Simply put, these are the motors that power your quadcopter. They need to be hooked up to an electronic speed controller which will regulate the voltage that goes to it in order to control the speed. These motors come in two ways: clockwise or counter clockwise (Usually denoted as CW and CCW, respectively). However, this does not represent the direction that the motor will spin in. All motors spin the same way (usually clockwise) and in order to reverse the direction, you just switch any two of the three wires that are connected to the electronic speed controller (ESC). The clockwise/counter clockwise on the packaging represents the direction that the propeller cap is screwed on. I’ll get into the details of why 2 need to be CW and two need to be CCW later. 

 

 

Here are a couple of stats that you might see when purchasing a motor:

 

KV- rating - This gives you the amount of RPM the motor is capable of producing when suppled one volt. For example if you have a 1000 kv motor, that means when you supply 1 volt, it can pump out 1000 rpm and if you supply 2, it can pump out 2000 rpm. 

 

Always buy 2CW and 2CCW!!

Read the comment section before you buy any product because sometimes product descriptions can be misleading. Look at some of the reviews and questions customers had. This goes the same for all of these drone components. Remember, if you’re an amazon prime member, you’ll lose about 6 or 7 dollars off of what you paid for if you have to return something. 

 

Sometimes you might see this phrase: “motor for 1045 prop”

I’ll get more into this later but prop stands for propeller and the 1045 gives the dimensions of that propeller. See propeller section for more info. 

 

Try to get motors that generate double the amount of thrust that your quadcopter will end up weighing. So the motors I used could give a total of 8 pounds of thrust so I aimed to keep my quadcopter under 4 pounds. Most motors you buy won’t provide a thrust spec simple because it just depends on what propeller you throw on it.

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