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Author Topic: EZ Spin motor - homebuild  (Read 55736 times)
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Lasersaber made mention of using tantalums on his EZ Spin...aha, makes sense with the low leakage !

Yep Centraflow, the 'trick' as it were is mentioned in the description box over at YouTube.
The 2nd is an unpowered rotor - all magnets are North outward
The 3rd is an unpowered rotor - all magnets are South outward
It was surprising that it worked though, thinking it all had to be the same as regular mechanical cogs.
:)


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Hi Steve,

Unfortunately, leakage current for supercaps are usually not readily given in data sheets, exception are perhaps the biggest manufacturers.  This is my conclusion after some search, and I have also been aware of tantalum caps being among the low leakage types.  Here is some info on capacitor properties, found useful in the search:
http://www.delta.dk/imported/images/DELTA_Web/documents/Innovation/capacitors-for-energy-harvesting.pdf 

Yet another useful collection on the self discharge property of different capacitor types is here:
http://www.robotroom.com/Capacitor-Self-Discharge-2.html

Sorry that I cannot really offer a particular type, with links, so far I found for instance AVX capacitors with leakage current between 5 to 10 uA (page 6 in http://www.avx.com/docs/catalogs/bestcap.pdf )   This 5-10 uA value sounds still high though.
 High quality electrolytic capacitors for demanding audio or measuring equipment surely exist with low leakage current, though their capacitance range may not go up to 0.1 F and this can be true for tantalum types too.

Mark, thanks for the answers. A curiousity question: I wonder whether there were four - four magnets on the two unpowered rotors or maybe more?

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Yep, 4 and 4.
The powered one had 2 magnets, with 2 transistors glued for balance.

Say, I can't get the voltage doubler to work. No idea what may be wrong, but did get sidetracked with the LED output on the driven motor. The 1000uF cap will go to 0.672V on a drive voltage to the motor of 0.9V. So instead of flashing the LED, it seems a good idea to use that output anyway.
I decided to try a blocking oscillator circuit from it and, although an LED can flash readily, it doesn't seem to be doing much when returned to the driving capacitor. Fun though and the oscillator runs to a lower drive voltage than the flashes do from the original LED.



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Hi Mark,

On the voltage doubler: a simple test would be as follows.
In the same setup where you find to get 0.672V in the 1000uF cap, just reverse the same diode and the cap's polarity and measure the induced voltage in the cap then. It is is possible that due to the all N or all S inducing magnets the induced voltage's AC polarity is uniform and does not change, so the doubler has nothing to rectify on the other half wave, this is where a scope would serve you fine.

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I think you're right.
For reference, the doubler was built with 1uF electrolytics and 1N4148 diodes.
Will take a good look at the flashable scope today.

Great news, the 'dancing' toys have arrived, so full remote rotor building will be underway later today.
The magnets from the toys will go on rotors as single and doubled up, 2 and 4 and probably a larger rotor with more coils as pickup coils.

Great news Part Two. Was talking with my wife about the original Lasersaber EZ Spin and how it uses sapphire bearings.
She said "i've got a bag of uncut sapphires"
My answer "who da what now ?" and my face ->  :o
They were a bag lot on Ebay some years ago, tiny rough pieces and her idea was to try and cut them into something resembling jewellery pieces. They'll be experimented with, that's for certain.  


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Mark,
  Glad the dancing toys arrived!  all those pre-wound coils, a good deal...

  Had an idea about the generator - instead of trying to build a gen from scratch, how about buying a small, hopefully high-efficiency DC generator?  pre-built...  A DC motor might do
the trick also, driven to produce a voltage.
  The tiny DC generator could be driven perhaps by a coupled rotor, or the "main" rotor;
using the bearings in the DC gen ...
   
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Now there's a thought, high output current from something like a 6mm coreless motor.
It reminds of wind generator experiments, where small motor size needn't result in similarly small output current for that size.
A lot being about the internal windings.
These EZ Spin type motors do have some torque, so, along with the fact that they use less power when running slower, the friction side to it may be more than made up for with the current generated.
Superb, will try that !
I'd mount the drive rotor on the 6mm motor shaft. The remote ones need to have a fine magnetic lock. It's not too difficult to achieve that lock, but torque would be next to zero.
Have got a few 4mm and 6mm, on R/C aircraft. but am sure 1 or 2 are around from a few years ago when I was building from scratch.


