APL's DIY axial-flux motor

[APL]

Thanks for the info., Onshape don't like my PC either.

Didn't realize how old my systems were, until I tried to run CAD programs. The toggle switches on the key board are a
giveaway though. (just kidding)

Looks like it's time to get another PC,.. buy a laptop, or just upgrade, I have a friend that can help me out with this stuff.
It doesn't look like it's going to set me back 'too' much.
I suppose my DSL connection is the next weak link.

 

[fechter]

I tried learning Fusion 360 a while ago but realized it was going to take more time than I had available. I still want to lean it or some similar CAD program so I can make 3D printed parts and fun stuff like that. Once I retire in a couple of years, I hope to have more spare time.

 

[InterestedinEVs]

Though not *technically* suitable, I run fusion on my at-machine computer just fine, which is an older Thinkpad t420 with an i7 and 10gb (unbalanced) memory. I use t420's at my machines because they are stupid cheap on ebay and I know they'll get trashed with all the metal dust in the air. The last two I bought were under $130. I highly recommend them for the price.

 

[Dui ni shuo de dui]

And here's a system checker page to see if Onshape will work for you.

https://www.pcgamebenchmark.com/onshape-system-requirements

I have no idea what this system checker actually checks, but that's total nonsense.
Onshape runs on your browser, you don't need anything but a good internet connexion and decent RAM capacity if your assembly is huge. As you can see in the link you provided, the system checker seem to check the computer for some kind of VR game named OnShape :
"What is OnShape?
OhShape is a fast-paced VR game where you will perform different poses and move your body to the rhythm of the music to go through silhouettes trimmed on walls. OhShape is a challenging single player action VR game that will sharpen your reflexes as you try to dodge every obstacle."

So that's not really the same thing. :lol:

My home computer is a very old laptop, with a crappy graphics card and an old processor, I am able to use it without any issue even with only 4 gigs of ram. You can even run it on a phone or a tablet.

... So long as you are willing to open source your project.

Yeah, that is kinda true, but it's easy to trick. Give a random name to your project so that it's virtually impossible to find with a normal search, hide the actual thing inside several folders and then download/delete it once finished. There is a theoretical probability someone somewhere did download it, but it is actually, in practice, extremely low if you follow this practice.
I don't think it would bother our friend APL though, but yes, that's a valid point I forgot to mention

 

[stan.distortion]

If you're having serious performance issues it could be from too much other stuff running in the background. 3D cad often puts a lot of load on a system, even with browser based apps (depending on how it's rendered) and everything gets it, hd, ram, cpu, gpu. I'm not sure how it works on mac but it may be worth creating a new user/session just for cad with any unnecessary apps shut down, I think you'll see a big jump in performance.

Maybe see how things go before updating PC too, ideally you'll need an SSD, as much ram as you can get and at least a mid-grade dedicated GPU (fairly similar to a gaming rig). That can be a lot to spend just for cad and there's no guarantee you'll get on ok with it, it can still be a slow and frustrating process even with lots of experience. You might well find yourself sticking with pen and paper for the most part and only using cad a few times a year for final draughts, could be big bucks better spent on copper and magnets in that case.

 

[APL]

I'm getting help in finding another PC, so it probably won't be taking to long. I'd almost prefer a separate system for the
cad anyway, so they don't mess with each other.
I finally found a PC that doesn't give me too much crap, and I want to keep it that way.

Being tethered, or open source, isn't a problem, most everything I do is for public knowledge anyway,.. nothing to hide.

I checked out Onshape on line a little, and your right,.. so I'll give it another look. If it doesn't take any space in the PC,
and is free to mess with, why not? Always nice to have options, and is something to mess with while I'm setting up. :thumb:
Most of the 'basic' moves are the same, just the icons change, so it's still good practice, and may turn out to be a favorite.

