DavecUK It says 50-60hz on it and 220-240v. Very little indication it’s DC, other than what the website says. DC rectified with that circuit would give us 340v~ in the UK. Gearbox reduces the speed/increases the torque, and will be the primary method of reducing revs. To vary speed you’d generally want to modulate the gearbox rather than voltage. May also be possible that the randomly huge resistor on the board is doing it, but you’d question why that wasn’t done at gearbox level (as above.)
Else they designed the gearbox, and the motor changed so they needed to stick on that huge resistor. If Niche want to send me an old unit to tear down, I’m happy to correct myself but for now the evidence says its an AC motor. (which there’s nothing wrong with.)
I had a google now and this is a guy on reddit who seems to share a lot of my opinions on it: (he even calculates rectified voltage almost as I do, only our opinions on the resistor seem to diverge a lot)
"I am an EE and was fascinated by that electronics board. What is it even doing there? It’s an AC motor and a switch, yet, there are four beefy diodes that I presume form a full bridge rectifier, ad well as a huge power resistor. Is this all for the little light? There do not appear to be any active components on the board, so we can rule out speed control or anything fancy like that.
It just seems strangely over-complex for what it needs to do."
"Either the label on the motor or the claim on the Indiegogo page is wrong then. Just from seeing the electronics in the video, I can see a rectifier and some passives, nothing more. If you rectify AC power where I live, you get ~170VDC, and there are no markings on that motor that suggest that is the voltage it should run at. If I were in the UK, that number would be ~330VDC, also not on the label.
A DC motor will normally have a motor controller, as well as feedback to control the speed, etc, none of which are here. It wouldn’t make sense to put a DC motor in there and then run it “open loop” without control.
Honestly, is that it is an AC motor, but I guess I’d have to disassemble my unit to see, and I’m not gonna."
ps. I wouldn’t say it’s the ‘ideal’ polymer, but it’s fine. Cheap and cheerful to replace too in the event of failures, even if the company is no longer around.