On Thu, 03 Apr 2008 15:16:29 -0500 snipped-for-privacy@aol.com wrote: | On 3 Apr 2008 18:31:50 GMT, snipped-for-privacy@ipal.net wrote: | |>I'm on a quest to find a good book that covers information about magnetic |>fields as it applies to power and/or radio engineering. For power, this |>would be things like generators, motors, and transformers. For radio, it |>would be a lot about antennas. Right now my preference is for the power |>side of this. |>
|>Doing searches through Amazon and B&N I find many books about things like |>motors and transformers. But pretty much everything is about how to do |>things like install, maintain, and repair them, or select them for various |>applications. There are some that cover the theory, but they did not look |>to be the best choices. I am interested more in things like the design of |>devices like generators, motors, and transformers, with respect to how the |>magnetic fields are used and shaped, particularly for specialized devices |>handling non-ordinary needs. A typical motor, for example, just turns a |>rotor, and has a classic axial construction. I'm interested in unusual |>things like non-rotary motion devices (electric pistons, for example) as |>well as unusual rotor motion devices, such as ring motors that have no axis |>at all. The focus I am looking for in an ideal book is on the design or |>the exporation of designs for a wide variety of devices, with an emphasis |>on how the magnetic fields are shaped and operate, whether coupling to |>electric windings, or interfacing with mechanical motion of any kind. |>
|>Pure electromagnetic or magnetodynamic theory is not the interest. Nor is |>the manufacturing, selection, installation, maintenance, or repair of such |>devices (though something that focused on the very unusual devices might |>provide some insight into their design). | | Voice coils spring to mind. That is a linear motor. | You can salvage some parts from a hard drive to play with one. The | older and bigger, the better. If you could track down an IBM 3330 | voice coil assembly you would have something worth doing some work | with. (coil the size of an oat meal can and magnets like paving | bricks, 3" stroke). On the other end of the scale is a regular | speaker. | If you couple this with a lot of coils and a controller you have a | linear accellerator that you can shoot like a gun
I'll hunt around in my basement to see if I have some old 3330's I'm no longer using :-) Actually, the 3350's looked like more awesome magnets.
Right now I'm focusing on looking for the information on how magnetic fields are engineered for various things including this. Yes, a voice coil is a very good example of a specialized magnetomotive device.
One interest I would have is substituting a magnetically driven device like this (which a voice coil could very well work) for the escapement of a clock as a means to electrically control an otherwise mechanically operated clock. One approach would be a mechanical escapement that is driven magnetically to overpower the gear forces. Another idea is to make a gear that instead of teeth, has alternating magnetic bars, and just drive it entirely from the field of two coils.
A couple years ago I mentioned the idea of making toothless gears by having alternating magnetic bars in each "wheel" that engage each other magnetically. The same wheel can be the rotor of a permanent magnet syncronous motor, too, by driving it from a sufficient number of electromagnetic windings. One of the things I want to explore is the diversity of winding shapes that can be used for doing such things, either for motor drives, or as a generator to either produce power from some primary mover, or to sense motion (which could also be done optically in a powered system).
I have no one particular goal at this time, other than to learn more about the way magnetic fields can be constructed. Maybe this will inspire some creative idea.