I still want to concentrate on Fusion 360 though, and don't want to get too distracted from that. I think it's the way to go,
and will pay off in the end. Just going to take a little time to get the system up and running.
Meantime, I'm afraid it's the old APL 2D Pen-cad.

 

[wturber]

Though not *technically* suitable, I run fusion on my at-machine computer just fine, which is an older Thinkpad t420 with an i7 and 10gb (unbalanced) memory. I use t420's at my machines because they are stupid cheap on ebay and I know they'll get trashed with all the metal dust in the air. The last two I bought were under $130. I highly recommend them for the price.

If you don't mind scrounging a bit, there can be some rather killer deals out there. Xeon x56XX CPUs are pretty cheap these days and so is the RAM. I found use HP Z600s for $200 a couple years ago. Upgraded the CPUs to 3ghz-ish x5670 CPUs and put in 48GB of ram. Total cost $400 - about the price of a single modern CPU. The machines came with Windows 7 which I upgraded to 10 at no cost.

I have old HP rack mountservers that cost about $250 that have a similar CPU RAM layout. They technically aren't supposed to run Windows 10, but they actually do.

These machines get me 12 cores at between 2.8 and 3 ghz - 24 cores if you count Hyperthreading. They are built like tanks.
Bucketloads of processing power cheap is out there and available.

 

[wturber]

And here's a system checker page to see if Onshape will work for you.

https://www.pcgamebenchmark.com/onshape-system-requirements

I have no idea what this system checker actually checks, but that's total nonsense.
Onshape runs on your browser, you don't need anything but a good internet connexion and decent RAM capacity if your assembly is huge. As you can see in the link you provided, the system checker seem to check the computer for some kind of VR game named OnShape :
"What is OnShape?
OhShape is a fast-paced VR game where you will perform different poses and move your body to the rhythm of the music to go through silhouettes trimmed on walls. OhShape is a challenging single player action VR game that will sharpen your reflexes as you try to dodge every obstacle."

Oops. Didn't catch the app change that I got from doing the Google search.

Here's a better link. It also has a browser compatibility link. They do claim that you don't need a lot of processing power. So maybe their servers do some of the heavy lifting? The app runs in WebGl, so you probably need at least a moderately decent video card, but certainly not anything cutting edge.

https://cad.onshape.com/help/Content/webgl.htm

 

[InterestedinEVs]

Though not *technically* suitable, I run fusion on my at-machine computer just fine, which is an older Thinkpad t420 with an i7 and 10gb (unbalanced) memory. I use t420's at my machines because they are stupid cheap on ebay and I know they'll get trashed with all the metal dust in the air. The last two I bought were under $130. I highly recommend them for the price.

If you don't mind scrounging a bit, there can be some rather killer deals out there. Xeon x56XX CPUs are pretty cheap these days and so is the RAM. I found use HP Z600s for $200 a couple years ago. Upgraded the CPUs to 3ghz-ish x5670 CPUs and put in 48GB of ram. Total cost $400 - about the price of a single modern CPU. The machines came with Windows 7 which I upgraded to 10 at no cost.

I have old HP rack mountservers that cost about $250 that have a similar CPU RAM layout. They technically aren't supposed to run Windows 10, but they actually do.

These machines get me 12 cores at between 2.8 and 3 ghz - 24 cores if you count Hyperthreading. They are built like tanks.
Bucketloads of processing power cheap is out there and available.

Ya! Ebay is a treasure trove of really powerful, but slightly older hardware. I don't do desktop hardware, but my CAD machine (also laptop for reasons, ha) is a Xeon P50 that I bought refurbished for under $1500. Heck of a deal. I use it for analysis and modeling, then use the t420's for CAM programming and light cad duty. I'm sure there are more powerful laptop options for similar prices now. It has been about a year since I bought my last t420.

 

[APL]

I do like Onshape so far,.. it's a simpler cad version than 360, but powerful enough to do whats necessary. I think it's a
good intro to a cad design program. I haven't used it yet, but there are some good tutorials that I'm watching, and am
anxious to get started.

