The Eclipse Series is our latest motor generation, built around a simple...
| EGODRIFT
Recorded on July 4th, this Summer News episode is the moment the Eclipse series got its name. Vincent explains where the new motors come from, why the Beta Series existed in the first place, and what changes across the whole lineup — including the discontinuation of the 4525HS and 4530HS models.
In this video:
Ever since EGODRIFT started making heli motors in 2018/2019, the custom stator developed for the 45xx models — an 18-month development of its own — has been the heart of what made them work. Summer '24 completed the same development for the smaller 40 mm and 42 mm stator sizes. The new series name says exactly that: Eclipse, or "EC", references the EGODRIFT Custom stator inside.
The first model of the series, the Tengu 4230EC Eclipse, is rebuilt from the ground up: a recessed bottom that is almost entirely cooling slots, a fully slotted top, deepened side grooves for more heat-dissipating surface, the EGODRIFT custom stator with new magnets, a new bell to house them, and larger bearings sized for 700–760 blades. Testing covered the two main target applications — trending light/ultralight 700 helis and scale builds:
"the 4230 that we've tested in a small, narrow Cobra fuselage was running extremely cool and efficient" — Vincent
For scale builders that matters, because many scale mechanics force a sub-45 mm motor diameter, where the traditionally used 4035's tall, narrow form factor was never ideal thermally. Beyond that, Vincent sees the 4230 in F3C and performance 580–610 builds as an alternative to the 4030 and 4035.
The Beta Series was always named for the one part still missing: the custom stator. With it finished, the 4025 and 4030HT models get full Eclipse counterparts — outwardly similar, internally redesigned around the new stator with different shaft diameter, bearings, magnets and bell.
Two HS models — the 4525HS and 4530HS — begin a slow discontinuation: the HT versions turned out to cost far less flight time than conservatively assumed, to the point of none at all. The Scale Collection gains selected models built from the 4230 and the Tengu 4525HT and Tengu 4530HT. And after never adjusting prices since 2018, rising material and production costs led to a July 15th price update — announced with a grace window to order at the old prices, alongside the first mention of the new website project.
Hi everybody and welcome, this is Vincent from EGODRIFT. Thank you very much for being here with us today, especially if you're in the US - Happy Independence Day, Happy July 4th! I hope you get to enjoy some good food, family and fireworks and I think we got our own little bit of fireworks here today with the release info for our first of the new Eclipse Motors, the 4230. So ever since we started making heli motors back in 2018/2019, one of the main factors that made our 45xx motors so great was the custom stator that we developed for them over the course of 18 months, and we're really happy and excited to share with you that we have finally finished a similar development for our smaller motors, namely the 40 mm and 42 mm diameter stator sizes.
The first model to come from the new series, which we're calling "Eclipse", or "EC", which is also reference for the EGODRIFT Custom stator in them, is the new 4230 Eclipse and as you can maybe see it's a complete redesign. It has, let me see if I can / the camera grabs that, it has a recessed bottom, the bottom is now almost entirely cooling slots, the top is entirely cooling slots, the grooves on the side have been deepened to increase the surface for better heat dissipation, inside is our EGODRIFT custom stator with special new magnets around it, a new bell to house the new magnets, different sized bearings to better handle those larger 700 to 760 size blades - and we're really excited to see what this motor can do.
We've tested it in two of the main applications that we see for this - namely the trending light and super light /ultra light 700 size helis, as well as scale builds to replace the 4035 stator size which we've always had a bit of a love/hate-relation with, because in a lot of scale machines the mechanics limit you to a sub-45 diameter motoro size and the 4035 size that has traditionally be used in it is less than ideal for thermal/heat dissipation or thermal dissipation due to its high and narrow form factor and the 4230 that we've tested in a small, narrow cobra fuselage was running extremely cool and efficient - and we've seen similar results from testing it in a light 700 build, so we're really excited to see what this can do.
The other two applications that we see it being really good for is f3c flying and performance 580 to 610 builds, as an alternative to the 4030 and the 4035 models and maybe even some 45s / applications in which 45 has traditionally been used. Once the launch of the 42 size is complete or the 4230 motor is complete we're going to turn to replacing the current Beta series 4025 and 4030HT models with their Eclipse counterparts, so we have a new development for this as well and while the 4025 and 4030 models are at first glance going to look almost exactly like the Beta series models, the motors internally have been completely redesigned. There is not only a custom EGODRIFTstator in them but also different internal shaft diameter, different bearings, different magnets, a different bell to house that and the motors are going to be almost as impressive as our 45 size I believe.
So you're still going to notice / still going to see drastic improvements in performance and power and efficiency, and a temperature improvement over the current Beta Series models. The Beta Series has been called Beta Series because they were still in beta for that one missing par,t which was the custom EGODRIFT stator, that we have now completed, but the new stator basically made it necessary to redesign the entire motor around it to bring out all its glory - and we're really excited to have that coming in the next one or two month as well. Secondly we're going to stop, slowly discontinue the 4525HS and 4530HS models. When we released the HT versions, we very conservatively assumed that the flight time reduction, due to the 15 to 20% bigger power, could be around the same 10-15% and the past experiences have shown that the flight time reduction has been far less than that, to the point where it's either non-existent or even yielding additional flight time over the HS models.
So we're safe, or we're confident that we can safely remove and discontinue the 4525HS and 4530HS models from our lineups in the future. The other thing that we want to do, as a lot of people love the Scale Collection, especially from our scale builders, they love, they really like the scale design that we made for them - so over the course of the next weeks we're also going to make some new scale, some very selected, scale models from the new 4230 and 4525HT and 4530HT models to have some scale offerings from these models as well. And lastly we have ever since we started in 2018 never adjusted our prices, but ever since the pandemic where raw materials and production costs have really gone up, we are now at a point where, effective July 15th, we're going to update all our prices and until that day you still have the chance to order at the old prices, but we're also working on a new website and in the process of setting up all the new products and migrating everything to the new store, we are going to start with the new prices and we've also already informed our dealers to adjust their prices accordingly.
So until July 15th you'll still have the chance to order at the old prices but from that day on forward you will be seeing new prices for our models. The 4230 is also already going to be available over the next couple, so we're going to send out the information to our dealers very soon, and over the next 2 or 3 days, with all the models that we are still testing the last final KVs for, so you your dealers should be getting all the information - go to your local EGODRIFT/ your favorite EGODRIFT dealer and let them know that you're interested because the 4230s are going to be coming very soon. Well thank you very much for tuning in, have a great July 4th and Ihope this video wasn't too long - Thank you very much for sticking with us to the end have a great season, thank you very much and we're really excited to see what you're going to do with our new models.
Thank you very much, and bye bye.