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Hello, my pretties !



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Dear Mark.

I spent the last couple of years of my career with the supply industry, remember MANWEB ??  In the " Test laboratory ", below us was the Meter test dep't. All the old disc type electricity meters had very nice, large spring loaded Jewelled bearings.

I am suggesting this as an alternative to making your own, as the grinding and polishing will be quite tedious. I shall have to look in the back room of the workshop, I know I rescued ( Liberated ) a few !!   ;)   If I come across them I will let you know and send a couple.
The weather here at the moment is COLD I am in no mood for a foray, but when things improve I will have a good look for you.

Cheers Grum.


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That would be truly appreciated !
Those meters spun freely for many years, what a great bearing set up.
Manchester West Electricity Board ?
We had one on our house until last year...told the electric company we didn't want a Smart meter and even explained in writing that I have electrosensitivity issues (many poo poo it, but i feel queasy around strong electromagnetics, neodymiums, wi-fi, get static shocks off car doors very readily and somehow sense lightning before nearby strikes lol). Also, this meter is banned in California, because of the 3W output, the limit being 1W. There were concerns and at least questions.
Anyway, my wife or I are in the house 24/7 nearly all the time. We both went out one day in the car and came back to find a new Smart meter on the wall !
Sleep was affected, is affected, it sits right outside the bedroom wall.



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Dancing toy coil removal - a mini How-To

Many people have trouble with removing the coils on the Dollar Tree dancing items.
The problem, is that a decent glue holds the coil to the plastic base - see pic.
The wires snap readily with even careful removal. Some people therefore cut around the coils with a knife or scissors.
Today, I found that a coil broke with the usual careful removal of bending the plastics down, while lifting the coil upward. The glue is stronger !
Here's the fix.
Firstly, desolder the circuitboard and solar panel, leaving just the coil attached to the base.
The glue they are using is a version of hotglue, it melts again with a decent amount of applied heat.
If you have a hotplate or electric cooker, switch on a ring to the highest heat.
Bring the bottom of the base to around 1" (couple of centimetres) to the hotplate and wait until the plastics begin to deform.
Remove from the heat and gently bend the plastics away from the coil.
Repeat if necessary, until the glue can be seen to be melting away from the coil.
Remove the coil.




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That would be truly appreciated !
Those meters spun freely for many years, what a great bearing set up.
Manchester West Electricity Board ?
We had one on our house until last year...told the electric company we didn't want a Smart meter and even explained in writing that I have electrosensitivity issues (many poo poo it, but i feel queasy around strong electromagnetics, neodymiums, wi-fi, get static shocks off car doors very readily and somehow sense lightning before nearby strikes lol). Also, this meter is banned in California, because of the 3W output, the limit being 1W. There were concerns and at least questions.
Anyway, my wife or I are in the house 24/7 nearly all the time. We both went out one day in the car and came back to find a new Smart meter on the wall !
Sleep was affected, is affected, it sits right outside the bedroom wall.


Dear Mark.

Merseyside And North Wales Electricity Board. The amalgamation of the Mersey Power company with the North Wales Power company in 1948.

Our department head had been in the employ of both the Penrhyn Slate Quarry electricity generation company and the fledgling N W Power company, he had some stories to tell, that's for sure !!

OOOOH, Smart meters, I am dead against them. At the moment I have been changing to suppliers that do not offer them.  The thought that your usage can be monitored 24/7 is surely an invasion of privacy ?? Are you able to get your supplier to remove it ?

Cheers Grum.


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Thanks for the company name. One of those things seen all over the place and never knew what it stood for.

