Design secrets of Dewalt XR brushless tools

The electronupdate blog does reverse engineering on Dewalt XR brushless tools:

If one cracks open the case, one finds a brushless motor and then a bunch of electronics hidden inside a potted module.  Unlike a brushed-motor design where the “electronics” is mostly a capacitor and a switch, a brushless design has some seriously more complex things going on.

With the coils being stationary one needs to drive them with an AC pattern to get the rotor to spin.  And that’s complex indeed. 1st one needs some powerful transistors and drivers in a thermally competent housing.

The other unique thing about brushless is the need for feedback to a microprocessor controller. That leaves the final piece of the puzzle: a 20 MIPs processor with DSP functions (single cycle multiply and accumulate, MAC).

Another example of the amazing march of technology. 20 MIPs CPU… dedicated to driving a motor.

See the video below and more in the post here.


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