Patent 7906880 was granted and assigned to Mitsuba Corporation on March, 2011 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
In a brushless motor including a rotor having 2n poles and a stator having 3n slots, segment magnets are arranged in three columns in the axial direction, thus constituting rotor poles. The segment magnets of adjacent columns, which are identical in polarity, are displaced in the circumferential direction, thus forming a three-stage step-skew structure. The skew angle θskew of each segment magnet is set to an electrical angle of 60° to 75°. The center angle of θm of each segment magnet is set to 46.8° to 52.7°.