The supplier won't remove it. It's all that mess of 'implied consent' because people don't explicitly say they don't want one.
Well, we did, by letter and then they must have stalked us to know when both would be out !
It's sad that a 'trick' to stopping them knowing habits is to use things at the wrong times of the day. Switch the cooker on at 3am. use solar on different items, switch everything off for an hour as though out  etc. Why bother ? well privacy yes, but I don't want habits known, exactly when people are out or away etc, for just such reasons as the meter swap episode.
Mind you, while slightly off topic anyway, here's how you mess up stores and their records of what you buy -
Works if you have neighbours that you get along with well. Both may spend $200 on shopping. Swap lists sometimes, shop for each other and swap goods on return. Their items go on your card, therefore database trackers are messed up. Same thing for browsing...i've no doubt certain people think I have a vast knowledge of curtains and are waiting to intercept pictures of the new couch that doesn't exist LOL
In my opinion, such things will become important when health prying and the Internet of Things really begins.
4th Amendment and i'm English !
That's why technology needs to be Open Source, anything online connected especially and communications allowed to be securely encrypted when persons are not suspected of terrorism (I noted that Cameron wants to ban encryption in the UK)..


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...
For reference, the doubler was built with 1uF electrolytics and 1N4148 diodes.
Will take a good look at the flashable scope today.
...

Hi Mark,

I guess you used the 1N4148 diodes because they were at hand or you may not have more Ge diodes?  Tha latter would give you a free 0.55V extra output voltage (0,65V-0.1V=0.55V,  the approximate difference between Si and Ge at the low current levels involved)  for each half AC half wave unless one of the half waves are missing indeed due to the nature of the single pole induction.
So in your test where you got 0.672V in the 1000uF cap, the DC level could have been approximately 0.672V + 0.55V =  1.222V for a half wave.

The ultimate solution to defeat the 0.1 - 0.15V Ge diode voltage drop would be to use a syncronous rectifier, this is a controlled MOSFET switch which is made to conduct whenever the desired polarity half wave comes from the coil.  When you waded through the overunity.com thread on the 25mV Joule thief topic, you may have seen a link to a paper entitled: "Design of a low-input voltage converter for thermoelectric generator"  see the 2nd link in that forum post:

http://overunity.com/13175/25mv-joule-thief-powered-by-peltier-merely-using-our-body-heat-free-energy-247/msg351059/#msg351059  

and study Fig. 4 in Page 4 of the PDF document.  MOSFET T3 shorts diode D2 whenever the AC wave becomes positive at its gate with respect to its source, this way the voltage drop of the diode D2 is killed by the low value drain-source channel resistance of the MOSFET (RDSon). Of course this solution demands an extra coil to control the MOSFET but maybe it pays off when you need just a 200mV extra juice in a low power setup...  :)  (thinking here to shunt at least two Ge diodes).  There are MOSFETs with low (logic level) threshold VGS voltage specifications, this may reduce the needed number of turns for the extra control coil.  

Gyula
« Last Edit: 2015-01-25, 10:59:59 by gyula »
   

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Well now that it has cooled down a bit here(8.30pm) I'm hitting the work shop.
I'm going to try something completely new here with the coils,and i suspect about a 3 hour build time for each coil-and we will need 6 of them. I'm going to try a C coil design,and the round 1inch x 1/4 inch disk magnets will pass through the middle of the C coils. The coils will be designed so as there is a concentrated north or south field inside the C section of the coil,and the outer circumference will carry the other pole. I'm hopping that this concentrated field will give maximum force against the magnet as it leaves one coil,and approaches the next-->but time will tell.


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C field sounds like Searle...
better have some ballast around just in case [anti Gravity]  :)

maybe place it on a scale...... :D

do you guys have dancing flowers down under? [I crack up every time Mark says "dancing flowers"]



   

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C field sounds like Searle...
better have some ballast around just in case [anti Gravity]  :)

maybe place it on a scale...... :D

do you guys have dancing flowers down under? [I crack up every time Mark says "dancing flowers"]




Searle-bla bla bla :P

We have all sorts of fancy toys that use those small coil's.
Infact,after all this time,i just thought of something-and i had to go check right at this time--> I bought my wife these two dolphin's that rock back and forth on a pivot over one of the little coil circuits.It takes 1 x 1.5 volt battery. I bought it for her 30th birthday,as she loves dolphin's. she is now 43(i didn't tell you that),and the dolphins still rock back and forth as i type this. That is 13 years running on one 1.5 volt battery-->holly sh-t :o They have only been stopped when we shift house,but other than a few days all up,these two dolphins have been rocking back and forth for 13 years on one battery ???-as far as i know. I'm going to have to ask my wife if she has replaced the battery a few times at least,as i see no way possable that this could be right.