It's still complicated enough, thats for sure. But starting out from zip-zero, it seems to be in reach, and I'm sure that
most of the tools are similar in Fusion. At any rate, it looks like I can at least get started with it immediately.
Thanks Dui, ni shuo de dui. :thumb:

Sketch tutorial; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qajB3dpw5jw

I didn't see anything about converting dimensions to millimeters yet though, I'm sure it's in a drop box somewhere.
Still working on a new PC, thanks for the ideas!

 

[APL]

Well, I'm not so sure Onshape is free anymore,.. free company tutorials, or free for $1500. a year, or maybe a free
trial after they call you up on the phone, and give you the business.

I just spent all night trying to get a free hobbyist account, but had no luck. If it's still available, then they're hiding it.

 

[Dui ni shuo de dui]

Well, I'm not so sure Onshape is free anymore,.. free company tutorials, or free for $1500. a year, or maybe a free
trial after they call you up on the phone, and give you the business.

I just spent all night trying to get a free hobbyist account, but had no luck. If it's still available, then they're hiding it.

Just fill in the info and wait a little, they will contact you and give you access. I did that for my uncle a few months ago and created him an account, I think they contacted me by email if I recall correctly. Just said I was a hobbyist and was interested in discovering Onshape, they activated my account right away. They didn't ask much questions or anything.

I suppose they do that to avoid getting too much free users. Since all the computing power have to come from their servers, it's logical that they don't want to just allow everybody to come too easily. So they set this little bar to let only pass the ones motivated enough to go through.

I created my own account a few years back and it was much easier back then.

Here is the link I used last time:
https://cad.onshape.com/signup2?basicdataid=113b147e-2347-49b0-8c52-32e785704419&extendeddataid=4175c8b5-4f16-4b3a-b61a-19646bb51c0b&enable_cookie=check&approveUser=yes&locale=en_US&hsCtaTracking=c3153aac-7793-4d1f-9f64-5f9a78544b2c%7Cba6f18c9-5891-4db3-946d-91fb5aa60ad9

 

[APL]

Thats the link I used,.. they make you click the box in order to continue, which gets you a phone call, (which I haven't
received yet), and they also send you a 14 part Email tutorial series over the next few weeks. I still don't have a password
or an account yet.
Anyway, It just seems like a bit of hoop jumping for a free hobbyist cad program,.. I'll see how it pans out, but frankly
I'm looking around for other some options too.

I tried Tinkercad, just to get my hands dirty, but that was like pulling teeth. They don't give you any decent tools, and
you have to use shapes, to shape shapes. BS. kidstuff, but at lest it gave me 'some' experience.

Looking around at other free cad programs, I see FreeCad, which is fairly sophisticated, but not all that intuitive, at
least at first glance. Of course a person can get used to anything.
Then there's DesignSpark,.. and that has got my interest. It's very intuitive, and a pretty simple screen layout. From
what I've seen so far, It looks more like what I'm after.

Just scratched the surface on it, but this intro-video shows what it's like. Lots of stuff to check out yet.

DesignSpark intro; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXgMY3-hlgs

However, as always, downloading it might be a problem. We shall see.... I'll give it some more lookie-look and maybe give
it a try.

Lots of headaches with watching all this stuff lately, I'm still working on a new PC. Patience, patience.

 

[stan.distortion]

I never got on with FreeCAD, it uses constraints and they're a love 'em or hate 'em kind of thing, an essential feature to some folks but they always felt like doing things the hard way to me. I still use it the odd time though, things like chamfered or beveled edges and helical extrusions can be a real pain with openscad.

Well worth trying to get to grips with though, it's based on opencascade and that's extremely powerful, the French electricity board have their own open source cad package based on it (Salome) and use it for developing all sorts of things, even nuclear reactors. It should be possible to do 3d magnetic flux modelling with it, it's ideally suited to that kind of job but I've yet to come across anything along those lines.

