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Hi there!

Is it possible to operate 2 brushless motors on one ESC as long as the ESC's voltage and current/amp limits are not exceeded?

Gohmer

Yes

Walt Thyng

My Feedback: (9)

The general consensus is "No." I do know of a couple of guys who have had success with very tiny motors.
Walt

exeter_acres

My Feedback: (2)

To answer the exact question....Gohmer is correct....

to answer the real world and will you in reality get it to work reliably? Walt Thyng is correct...


Due to timing, current differences, etc. etc.

it almost never works...

best to run an ESC to each motor.

pilotpete2

Another way to look at it.
Trying to run two BLDC motors with one ESC, is like two guys trying to dance with one girl. At some point someones toes will get stepped on
Pete

Teenage Pilot 14

It's actually been shown to work very, very well. You can even have one motor heavily loaded and the other spinning free and it'll still work fine. The only major disadvantage is that the efficiency isn't what it could be if two separate ESCs were used.

Someone did extensive testing with a variety of different motors and found no real problems with it. If you REALLY want to use only one ESC, go for it. Just be warned that it'll be a less-efficient option...

http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1357604

Dr Kiwi

It's actually been shown to work very, very well.

I would argue that it hardly ever been found to work consistently, reliably or very well!

Julez has said:
One factor to make a brushless system efficient is to have exactly identical coil windings in each stator part of a single motor, and exactly identical magnets.
If any winding/magnet pairing has different electromagnetical properties than the average of the rest, the ESC will not be able to provide it with current perfectly timed.
Only a motor with identical winding/magnet pairings will be able to achieve top-notch efficiency.
This is one factor, why low-quality brushless motors, especially inrunners, have considerble less efficiency than brand-name products.
Cheap inrunners are made by workers with low skills, who jam the wires in there some way, but certainly not in an identical way.
Because of this, the ESC cannot power the motor properly, as it requires a different timing in each fraction of a single turn. As the ESC cannot do this, one loses efficiency due to incorrect timing.
A motor with identical windings will require the same timing always in each turn, something easily to achieve for the ESC.

Once one has understood this concept, it becomes clear that two motors on a single esc will never be efficient. They will never be as perfectly in sync with the ESC as a single motor would be. The esc sees the average from the two motors, but each motor sees the single pulses from the ESC. As the motors vary slightly, one motor will have a timing a little off in one direction, the other one will have it off in the other direction, so that both do not work at the perfect point.

This means that although it is possible to power multiple motors with a single ESC, it should not be done in practical applications where efficiency and reliability count.
Doing RC stuff is a hobby for me, I want my stuff to work and not to bug me with problems in my spare time.