brushless speed controller work on a motor w/ brushes (DC) ?

Can a brushless speed controller work on a motor w/ brushes (DC) ? Thanks !

Reply to
pogo
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No. A brushless DC motor and a brushed DC motor are two different animals.

A PM brushed DC motor has permanent magnets for the stator (mounted to the motor housing) and coils on the rotor (mounted to the turning motor shaft). Commutation (which is what produces rotating torque that makes a motor turn) is accomplished by brushes in contact with the commutator (which is connected to the shaft).

A brushless DC motor turns this around - the permanent magnets are mounted on the rotor and the coils are mounted on the stator. Commutation now occurs electronically by the brushless motor controller. The controller "rotates" the magnetic field in the motor by driving multiple stator coils with phase-shifted sine waves.

BRW

Reply to
BRW

I've never really understood all the different types of motors that exist.

If a brushless DC motor is driven by phase shifted sine waves (which makes plenty of sense as you describe it), doesn't that make it an AC motor? Why is it called a DC motor if it works like that? Any clues? Maybe it's time for me to do a bit of research on the net and learn something new...

Reply to
Curt Welch

Yes. A "brushless DC motor" is really a polyphase synchronous AC servomotor.

For historical reasons, small servomotors of this type are called "brushless DC", and large motors (typically 1KW and up) are called "AC servomotors". (And small motor controllers are called "motor controllers", while big ones are called "drives").

The upper limit on motor size for AC servomotors is quite large. The current generation of large locomotives uses AC servomotors to drive the wheels, keeping all the wheels in sync by active control. No more individual wheel slip.

See "

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" John Nagle

Reply to
John Nagle

Not true. If you feed the right signals to the feedback inputs you should be able to use one phase of the BLDC driver to drive the motor. Then again, that would be insane, since BLDC drivers are bigger, more complicated, and more expensive than ordinary drivers.

-chris

BRW wrote:

Reply to
eckern

That doesn't sound right. A normal DC motor will invert the connections to the rotor as it spins so you can feed it with a constant DC voltage. A brushless DC motor won't so the driver needs to constantly invert the polarity of the signal sent to each phase. I don't see any way you can use a driver that is generating an AC signal to drive a normal DC brush motor - no matter what feedback signals you send it.

Reply to
Curt Welch

Reply to
eckern

Thanks for the info. I've also done some reading on the net now and have a better understanding.

The "brushless DC motor" works the same as normal permanent magnet DC motor except instead of using a mechanical switching system (the commutator) to switch the current to the coils, the mechanical system has been replaced with an electronic switching system. Since you no longer need the mechanical switching, there is no advantage to making the coils spin, so they invert it and hold the coils still and make the magnets spin. So in both types of DC motors, the system is fed with DC. In both cases, the switching systems converts DC to AC with the frequency matching the rotational speed of the motor. So even a normal permanent magnet DC motor is driving the coil with an effective variable frequency AC signal created by the commutator. I had never thought of it like that before.

And there's no reason a normal PM DC motor needs to have the coils on the rotor. It could just as easily put the PM on the rotor and make the coils stationary and still use a mechanical system to switch the coils. But the mechanical system would need extra rings and brushes if you did that to connect the coils to the switch (at least 2 extra brushes and 2 more rings). So if you are using a mechanical system to generate the AC current to drive the coils, the system is simpler if you put the coil on the rotor.

And likewise, an electronic switch could have the coils on the rotor, but you would need rings and brushes to get the current to the spinning coils. So as long as you have the electronic switch to replace the mechanical switch, it makes more sense to put the permanent magnets on the rotor and keep the coils stationary so you can eliminate all the mechanical brushes.

So it's called a "brushless" motor simply because the mechanical brushes have been eliminated by using an electronic commutator. The advantage of course is you have replaced a mechanical system that wears and produces nasty conducting dust with an electronic system that will last a lot longer and not produce the dust from the brushes and rings wearing down. They could just as easily be called, PM DC motors with electronic commutators.

The advantage of both types of DC motor systems is that they provide high torque even at slow speeds since the switching of the drive current is kept in sync with the rotation of the motor.

AC synchronous motors are fed with a constant frequency AC current and the motor spins in sync with the frequency of the AC current. But they have problems starting since the AC frequency is not slowed down to keep it in sync with the actual rotation of the motor - so other systems are used to start these types of motors. These seem to be used mostly in special high power industrial applications.

Most common AC motors (like what we find around the house) are not synchronous motors but instead, are induction motors, which act like transformers. So the rotor has windings (or one type or another) but is not directly powered through brushes of any type. Instead, the AC field created by the stationary windings induce current to flow in the rotor which acts like the transformer stationary. These actually loose power as they get near to synchronous speed because if the rotor is turning in perfect sync with the rotating AC field, then there is no net power transferred to the rotor windings and the torque drops to zero. So induction motors always run slightly slower then the sync speed.

The other major class of motor we find around the home seems to be the universal motor. This works like a DC PM motor, except the PM is replaced with a stationary winding energized by the same current used to energize the rotor. Unlike the AC induction motor, this motor needs brushes which work just like a DC motor with brushes. But since both coils are driven by the supply voltage, you can drive the motor with either DC or AC. Which is why they are called "universal". Spin direction is not controlled by the supply current polarity but instead, by how the rotor and stationary windings are connected. Invert one and the motor spins in the other direction. These motors work like DC motors in that there upper rotational speed is limited only by power and load. And for high power applications, it seems they have a real problem of self destructing by trying to spin too fast if you don't keep a load on them. But they have the advantage of much higher speeds than the induction motors which can't go any faster than their synchronous speeds - so higher speed applications like blenders and drills tend to use this type of motor.

