Got around to finishing the software to drive the RC style speed controller.

It lags... terribly... even in it's 'fast' mode. It seems to be averaging the input signals before generating things. So on the start of a line, it spins up late. On short lines, it doesn't spin up at all.

It also obviously switches it's MOSFETs in the audible range making for a pretty annoying printer.

I got excited when I started looking around for alternate firmware. Lots of work has been done for flashing crappy ESC's to perform better. I figured out which ESC I had and checked for a better firmware for it. Alas it has a SiLabs chip, and BLHeli doesn't support it. I'm basically out of luck.

My attention turned to the quad motor. It has 12 poles. My initial thought was to rewire it to be a bipolar stepper and drive it with a stepstick. Well, it also has 14 magnets, so it needs the three phase drive to keep things spinning. That's a dead end as well.

Hobbyking had a decent 20A ESC already flashed with the SimonK firmware. It supports 1khz update rates, has OneShot125 support for zero lag, and has an I2C header I could use as an alternative to PWM encoding. At $10 shipped from the US, I'm investing in one.