PEEK Gear for the Ultra Needed

[TDA78]

All,

Quick update on the PEEK gear.

1. We have experienced minor to catastrophic failures of the gear across all our test gears. We have experimented with all variants -

- PEEK, - initial failure at around 650 miles. Complete failure at around 1000 miles.
- PEEK with a different carbon polymer material - complete failure at 500 miles. This is unusual- were hoping to be better than PEEK, so this may also be a manufacturing defect. Regardless, it failed.
- Carbon infused PEEK. Initial failure at 1350-1400 miles. Complete failure at 2000 miles. <-- this was what we were hopeful for, and had ordered. Unfortunately it failed as well.
2. All gears were on motors tuned to Archon X1 @1800 Watts (around 180Nm of torque)

As of right now, we DO NOT recommend using PEEK in the bafang ultra, or any motor over 500W nominal / 100Nm of torque. The only realistic way of reducing noise is to have better tolerance on the motor. We are working on that and will post progress over the coming months.

Thank you for your effort on this project. I'm in for the tight tolerance solution.

 

[AHicks]

Subscribed

 

[Bubba zanetti]

Pardon me guys what is peak gear?

PEEK: The Superman of Polymers

Why is this in a Ebike forum, because I am convinced this is the wave of the future to make Ebike motors make less noise when running and yet still have plenty of power. So far only a few Ebike companies are using this tech like LUNA and I believe Watt Wagon is working on some as well. But their...

electricbikereview.com

 

[Ebiker33]

All,

Quick update on the PEEK gear.

1. We have experienced minor to catastrophic failures of the gear across all our test gears. We have experimented with all variants -

- PEEK, - initial failure at around 650 miles. Complete failure at around 1000 miles.
- PEEK with a different carbon polymer material - complete failure at 500 miles. This is unusual- were hoping to be better than PEEK, so this may also be a manufacturing defect. Regardless, it failed.
- Carbon infused PEEK. Initial failure at 1350-1400 miles. Complete failure at 2000 miles. <-- this was what we were hopeful for, and had ordered. Unfortunately it failed as well.
2. All gears were on motors tuned to Archon X1 @1800 Watts (around 180Nm of torque)

As of right now, we DO NOT recommend using PEEK in the bafang ultra, or any motor over 500W nominal / 100Nm of torque. The only realistic way of reducing noise is to have better tolerance on the motor. We are working on that and will post progress over the coming months.

Well I am very sorry this failed, is it the design mechanism of the ultra?
Because the Luna version works on the BBSHD mid drive it's rated for 1600W and 150nm.
It has 22 reviews all 5/5 stars, not one report of a failure

I am sure they have tried it on the ultra and theirs failed too, I very curious why it works on one motor with similar power but not the other.
Those that have worked on both motors might know, need a service tech to chime in, on this one.
They also have one for the Bafang M600 on there Enduro Ebike

But thank you for trying, I was just commenting on another thread, if you could make this work the military might come knocking for a stealth Ebike for special ops.

 

[pushkar]

1. I’m positive that the PEEK on m600 fails if pushed hard. In fact after our test failures I looked at some FB forums and I did find reports of failures and Luna specifically mentioning that they have experienced it too (for m600).
2. I haven’t done more research on BBSHD. It doesn’t fail even with the regular nylon gear. Almost leads me to believe that the motor is not generating the higher quoted torque.

In terms of stealth, IMO the best way to do that with higher power motors is to have better tolerance. That doesn’t require a lot of trade offs. We have that in the works. I’ll post as we make progress.

 

[pushkar]

Here is a thread I saw . May be more people are not reporting it but it absolutely fails. I do t know if this was 500W or higher but the damage to our test gears is very similar.

I did not search beyond 1 month on the group, but I would be surprised if there are no more issues.

 

[Ebiker33]

That is a picture of the ultra gear, I see Eric even chimed in saying they improved their own gear since it's inception.
Regardless I trust your testing.

 

[pushkar]

That is a picture of the ultra gear, I see Eric even chimed in saying they improved their own gear since it's inception.
Regardless I trust your testing.

