Has anybody wound their motor with square silver wire?

[Malcolm]

Thanks Miles. I'm only four months behind everyone else. That's pretty good for me

 

[Pablo_1985]

This is why spending $100-200 in silver wire, and many hours of time and effort in winding don't seem all that crazy

All that crazy.... , maybe it is a little all that crazy but, what the hell is our time and money and we can spent it like we wish, others buy a ps3 or a HD proyector or...

When you talk about the loss in a electric motor there are hystheresys, foucault (i didn´t know it like eddy) and joule... silver resistivity is 10% better than copper resistivity. Anyone knows the typically distribution of this losses? , because there is another thing wich make all our losses bigger, our signal is not a senoid, it has a lot of high frequency harmonics, and hystheresys losses are directly proportional to the frequency and foucault losses are directly proportional to frequency^2!!! maybe the main problem is not the wire...anyone knows about ferrite cores in this aplications?

Example...supose 1000w motor 90% are work, 5% joule, 3%foucault and 2%hystheresys... if we change copper for silver we change 5% joule losses to 4,5% joule losses that mean, 5% of total losses so it cannot handle 1500w because at 1500W the rest of losses are going to raise and the efficient goes to..86%...so at the end maybe we just can handle about 1200w...obviously i´m just making up numbers.

And i have no talked about skin effect, and more diferents losses...but if que put it there we can see that improving a motor is not so easy.

Regards

 

[Miles]

Eddy current losses in the core are proportional to the square of the lamination thickness, that's worth bearing in mind, too.....

 

[Pablo_1985]

that´s right, but there is a limit for it because all the sheets are varnished (with an special varnish...it is hard to speak english for me LOL....), so you can´t make them all the thickness you want or at the end you would have more varnish than magnetic iron... it would be interesant find out where is that limit...but more interesting would be find a material wich could be a non-fragile and strong ferrite core..imagine to make a mold and fill it with this mysterious material....and when it drys (i´m inventing the process of course ahhaha) you could get your core!

 

[Miles]

Well, there are all sorts of soft magnetic composites you can use. The advantages are, negligible eddy current losses and the possibilities of true 3D flux distribution. The disadvantages are much higher hysteresis losses and much lower permeability..........

 

[Pablo_1985]

Thanks for de pdf is very interesting

 

[Miles]

that´s right, but there is a limit for it because all the sheets are varnished (with an special varnish...it is hard to speak english for me LOL....), so you can´t make them all the thickness you want or at the end you would have more varnish than magnetic iron... it would be interesant find out where is that limit..

You could maybe use a very thin Polyimide film, for insulation, but you don't often see laminations thinner than 0.2mm in a motor.
http://www.protolam.com/page3.html

 

[dozentrio]

Some of these topics make me wonder whether or not intelligent people who were getting paid a lot of money had already considered the same things decades ago. Or maybe not, and endless-sphere will be the birthplace of a new motor or battery technology.

 

[swbluto]

Some of these topics make me wonder whether or not intelligent people who were getting paid a lot of money had already considered the same things decades ago. Or maybe not, and endless-sphere will be the birthplace of a new motor or battery technology.

I have an ideology: "If I thought of it, someone before me has already thought of it before". This particular topic, I'm sure, has been thought of before as reducing motor resistance is an ideal in motor construction as that determines your continuous torque limit.

 

[dozentrio]

I have an ideology: "If I thought of it, someone before me has already thought of it before". This particular topic, I'm sure, has been thought of before as reducing motor resistance is an ideal in motor construction as that determines your continuous torque limit.

I tend to think this way also, but if it were generally true then no one would ever think of something new. _Someone_ has to be the person to think of the next brilliant idea, right? Why can't it be me? I agree though, that reducing motor resistance has been though of before. And there must be a reason we don't use square wire cross sections. Probably any advances in motor technology will only follow from development of new materials. Which happen all the time! Rare earth magnets were only developed in the 60's, and there is practically no PMDC motor which uses ALNICO now. At least, none that should... I don't think there is any benefit to it. Except perhaps cost. If demagnetization is not a concern. I'm rambling now, sorry.

 

[amberwolf]

I suspect that the main reasons many of the ideas that come up such as these are cost vs payback vs what people will pay for things; the "good enough" principle, and manufacturing issues that could raise costs high enough to make untenable using some ideas that are otherwise good.

However, there are going to be some improvements soon enough, as I have heard of a new mandate (law?) that will require electric motors to be made more efficient. (naturally there is no equivalent for gasoline-powered engines)
http://www.diyelectriccar.com/forums/showthread.php?t=42607
For those that understand legalese (I can't follow that complicated crap they call "language"):
http://www.advancedenergy.org/md/knowledge_library/motor_efficiency_regulations/Energy%20Independence%20and%20Security%20Act%20of%202007.pdf
http://www.advancedenergy.org/md/knowledge_library/motor_efficiency_regulations/Motor%20Efficiency%20Enforcement%20Announcement%20October%202009.pdf
http://www.advancedenergy.org/md/knowledge_library/motor_efficiency_regulations/Small%20Motor%20Efficiency%20Rule%20Making.pdf

 

[swbluto]

However, there are going to be some improvements soon enough, as I have heard of a new mandate (law?) that will require electric motors to be made more efficient. (naturally there is no equivalent for gasoline-powered engines)

Are they really trying to make electric cars more expensive? Didn't any of the lawmakers take economics 101? Or did they take economics 101 and the law-makers are knowingly evil?

Or are they effectively trying to outlaw brushed motors? :lol:

 

[Miles]

It's got nothing to do with electric cars, really...... it relates to home appliances and industry.

 

[johnrobholmes]

motors use something like 50% of the electricity in the US. Pumps, compressors, appliances, etc.

 

[Azazel]

Interesting discussion on silver wound motors. Tesla chief motor engineer acknowledges that silver would be better. Seeing as it's more expensive than copper, it will likely only get used as pure silver wound motors on supercars and silver plated copper on premium cars imo.

"If it happens, we will know it very soon and it will be adopted. So far there are very few materials, though. Silver is the most conductive material you can find, but it’s way more expensive than copper. This is why copper is dominating in most cases. But I will be excited to see evolution there."

https://chargedevs.com/features/teslas-chief-motor-engineer-discusses-the-potential-of-next-generation-motor-technologies/