How To Choose The Right Motor

The simplest way is to order one of the kits and assemble any motor described on this site following the detailed assembly instructions.
You can try to design and build the motor yourself from your own materials based on descriptions available at How it works section. You can buy parts in special electronic stores. Be advised, however, that some of the parts required for these motors, such as heavy duty reed switches, are not sold in Radio Shack and other general electronics stores. You may purchase these parts at the ordering page (shipping expenses are generally low).
You can build a simple reed switch motor without buying a kit as described at Assembly Instructions: Simple Motor You Can Build Yourself. Again, you may order the parts you need on this site.

It is recommended to buy one of the kits instead of building it yourself for the following reasons:

	There are 8 different kits. They include everything you need to build the corresponding electric motor. Kits contain 22-39 carefully made and selected parts. For example, this is what you get when you order Kit #8.
	These motors use professionally made parts but at the same time they have a "self-made" charm and appearance.
	The axle in the motors sticks out to allow you to attach anything desired. For example, a fan (propeller), colored disks, or anything else using a rubber plug (included). This gives you the opportunity to conduct many experiments. The build-it-yourself motor lacks this ability.
	The kits contain parts that were carefully designed and tested many times. That significantly improves your chances to build the motor successfully. It is very easy to assemble these motors from the kits.
	Unless you have most of the parts at home the kits are cheaper. It also saves you several trips to different stores.
	The motors from the kits are transportable: you may easily move them around; they work in any position.

Buying Tips For Individuals:

The kits provided on this site are great educational tools in helping to learn basics of electricity, magnetism and electronics. All of these kits are extremely simple to build. Kits #1-4 are the simplest and are suitable for ages 9 and above. Kits #5-7 are also easy to build, however they are based on a more complicated theory and may be used in middle/high schools and even at college/university level.

If you want to see how all these different motors work you may be interested in buying Kit #8. It includes the parts necessary to build all of the motors (not at the same time).

If you need an electric motor for a school science project you may select any kit. However, a good science project requires a lot of experiments. You may compare two or more of these motors. This comparison is valid and accurate as all the motors share the same mechanical design. You may visit the About Myself / My Project section to see how my project looked or you may order the Project CD that contains complete project information. For your project you may select any combination of kits # 4, 5, 6, and 7.

You may also compare any of the brushless motors shown on our web site to the conventional motor. It could be a simple conventional (Beakman's) motor - we provide a kit to build one. Or you may choose one of the industrial brushless or conventional motors that we also offer at our ordering page.

If you plan to conduct experiments you may purchase one of the experimentation kits. With experimentation kit #1 you can build a variable speed reed switch motor.

Every kit includes all parts necessary for complete motor assembly. However, if you plan to experiment with these motors, you may want to order backup parts in case that any of them break. The parts that might be broken include the reed switch, hall effect switch, optointerrupter, and transistor.

Buying Tips For Organizations:

As of August 2005 36 universities and high schools in the United States and other countries successfully used the kits in educational process.

There is a volume discount for large orders, which is calculated automatically:

15 - 49 kits: 5%
50 - 99 kits: 7.5%
100 or more kits: 10%

Purchase orders are acceptable from educational organizations.

How It Works: [Reed Switch Motor] [Transistor Based Motor] [Hall Effect Motor] [Optointerrupter Motor]
Assembly Instructions: [Kits #1-4] [Kit #5] [Kit #6] [Kit #7] [Kit #8] [Build It Yourself Motor] [Conv.Motor] [Exp.Kit #1] [Exp.Kit #2]
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