May be I mis-read. I believe user Benny is saying he got the PEEK gear on the Luna X1 - which is M600 IIRC.

Regardless - no go with Ultra. We were aware of the lowering of performance for sure, but failure is just terrible So sorry about that.

 

[Ebiker33]

May be I mis-read. I believe user Benny is saying he got the PEEK gear on the Luna X1 - which is M600 IIRC.

Regardless - no go with Ultra. We were aware of the lowering of performance for sure, but failure is just terrible So sorry about that.

You are correct about the M600 gear, I was getting the two gears mixed up
This is their stock picture.

 

[AHicks]

2 thoughts. The first is the fact the BBSHD seems to be doing so well with it's OEM composite gear. I would LOVE to have a gear like this available for my Ultra.

The second may be more debatable. With the steel gear coming standard, why the focus for a composite gear that will hold up in a performance application? Am I the only one with absolutely no desire to work my Ultra in a performance mode that might have it pulling 1800w?

I'm left wondering how well that carbon infused PEEK gear would fare in an environment closer to the BBSHD environment where the motor was dialed back to OEM specs, and only rarely used at full power? I see little doubt that there are some buying Ultra's to beat the tar out of them, but in the grand scheme of things, I'm betting for every rider like that there are 25 who will never push their Ultras like that. THESE folks should be the ones catered to with a quiet gear....

 

[pushkar]

2 thoughts. The first is the fact the BBSHD seems to be doing so well with it's OEM composite gear. I would LOVE to have a gear like this available for my Ultra.

The second may be more debatable. With the steel gear coming standard, why the focus for a composite gear that will hold up in a performance application? Am I the only one with absolutely no desire to work my Ultra in a performance mode that might have it pulling 1800w?

We wanted to test if we could get the apparent best of both worlds (performance and low noise) without making wholesale changes (re-doing the motor with better tolerance)

I'm left wondering how well that carbon infused PEEK gear would fare in an environment closer to the BBSHD environment where the motor was dialed back to OEM specs, and only rarely used at full power? I see little doubt that there are some buying Ultra's to beat the tar out of them, but in the grand scheme of things, I'm betting for every rider like that there are 25 who will never push their Ultras like that. THESE folks should be the ones catered to with a quiet gear....

We are seeing failures at 1800W peak. May be there is something t be said about the ratio of the PEEK gear versus the primary gear it attaches to. size ratio I mean (like BBSHD). We definitely cannot recommend PEEK the way it stands right now. Lower power is ok I believe. Infact the original Ultra gears were nylon and the peak was 1500W, and most of them lasted a while. If we are lowering performance, PEEK is only adding cost IMO.

Bafang Ultra bare motor is nearly 14-15lbs. Bafang m600 bare motor is 6-7lbs, but struggles with heat. Where I am going with this is, IMO there is a sweet spot of a quiet motor that can do up to 1600-2kw peak, and is slightly bigger than the m600, to ensure better thermals. It may very well be that the m600 actually needs better or bigger casing.

Ultra is great at what it does. There is no motor that can do 3kW consistently.

 

[Ebiker33]

So Luna has made the PEEK gear standard on their new X2 Ebike imbedded within the M600 motor with their special controller has it running up to 2500W.
My thoughts are this, maybe it's not the wattage eating up the peak gears Pushkar was testing but the NM on the motor. It seems they reduced the NM from the standard M600 which is 120nm to just over 95nm.
I doubt Luna would put out an Ebike with this as standard if they where failing like crazy, that is a recipe for bad customer feedback.
From their website.

The X2 comes with our v2 silent gear made of peek plastic as a standard option. (normally $300 add on). This gear is wider (for more contact area) than previous gears and made from even stronger composite peek material to last longer than the original peek gears lasted. This gear also makes the bike super quiet unlike the original bafang steel gear which is about 2x as loud.......This bike features our brand new Luna Controller the Ludi v2 which is a game changer. This controller will put out up to 60 battery Amps (2500 watts).....