Edit-I just had to check this thing out,and it has a 9 volt battery in it,not a 1.5 as i thought. The wife has never changed the battery,and it turns out i bought it for her 25th bday,not her 30th as i thought-the mind is growing weaker lol.
So that makes a 17 year run time on one 9 volt battery.Its been going that long that one of the balls the dolphin's nose hits has worn right off lol.
Video to come.
« Last Edit: 2015-01-25, 14:05:11 by TinMan »


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Dear TinMan.

I'm smiling as I post this response.... We have a similar thing, a kiddies toy. This toy has continued to operate for 13 years on the same battery!

Perhaps 2002 was a good year for Alkaline?

Cheers Grum.


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Tinman
Gravity ??
doesn't hurt to pay attention to that one, after all ....nobody really has a clue about gravity ..
and I know you have a scale [your very intriguing recent weight change vid ].

17 years on 9volts and still running...we could have saved a zillion bucs on nuclear batteries and gone to
 the five and dime for the batteries to run the  mars lander...  C.C  8)

Grum
its a good thing that you purchased those batteries prior to the "new planned obsolescence protocol" !:"}.

but as many have pointed out ,a well balanced system utilizing all input to its advantage ..can run a really really long time..
         like a watch.



 




   

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Dear TinMan.

I'm smiling as I post this response.... We have a similar thing, a kiddies toy. This toy has continued to operate for 13 years on the same battery!

Perhaps 2002 was a good year for Alkaline?

Cheers Grum.
Well at the moment,I'm thinking why even bother trying to make this easy spin motor as efficient as i can,when a toy maker was making these super efficient toys 17 years ago. The efficiency of this dolphin toy makes LS easy spin look under efficient. I just checked the voltage in the old 9 volt battery in the dolphin toy,and it still has 9.32 volts in it. Now I'm wondering how much voltage(if any) would a 9 volt battery still have in it if left sitting on a shelf for 17 year's?.


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At this point in time,im afraid that the wife's dolphin toy is now up for grab's in the name of reserch-->this is ofcourse after she has left for work tomorrow,and i should have it all back together by the time she gets home. O0

Oh P.S
I might add that the motion of the dolphin's is the motion of a pendulum.


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@Gyula...the K170 MOSFET's would suit ?
I've always wanted to find the perfect diode, zero loss. There's also so much out there that falls just short of transistor switch on of around 0.5V. Atmospheric collections, aged crystal cells and such.
Funny thing, at very low voltages and currents, I find that 1N4148's can drop something like 0.1V and they only do their silicon stumbling block of 0.7V with more realistic amounts, such as 2V at 10mA. But, yes, am nearly out of Ge, having about 3 left.


Dancing Dolphins FTW ! as they say.
Soooo, 2 small neo's could go on the dolphin, to equal the weight again.
A remote rotor could spin by the action of the dolphin at the front or/and one at the back.
Pickup coils and a synchronous rectifier (Gyula) MOSFET system could translate that to running the dolphin on a tantalum capacitor ?!?!
If anythings vintage is 2002 or older then it may not be a black blob chip inside.
The other thought is that these older designs may be 'wrong' and that's why they got discontinued  8)
A search on Ebay brought up nothing, but does it look somewhat like the one in the pic below ?



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At this point in time,im afraid that the wife's dolphin toy is now up for grab's in the name of reserch-->this is ofcourse after she has left for work tomorrow,and i should have it all back together by the time she gets home. O0

Oh P.S
I might add that the motion of the dolphin's is the motion of a pendulum.

Dear Tinman.

My wife said laughingly, it probably wont work after your investigation !!  " If it ain't broke, don't fix it "  certainly comes to mind !!   :)

Are you going to poke around with a scope ? Probably the safest bet !!

Our OU toy ??  Is a mat with footprints on it, these pairs of feet lead to a pool at the far end. The Grandkids have loads of fun with it as each footprint they stand on makes a different sound, culminating with a splash into the pool.
I can say, with hand on heart, this toy is running on the same Battery it came with, 13 years ago.

