The new light-weight series is based on the NOVA family of rugged inrunner BLDC motors and was specifically designed for weight sensitive applications, such as airborne uncrewed systems. The new series is significantly lighter than the regular NOVA series, while offering the same rugged design.

The new light-weight series was first released with the “NOVA 15-20 LW”, which has up to 8 kW of peak shaft power, up to 12 Nm of peak torque and up to 300 N of peak thrust (30×10” prop). Plettenberg plans rolling out the light-weight series to all other motors of the NOVA family.

The engineering team at Plettenberg completed a comprehensive re-design of the entire motor. The housing was revised, with lighter casing and shaft, new cooling fin design as well as optionality for rear or front mounting. In addition, lighter and more efficient bearings as well as a new integrated prop coupling system specifically for UAV applications has been added. The new motor is available with different sensor types.

The weight of the motor incl. prop coupling is 1,440 grams, which equates to a saving of up to 15% vs. the standard version.

Like the regular NOVA series, the new series can be tailored to the specific load profile of the customer. Possible changes include housing and shaft design, number of poles, winding, cooling, sensors, etc. The NOVA light-weight series comes with ingress protection of 54 as standard.

“Plettenberg has long been a leader in building robust drive solutions with very favorable power-to-weight ratios,” said Plettenberg CEO Bastian Greiner. “With our new light-weight series we set a new standard for rugged inrunner BLDC motors. We designed this new series specifically for our customers in the uncrewed systems market, which are looking to apply the motor in harsh environments but need to save every gram of weight to maximize endurance.”