other problem is that steppers are not only inherently slow (well they could be used to directly drive loco's wheels), but since they rotate in distinct steps, they are inherently noisy.  They buzz and "sing". Not a desired feature for a model loco.

But this is again getting way off-topic.

[mike_lawyer]

This is when I really miss the Motorman (Eldon Shirley).  He always had a stockpile of Faulhaber and Maxon motors at very reasonable prices.  He also could cut down gearheads to specification.

I remember buying Maxon 1017s from him in the $35-40 range.  I have no idea what they go for now.

[Chris333]

Eldon's motors were mostly used (still perfectly fine).

[mmagliaro]

For the motor with no gearhead on it?
I would pay maybe $30, but I'm persistent and cheap.  I have hunted and watched eBay and other surplus sites for over a year to get more motors, because I refuse pay those expensive prices.  Usually, I pay more like $12-$15 when I could find somebody doing a really cheap unload of them.

It depends on your application, but to me, without the gearhead, these motors are not very useful.  They pack more power and can run slower than a conventional motor, but they don't have the super-crawl behemothic power I want without the gearhead.

You can get the 4:1 maxon gearheads for about $25 (used to be cheaper) by looking for Maxon "320555" motor + gearhead combos, and then just unscrew the gearhead and put it on your 1017 IF your 1017 has the pinion gear on it.   I wrote a post about this https://www.therailwire.net/forum/index.php?topic=51299.0
It is still true, but the prices have gone up.  You would also have to be able to get the pinion off the motor that comes with the gearhead and put it on your 1017 if it doesn't have one.