Hello
I might get one of Maxon motors and I want to use it with ODrive but I still don’t if ODrive can control such motors or it is dedicated to only hobby motors. The first thing I noticed is that the wires of Maxon motors are very different from hobby motors, also the mechanical and electrical properties are very different from hobby motors and I don’t know how ODrive can handle that.
How are the wires different?
Maxon make a lot of DC brushed motors. If it has two wires, then it’s a brushed motor and ODrive will not be much help in controlling it.
If it has four wires, then it’s (probably) a brushless motor with a ground wire. Connect the three phase wires as normal, and connect the ground wire to the negative side of the power supply or battery, or to Earth.
Mechanically, they tend to be in-running motors, so they will have lower inertia and lower torque constant, but they might have a gearbox. ODrive should handle this just fine.
ODrive is not dedicated to hobby motors - it can control any 3 phase AC motor (this includes brushless “DC” motors) but it can only go up to 56V. It will work with industrial motors designed for hundreds of volts, but the speed and control performance will be much lower than a drive that has 600 volts available.
Suck it and see. 
I’m using the ODrive to control 2 Maxon EC flat 90 motors with MILE encoders. This required me to make a custom ODrive shield that decodes the differential encoder signals to straightforward AB signals. But it’s definitely possible to use Maxon motors with the ODrive :).
Do you mind to share how do you convert the differential encoder signal to singled ended signal? My motor having A+,A-, B+,B- encoder as well, current I just connect the A+,B+ and gnd. I am really interest if I can purchase any board to convert the differential to signal to single endeed.
@sgwong513 What you want is a “Triple RS-422 Reciever” e.g. https://www.maximintegrated.com/en/products/interface/transceivers/MAX3097E.html
@sgwong513 I designed a PCB shield specifically for my application but you can get by if you buy the normal adapter board: https://oshpark.com/shared_projects/JfDf458t with components: https://octopart.com/bom-tool/bUMGyQwH. You have to solder the stuff yourself though.
Hi @rowanG,
I am currently trying to bring-up a Maxon EC flat 90 with MILE encoder motor using the ODrive Pro
May you tell me the gains you used (pos_gain, vel_gain, vel_integrator_gain)
Moreover, can I use a differential encoder with the ODrive Pro and simply ground the “neg” channels and connect only the “pos” channels?