This is the information about Stan’s science fair project experiments as published in 2000.
In my science fair project I conducted many experiments with these electric motors.
In my first year I compared my original reed switch motor to the conventional motor from a toy car. The results were favorable but they cannot be considered accurate because these motors were too different: they required different voltages, contained different amounts and types of wire, the magnets were not the same, etc.
Second year was devoted to comparison of the motors with different number of reed switches and electromagnets in serial and parallel connection.
In the third year of my research I compared several different motors sharing the same unified mechanical design. The results of this comparison were very accurate and reliable.
One of the manipulated variables in the experiments was voltage.
The independent variables were the number of magnets on the rotor, the sensor position, and weights in torque testing.
The dependent variables were the speed, measured in revolutions per minute; and the relative power, measured as an angle on the torque testing device, or as the weight, lifted with the help of a speed reducer.
The consumed electric power (in Watts) was calculated as the power supply voltage (in Volts) multiplied by total current through the circuit (in Amperes).
After building the motors I noticed that the spinning magnets on the rotor could be used for calculating the speed in revolutions per minute. To assist in finding the rpm value I used another reed switch. The signals from the second reed switch were sent to specially built 3-digit electronic decade counter. Last year I improved this counter replacing the reed switch with a Hall effect switch and adding an extra decade for easier measurements.
One of the big challenges was the torque measurement. Torque, the twisting force of a motor, is a very important characteristic. As this task is quite complicated it was decided to measure a relative power as an angle on a specially designed device. It is shown on the picture below.
In torque experiments one end of the string (heavy-duty thread) was taped to the axle, and the other end was attached to the top of a lever. The bottom end of the lever served as a pointer showing the angle on the dial. A lath was attached to the pointer end. Several holes in the lath were used for adding heavy bolts and nuts as weights to increase the lever resistance.
The spinning rotor of the motor was winding the string around the axle. The string was long enough to allow the motor to gain full speed before pulling the lever. The maximum angle was noted.
The actual torque was not calculated. However, the angle measurements provided very reliable results for relative power comparison, as the motor with higher torque will turn the lever to a larger angle.
Last year, for torque measurement, the motor was attached to a speed reducer. One end of the piece of thread was affixed to the axle of the speed reducer, while the other end contained a hook, which was holding a box. As the motor spun, the thread was slowly winding onto an axle. This lifted the box. The speed reducer ratio was approximately 1:150, which means that the motor needed to make 150 revolutions to make the axle rotate one turn. The box that was lifted contained a specific number of weights, which were actually ceramic tiles. Three ceramic tiles weighed exactly 1 lb. To achieve 0.5 lb. increments, one tile was split in half. The picture below shows also a regulated power supply (in the upper right corner) and the electronic counter (on the right side).
Some of the motors were powerful enough to lift up to 4 kg (9 lbs) on 6V. The speed reducer increased the power of the motors, but decreased their speed significantly.
We made a decision to make Stan’s 3-year science project research papers publicly available. You may use them as a reference for your project.
First year study: the original reed switch based brushless motor.
1998 Research (25 pages) | 1998 Abstract
Second year study compares the following motors:
– motor with 1 electromagnet and 1 reed switch
– motor with 2 electromagnets in serial connection with 1 reed switch
– motor with 2 electromagnets in parallel connection with 1 reed switch
– motor with 2 electromagnets controlled by separate reed switches
1999 Research (37 pages) | 1999 Abstract
Third year study provides an extensive research on the motors shown on this site. In addition it contains several other motors, such as double reed switch motor based on push-pull operation, SCR controlled brushless motor, optocoupler based brushless motor, etc.
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