Patent ID: 7471026

Claim:
A brushless electric motor, comprising: a housing; a pair of disc-shaped end plates fixed relative to the housing in spaced, generally parallel relationship to each other, each end plate having a center recess for receiving a bearing; a pair of bearings respectively positioned within the recesses of the end discs; a motor shaft rotatably journalled in the bearings in the end plates for rotation about its axis; a stator assembly supported by the housing intermediate the end plates and through which the motor shaft passes, the stator assembly including a plurality of individual wire-wound coils in an overlapped toroidal array around the axis of the shaft, an over-molded plastic encasement about the array of coils with wire leads from the coils extending out of the encasement, and the over-molded encasement having circular recesses in opposite faces thereof; and a pair of disc-shaped rotor assemblies fixed to the motor shaft and respectively disposed substantially entirely within the circular recesses in the opposite faces of the stator assembly inside the end plates, each rotor assembly being laminated to include a magnet disc and a flux return disc secured to the magnet disc, the magnet disc being solid and of homogeneous metal material with a plurality of permanent magnet sectors of alternating polarity incited directly into the solid metal material of the disc in a ring-like pattern of permanent magnet sectors generally aligned radially with the array of wire wound coils of the stator assembly.