• Over 95NM of torque

The ultra might always be too powerful for any PEEK gear.
There is a sweat spot of power and torque and noise reduction, still waiting for that perfect combo with a gates belt which also cuts down on chain rattle.

 

[AHicks]

The ultra might always be too powerful for any PEEK gear.

The ONLY way that would make sense is if we didn't already know there are a BUNCH of the original Ultra's and BBSHD motors out there that are not having any trouble with their (nice quiet) plastic gears.

 

[Ebiker33]

The ONLY way that would make sense is if we didn't already know there are a BUNCH of the original Ultra's and BBSHD motors out there that are not having any trouble with their (nice quiet) plastic gears.

That's a very good point, so there must be other variables in play.

 

[AHicks]

That's a very good point, so there must be other variables in play.

IMHO, they ARE asking way too much from the plastic gears. If they could get that plastic to handle a steady diet of 1500w without issue, and NO more, I think we'd have a winner. If somebody has higher expectations, let them listen to the metal.....

Or am I the only one that sees that kind of power showing on the watt meter only rarely, and then just for a few seconds (as in full throttle sprint across a busy road)?

 

[greeno]

My buddy has an older BBSHD with the original white nylon gear on his hardtail Surly Wednesday bike. He rides 100% on the street, or "urban riding" as he refer's to it. He rides pretty much everyday maybe 20 miles or so so he puts a fair amount of time in on his saddle. I'm pretty sure he's all about going as fast as possible and never gives it a second thought on which gear he's in from a stop or when cruising around. His motor is probably 2 years old to boot. He's never had an issue with the motor. We opened it up a couple of months ago to add some grease and you could see nominal wear but we didn't replace anything.
The motors that are blowing the PEEK gearing maybe they don't cool as well or have proper lubrication channels to minimize resistance to keep heat down, maybe it's the electronics inside for all I know.
I'm pretty sure some day that they will figure out how to design an PEEK supplied motor for the better. I remember when bike frames were steel, "steel is real" was the saying back in my racing days. Then oversized Alum showed up, then Ti, and carbon as well, One of my old racing bikes had a Kestrel CF frame which I ended up breaking the bottom bracket on that, but I digress.
If riders kept a closer eye on their wattage display readings and acted accordingly we would probably be talking about another topic.
But as always that's just my opinion.

 

[Leon S. Kennedy]

…If riders kept a closer eye on their wattage display readings and acted accordingly we would probably be talking about another topic.
But as always that's just my opinion.

A lot of us have learned this the hard way. After I ripped up a Gates belt, I'm really careful about starting from stop at 0 or lowest power and only increasing power at higher cadences.

 

[Ebiker33]

A lot of us have learned this the hard way. After I ripped up a Gates belt, I'm really careful about starting from stop at 0 or lowest power and only increasing power at higher cadences.

So gunning it at full power in the wrong gear puts excessive pressure on parts,.
But when testing products in a R &D fashion, you replicate the stupid mistakes people make, because you want to see if the product can survive it.
If it can't, the vendor needs to decide if they can release it with a warning, or keep testing to make a better product that is stupid proof as well.
I deal with vendor that has had a very special piece of machinery in R & D for 10 years, I talked to the VP this year and it could be in R&D for another 5 years yet.
They won't release it until it's perfect.

 

[Ebiker33]

Even though this failed on the Ultra, it looks like Bolton and Watt Wagons are going to give it a shot on their combined joint effort on the M600 on the Falcon.
Falcon Emtb

 

[AHicks]

Even though this failed on the Ultra, it looks like Bolton and Watt Wagons are going to give it a shot on their combined joint effort on the M600 on the Falcon.
Falcon Emtb

Not familiar. What failed with the Ultra?

Never mind. I figured it out. You're referring to the new gear. I thought you were talking about a frame failure or something.

So with an M600 and aftermarket controller, we have a powerfull quiet motor with a controller that we can configure/get away from the junk OEM settings. Sounds like a winner from where I'm sitting....