Description
The T500 Thruster is our next-generation thruster with over three times as much thrust as the T200 Thruster. We designed it for high-power ROVs, surface vessels, and AUVs, as well as human-carrying applications like kayaks. It’s carefully designed to be rugged, powerful, and flexible in many applications.
The T500 is designed to achieve its maximum performance of 16.1 kg (35.5 lb) of thrust at an operating voltage of 24V and power consumption of just over 1 kW. That said, it also operates well at 16V, the voltage of our BlueROV2 and lithium-ion battery. At 16V, it consumes a similar amount of power to the T200 Thruster, but is more efficient and generates 70% more thrust.
Patented Flooded Thruster Design
Like the T200, the T500 Thruster leverages our patented flooded thruster design, which is water-cooled, water-lubricated, and inherently pressure tolerant. It has an encapsulated stator and motor windings, a ruggedized and corrosion resistant magnet rotor, and high-performance plastic bearings. The body and propeller are made from impact resistant glass-filled polycarbonate plastic.
The T500 Thruster is a three-phase sensorless brushless motor and requires an electronic speed controller (ESC) for operation. We recommend the Basic ESC 500, which is designed for the high-power requirements of the T500 running at 24V, however, if you’re operating at 18V or less, you may also use the original Basic ESC without any reduction in performance.
Designed and Tested for Reliability
The T500 Thruster was designed with an emphasis on reliability and robustness in challenging applications.
The magnet rotor is significantly improved over that in the T200 Thruster. The rotor has rugged construction with high-performance N52 neodymium magnets, protected by a metal abrasion shield lining the inside of the rotor. This prevents the magnets from being damaged due to debris or sand in the thruster.
A new overlapping design between elements of the propeller, base, and tail cone minimize the chance of particulate, sand, or seaweed entering and jamming the thruster.
We validated the T500 through hundreds of hours of testing under extreme conditions. We pushed our test units through thousands of cycles, hot and cold temperatures, and extreme pressures.
Easy to Integrate
The T500 Thruster is intended to be integrated into a wide range of different applications with ease. The nozzle includes four M4 mounting screws and can be attached to ROV frames, boat hulls, or just about anything!
It comes with a 1.5 m (59 in) cable with a pre-installed WetLink Penetrator to make it easy to connect to a watertight enclosure or other housing. The penetrator has an M14 thread size and requires larger holes than we have on most of our watertight enclosure end caps. Several new end caps will be available soon to accommodate the M14 thread size.
Diving In
The T500 Thruster comes ready to use and includes both clockwise and counterclockwise propellers. In addition to the thruster, you need a speed controller like the Basic ESC 500, a power source like our battery, and a signal source, such as our Thruster Commander, an RC radio receiver, or a microcontroller like the Arduino or Raspberry Pi.
There is a wealth of available technical information, charts, code examples, and tutorials on the Technical Details and Guides sections of this page as well as support through our online forum community.
With more thrust, there are more possibilities! We’re excited to see what you do with it.
Contents
1 x T500 Thruster with WetLink Penetrator pre-installed
1 x Clockwise propeller (installed on thruster)
1 x Counterclockwise propeller
1 x Penetrator nut and O-ring