There seems to be an endless number of variations on these ideas (and as many different names and terminologies to go with the variations), but the above designs seem to be the major classes of electric motors that exist.

Reply to
Curt Welch

Exactly. At the windings, all motors are AC. Or they don't keep rotating. They'd reach some position and stop, like a rotary solenoid or a stepper.

Wikipedia has a good article on electric motors.

John Nagle

Reply to
John Nagle

Where do steppers fall into these definitions? When I turn a stepper by hand it generates current like a dynamo.

Wayne

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Reply to
Wayne Lundberg

Well, I'm no expert, but this is what I gather from the web sites I read.

Steppers are basically a type of brushless DC motor. They have magnets which rotate and fixed stator coils. Their design is optimized to step and lock in fixed positions instead of being optimized for spinning. For one, this typically means they have more stator coils and more poles on the rotor magnets to allow it to stop in more positions for each rotation.

Because they use permanent magnets, they will generate currents when you spin them.

I'm not sure, but some of the sites I read left the impression that some stepper designs don't use magnets. But it's unclear from what I read if that means they have coils on the rotor connected with brushes that must be energized to act as a magnet, or, if the rotor simply uses some metal that is attracted to the energized stator coils. I believe it's the second.

Reply to
Curt Welch

I have often heard steppers called "very early forms of dc brushless".

Any varying magnetic field passing through a wire will cause a potential to be induced in the wire. So as you apply torque on the shaft, you are moving the rotor, and it's magnetic fields are varying, causing the windings in the stepper to "feel" the varying fields, and generate varying potentials.

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This is very much like the same principle that every speaker (motor to move air around) can also be used as a microphone (air moves speaker, and it generates current).

Reply to
Randy M. Dumse

Here's an even better explanation from hyperphysics . In the case of the stepper, the magnet is moving and the wires are still, but the generation princople is still there, because it is relative motion that counts.

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Reply to
Randy M. Dumse

And if you want to have some real fun, get a pair of identical steppers and connect the like wires together. If you then spin one of them fast enough to generate a decent voltage, the other will step along in sync. Beautiful!

-- Joe Legris

Reply to
J.A. Legris

Never tried that, but don't doubt it a bit.

The same is true of the really finely made swiss motors, with a little bit of gearing infront of them. Hook them in parallel, turn one, the other follows. Almost ghost like. And you don't have to turn that fast.

And that brings up a whole 'nother set of things called servos. Servo-resolver or synchro-resolver sets. Also called selsyn when used as a system. Anybody remember those? I hadn't thought of those in about 20 years. I had a whole tinker toy set of those things in our Mk 68 Gun Fire Control System when I was gunner officer, U.S.S. Dewey.

The very point of those resolvers is one would exactly track the position of another off at some distant point.

Reply to
Randy M. Dumse

I do remember hearing or reading about those at some distant point in my past. I think it was back in the days when I was more into electronics before I got hooked on computers which would have been about 30 years ago.

Didn't they use external power and act as electro-mechanical amplifiers? Or were they stand alone with no need for external power?

Reply to
Curt Welch

They used an external AC reference signal. Really they were more like transformers than amplifiers. The phase orientation of one would minimize the current only if the other was at the same phase. They didn't have a lot of power. Mostly used for indicators. Here's a pretty detailed write up about them.

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You might be thinking of magnetic amplifiers, whcih was a whole 'nother contraption (also used in that gun fire control system).

Reply to
Randy M. Dumse

I think this is how a radar operator in a WWII destroyer tracked targets. I was a radioman and our shack next to radar and we'd visit. I was always amazed at how neatly the radarman could control that huge dish on top of the mast. This was my introduction to servo technology.

Wayne

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Reply to
Wayne Lundberg

Very astute. This was probably a selsyn, which is a particular type of AC-actuated servomechanism. Very simplistic compared to modern servos and in fact no external electronics (other than the odd resistor or capacitor) were usually required. For a power control application these were often referred to as an Amplidyne, as amplification of the transmitter signal was needed to control a much heavier receiver load. Your ship's telegraph was probably selsyn-operated as well, as were a number of its indicators. A selsyn mounted on the shaft of the rudder was used to indicate the actual position of the rudder, for example.

-- Gordon

Reply to
Gordon McComb

Selsysn are still used as position transmitters for feedback on aircraft actuators. They're more rugged than absolute encoders or feedback pots. The receiving end today is usually a resolver-to-digital converter, not another selsyn.

An amplidyne is something else. That's an application of super-regeneration to get extra gain from a Ward Leonard drive. It's a DC device; a selsyn is an AC device. It's obsolete; the early stages of amplification for a high power drive have been done with semiconductors for decades.

Ward Leonard drives, which were invented in 1893, are still around. They're a motor coupled to a DC generator, with the field of the generator controlled to vary the output of the generator. This was the main drive system for elevators for most of a century, and there are thousands of them still running. If you're in an elevator, and it's stopped, but you hear a big motor still running somewhere above, that's a Ward Leonard drive. Nobody installs them in new installations, but there's still a replacement market.

John Nagle

Reply to
John Nagle

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