[Kevin Sevcik]

*chokes on drink* umm... I recommend just relying on the published data, unless your team has quite a surplus of money, batteries, and motors. While Tom's suggestion for getting no-load speed is easily doable, trying to measure stall torque is going to get rather expensive and hair-raising on some of the motors. Specifically, the small CIMs. If you're trying to measure characteristics at 12V, the CIMs have a stall current of 133A. Which is a lot. You'll be needing a power supply that won't sag much under this kind of load (possibly a bank of 5 FRC batteries), plus a clamp on ammeter that you trust more than the data sheets. Plus a torque wrench that you trust more than the data sheets that can actually measure torques in the range we're interested in. (21-22 in-lb for a CIM at 12V)

Now granted, you can decrease the voltage on the CIM to decrease the stall current and stall torque (mostly linearly), but then you'll have an even tougher time measuring the torque accurately enough.

And that's just the CIM. Our various other motors will all present their own problems, of course. Like the fisher-price motors being likely to melt if you stall them, and having ridiculously low stall torques anyways. Plus no-load speeds likely to give your encoder or tach fits. Or the window, van door, or globe motors, where the output is going to depend on the efficiency of particular motor's gear box.

So. It's possible to build a setup to measure all these different parameters, but it's going to be more difficult than a simple tach and torque wrench. And you're quite likely going to lose some of the motors you're testing. So, really, I think you and/or your mentors need to examine just how accurate they actually need these numbers and how many motors you're willing to sacrifice and/or beat up to get reliable numbers.

Oh, didn't I mention that? Chances are you're going to want to test multiple different samples of each kind of motor, to make sure the numbers you're running with aren't from a fluke motor that's extra bad or good. So atleast 3 samples, but 5 or more would get you better data. Oh. And the multiple runs on each motor in both directions to check for hysteresis. Plus, you'll be wanting to calibrate all your testing equipment to make sure it's giving you those super accurate readings you're looking for. Plus.... Well. 4+ paragraphs probably carries the point of how much work you'll likely need to do to get more reliable numbers that we've got as of right now.