Cheers Grum.


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 ;D
"no worries dear, it's all back together and working fine, only got 2 screws left over this time"
"what do you mean this time ?, what else have you taken apart of mine ?"

Best example of battery life in something commercial for me, would be the yellow Innova 3300 DMM seen in many uploads. Bought in 2010, it gets used every day and has even been left on by mistake overnight a few times. Still going on the factory fitted 9V. At least I think it's a 9V.
Oh, also my wifes digital temperature display, is a tiny thing with an LCD that comes on when pressing a button. Uses an LR44 and she got it way before her and I met in 2005.


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...the K170 MOSFET's would suit ?
I've always wanted to find the perfect diode, zero loss. There's also so much out there that falls just short of transistor switch on of around 0.5V. Atmospheric collections, aged crystal cells and such.
Funny thing, at very low voltages and currents, I find that 1N4148's can drop something like 0.1V and they only do their silicon stumbling block of 0.7V with more realistic amounts, such as 2V at 10mA. But, yes, am nearly out of Ge, having about 3 left.
....


Hi Mark,

No, if you mean the 2SK170, it is a junction FET and is normally on, here you need a normally off device (like many MOSFETs) which can be controlled with a single polarity voltage with respect to its source pin.
Because you have here a low level setup (voltage is much less than 20-30V, current is much less than a few hundred mA), low power MOSFETs could be used, they have low inter-electrode capacitances too. This means that the input power needed for the control of gate-source electrodes is in the nanoWatt range. Their channel resistance when they are on is less than few Ohms, some of them are under 1 Ohm.
All such MOSFETS have the body diode between their source and drain, for the N-channel types this diode anode is the source and the cathode is the drain, thus for N-channel MOSFETs this diode is always off whenever the drain is either more positive than the source or there is no any voltage between them AND the gate-source control voltage is less than the needed threshold voltage so that the conducting channel between the drain-source is open i.e has several MegaOhm impedance.
Of course the body diode is able to conduct like any other Si diode whenever the source voltage (the anode) is more positive than the drain (the cathode), in such situation you cannot control the MOSFET to work as a syncronous rectiifier.  

Remember that these MOSFETs i.e. controlled switches (I give some links below) need a VGS control voltage higher than at least 0.5V, preferable around 1V, taken from the induced field of a setup by pick-up coils, so using them in atmospheric collections, aged crystal cells etc which are not able to provide the threshold control voltage is quasi impossible (unless you enhance a received and wanted signal by selective passive LC circuits at a certain single frequency).

Some low power MOSFET types are here, I chose Digikey because it is easy to browse through and select:

TN0604N               http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/TN0604N3-G/TN0604N3-G-ND/4902372    
TN0702                 http://www.digikey.com/product-search/en?x=20&y=14&lang=en&site=us&keywords=tn0702&stock=1  
TN2106N               http://www.digikey.com/product-search/en?mpart=TN2106N3-G&vendor=150  
ZXMN6A08E6        http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/ZXMN6A08E6QTA/ZXMN6A08E6QTADICT-ND/4747690
DMN3703u-7          http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/DMN3730U-7/DMN3730U-7DICT-ND/2792455  
FDN337NCT           http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/FDN337N/FDN337NCT-ND/458950    
VN0606L               http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/VN0606L-G/VN0606L-G-ND/4902394  
BSS806N               http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/BSS806N%20H6327/BSS806N%20H6327CT-ND/3196655  

There are more of them of course...  :)   In the above links the data sheet is included for each type.

Possibly you have some power MOSFETs scavenged from somewhere or bought, normally they have 2 to 4 nanofarad or so input capacitance between the gate source, and also some nanofarad capacitance between the drain source, so they need more input 'juice' to charge them up and it also takes some more time to discharge them, this may or may not be a drawback in a setup.

Gyula
« Last Edit: 2015-01-25, 21:12:45 by gyula »
   
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"Our OU toy"??  Now that's funny...  ^-^

TinMan - and Grum -- any photos of these pushing-the-envelope toys?

Then we can shop around, see if we can get our ou toys on e-bay...   :D
That would be a hoot!



   
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