Company name: Mid-drive motor
Research fields: equipment manufacturing, intelligent manufacturing, high-speed motors
Company introduction: Zhongdrive Motor Co., Ltd. was founded on August 17, 2016. It is a professional R&D and production provider of high-speed brushless DC motors, hub servo motors, drive controllers and other system solutions. It is a national high-tech enterprise and its independent The independently developed high-speed brushless DC motor and drive control technology is a global leader and has obtained invention patents from Japan, South Korea and other countries. Foreign Monopoly Patent Barriers
In April 2016, Dyson released the world’s first high-speed hair dryer in Japan, the core component of which is a motor (high-speed motor). The birth of high-speed motors was announced. Compared with traditional brushed DC motors, Dyson’s motor not only rotates up to 110,000 rpm, but also weighs only about 54 grams.
In addition, Dyson also uses brushless motor technology to generate electromagnetic force through digital pulse technology to drive the rotor rotation. Such investment in innovation has allowed Dyson to gain an absolute technological position in the field of home appliances and even form a monopoly in the global high-end market. Due to patent barriers, domestic manufacturers have to adopt solutions that bypass Dyson’s patents in the design of hair dryers.
Dyson Supersonic™ hair dryer and Dyson founder James Dyson (Photo source: Internet)
Plagiarism and imitation is the first? Choose second place for mid-drive motor
Faced with today’s market conditions, users’ demand for hair dryers is increasing. In 2022, domestic production and sales of high-speed hair dryers are expected to reach 4 million units. From the perspective of global market demand, by 2027, the global market share of high-speed hair dryers will reach 50%, and the market size will exceed 100 million units.
In the face of Dyson’s monopoly and the huge demand in the domestic market, Kuang Gangyao, the founder of the mid-drive motor company, decided to develop his own high-speed motor with new technology, giving China’s small home appliances a chance to catch up and overtake Dyson. .
But at the time, companies had only two options: First, directly copy Dyson’s patented technology.
When Kuang Gangyao, the founder of mid-drive motors, was researching Dyson products, he found that a large number of peers chose to directly copy Dyson’s technical achievements and motor structures because of the difficulty of technological innovation.
Kuang Ganghui, Founder of Zhongdrive Motor
In Kuang Ganggyi’s view, “They can save money and time by doing this, but in the end they will not last long.” These companies have left their fate to Dyson. Once Dyson initiates a patent lawsuit, these companies will Enterprises will face losing lawsuits or even bankruptcy.
This is not what mid-drive motors want. Mid-drive motors hope to be independent and develop their own core technologies and products. (This is the second option for enterprises: independent innovation)
The road is obstructed and long, and the road is approaching
From 2017 to 2019, it took three years for the mid-drive motor to overcome Dyson’s patent barriers and successfully develop another motor structure; from 2019 to 2021, it took another two years to solve the problem. Technological problems in the production process of products.
Kuang Gangyao revealed that the research and development process was very tortuous: at the beginning, they tried to figure out how the functions of Dyson technology were realized, and began to use Dyson’s technology as a reference. Therefore, the first phase of products still has obvious traces of Dyson, and there are many problems from a patent perspective.
Reflecting on the entire process, the mid-drive motor R&D team found that if they always focused on Dyson’s products and technologies, they would always complicate the problem and lose their way.
The team found that traditional motors have a long history of development, but they have not achieved high-speed functions. So under the guidance of founder Kuang Gangyou, they decided to think about high-speed motors from the underlying logic and focused on “why traditional motors cannot achieve high speed”.
Mid-drive high-speed motor series (Picture source: Mid-drive motor official website)
The main difference is that the high-speed motor adopts a single-phase cantilever beam structure, while the traditional motor adopts the two-pole three-phase structure of the traditional motor. Dyson’s high-speed motor is a single-phase brushless motor.
We have been researching mid-drive motors for five years, and have iterated on three generations of products, conducting research and experiments in multiple fields and disciplines such as high-speed motor structure, fluid simulation calculations, electromagnetic analysis and optimization, materials, and precision manufacturing. They also made a lot of technological innovations, and then invented the inner rotor structure, which is the structure of the traditional motor. Finally, they developed a two-pole three-phase brushless motor structure, successfully avoiding the Dyson single-phase structure and driving The control principle also avoids Dyson’s patented technology, and successfully develops a high-speed motor that is comparable to foreign counterparts.
At present, mid-drive motors have formed a series of high-speed motor product lineups with outer diameters of 25mm, 27mm, 28.8mm, 32.5mm, 36mm, 40mm, and 53mm, becoming a high-speed motor manufacturer with rich product series and strong development capabilities.
In this way, Mid-Drive Motor has slowly evolved from a company that only produces motors to a service provider with excellent product system solutions.
According to a reporter from “Electrical Appliances”, Zhongdrive Motor is the only Chinese company that has broken through the technical and patent barriers of its foreign counterparts. It has obtained 2 international invention patents, 7 domestic utility model patents and 3 invention patents (substantial review), and is still in the process of Continuously apply for new patent protection.
In 2023, Mid-Drive Motor will prepare to establish a high-speed motor engineering research center to engage in basic theoretical research on high-speed motors.
The editor believes that “there are always some people who have thought of something and done something for the public in advance. It may be a little exaggerated, but its value lies in the history of the development of manufacturing in China.” In breaking foreign barriers and developing high-speed motors, mid-drive motors have always adhered to the belief that “the road is long but the road is long, and progress is coming”.
Post time:
Sep-08-2023
