Although [Jamie’s Brick Jams] has made many far more complicated motor design in the past, it’s nice to go back to the basics and make a motor that uses as few parts as possible. This particular design starts off with a driver coil and a magnetic rotor that uses two neodymium magnets. By balancing these […]
The electric vehicle revolution has created market forces to drive all sorts of innovations. Battery technology has progressed at a rapid pace, and engineers have developed ways to charge vehicles at ever more breakneck rates. Similarly, electric motors have become more powerful and more compact, delivering greater performance than ever before. In the latter case, […]
Compromise is key to keeping a team humming along. Say one person wants an inrunner electric motor, and the other prefers outrunner. What to do? Well, if you work at [Deep Drive], the compromise position is a dual-rotor setup that they claim can be up to 20% more efficient than standard designs. In a recent […]
If you take the wheels off a FIAT Punto, you might just notice that those rims fit nicely on a rail. [AT Lab] did, and the resulting build makes for a very watchable video. Some of us have been known to spend a little too much time chasing trains, and there’s little on rails that […]
Over on his YouTube channel [Ryan Inis] has a video about how electrostatic motors are breaking all the rules. He explains that these days most motors are electromagnetic but suggests that may be changing as the age-old principles of electrostatics are being explored again, particularly due to the limited supply of rare-earth magnets and other materials […]
The first attempt at replicating William McLellan’s miniature motor. (Credit: Chronova Engineering, YouTube) How small can an electric motor be without resorting to manufacturing methods like lithography? In a recent video, [Chronova Engineering] on YouTube tries to replicate the 1960 McLellan motor that fulfilled [Richard Feynman]’s challenge requirements. This challenge was part of [Feynman]’s 1959 […]
Electrostatic motors are now common in MEMS applications, but researchers at the University of Wisconsin and spinoff C-Motive Technologies have brought macroscale electrostatic motors back. [via MSN/WSJ] While the first real application of an electric motor was Ben Franklin’s electrostatically-driven turkey rotisserie, electromagnetic type motors largely supplanted the technology due to the types of materials […]
If you’re a seasoned international rail traveler you will no doubt have become used to the various sounds of electric locomotives and multiple units as they start up. If you know anything about electronics you’ll probably have made the connection between the sounds and their associated motor control schemes, but unless you’re a railway engineer […]