[Adam Y.]

Originally Posted by EricVanWyk

Claiming that this is too difficult for a FIRST student is simply begging to be proven wrong. I'm betting it can be done entirely with KoP items and some creativity.

I've tried motor testing before. I use the word try because the electronics were apt to blowing up while the motor was running. The underlying process is fairly simple but can't be done with only KoP items. You need a generator and a huge load bank that can handle large amounts of power. Another motor will not work (Actually tried that first) because of the fact that a generator and a motor are wound differently. The load bank is also a problem because you have to dissipate the power produced by the motor in a manner that is safe (I was working with 120V heater elements). As for measuring torque we used a torquemeter:
http://www.himmelstein.com/
Aligning such a device between the generator and the motor was a pain and it typically made ears bleed as we did not have the best ability to align the three things together. The noise was horrendous. Measuring motor speed was the easy part since it was a brushless motor. We just measured the magnet ticks off the back. I would say that most FIRST teams would not have the resources to do this. A generator motor costs a couple hundred of dollars. The torquemeter has to be fairly expensive. We were using Labview and a DAQ card to obtain the data. The load isn't necessairly a problem you just would need a hundred lightbulbs and their corresponding sockets which I guess is a hundred to two hundred dollars.

This isn't rocket surgery, and the first order linear model of a brushed DC motor is good enough for anything we do here.

I don't think it's first order though. I think it's actually third order.