If you get anywhere with it then HeeksCAD might also be worth a look, iirc it also uses opencascade (feels similar to freecad) and it's more orientated to machining work. None of those will be as polished as the commercial offerings though, things like Fusion or Solidworks are hard to beat that way but are generally heavier on the PC and try to lock you into their products with file formats that can only be read with their software (I had a year long battle to read .dwg files on a linux box, vowed never to use autodesks products again after that).

 

[APL]

Thanks for the info., the more options the better. I'm really liking DesignSpark Mechanical though, The more I watch,
the more it seems like it was made for me. The way they make it work just seems right. Its not as defined, or technical
as the others, but when it comes down to creating an object quickly so that others can see your concept, it's just right,
and thats mostly what I need right now.

Anyway, after watching a dozen tutorials again, I was all ready to sign up and start fooling around with it. But I got
spanked yet again, because they don't have it for Mac! Really?

No love for the old APL.
Well, you have to take the rough with the smooth, I'll get it all straightened out soon enough.

 

[stan.distortion]

Sounds good Just checked their site, it's tested with wine (winehq.org) so should run just as well on mac as natively on windows. A lot of software is doing that these days, being developed to run on wine rather than having different versions for different operating systems and there's usually no performance hit, some even perform better on wine than natively on windows!

EDIT: Just read through some details on it, seems it doesn't run well on wine, works but a few glitches and not simple to install:
https://designspark.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/213438565-How-to-install-DesignSpark-PCB-on-Linux-with-Wine-

EDIT: Oops, that's DesignSpark PCB. Read up a bit more, some folks have got DesignSpark Mechanical working ok with wine but most comments say it's buggy, the steps needed look the same as PCB though. Apparently it runs ok using Parallels but I didn't see any mention of performance, there could be a big performance hit.

 

[APL]

Thats OK, I'm working on getting a Windows 10 unit, that should cover all the bases. Windows is not my favorite, but I can
deal with it, I've had plenty of Windows OS's. Mac is relatively new for me, but I like it because it seems less problematic.
Since it will be a stand alone PC for this, I don't expect to see any bug's or glitches incurred with lot's of web searching,
and downloads, or other programs.

 

[SRFirefox]

If you're still looking, a used computer from business or academic surplus less than 5 years old is all you need for F360 or other cad programs, and they can be had quite inexpensively from various places if you can do the refurbishing yourself (never leave the OS they give you on it). Occasionally they can use a RAM or SSD upgrade, both of which are quite inexpensive these days.

 

[APL]

I'm on it. Probably will have something within a week or so, and I'll be push'n and pull'n graphics all day long. At least
for this DesignSpark Mechanical program, the system requirements are rather puny so anything will work.
(except for my backup PC which makes an abacus look modern.)

Don't want to beat it to death, so I'll edge it back over to motors for a while. I found this 2015 article on an 18/16 axial
thats similar to this motor, in that it uses straight through cores and double windings. Looks a lot like Dui ni shuo de dui's
graphics a few pages back with the center pegs. They didn't leave much room for wiring though.



The article has lots of specs on dimensions that may be relevant. They are trying to make it work with ceramic magnets
to save on production cost's though. Also using laminations,.. with 'lots' of tooth lip at only 2mm thick.



Surprised to see .4mm air gap, and 1mm tooth gaps. (maybe a non-neodyminium thing)

Taken from; https://orbit.dtu.dk/files/117047343/Session_3_Applications_presentation.pdf

Anyway, just interesting stuff to look at, and another example of a non-laminated bolt going through the middle of a core.

 

[APL]

Finally have a line on a new (refurbished) PC, but the acquisition is taking time. Tower, new OS, and nice big monitor.

One of the loose ends on the new motor is the spacer design. The last motor had spacers that were unidirectional, but
thats not really necessary, and although they looked nice,.. they didn't work to good. They made a lot of air move around
the diameter, but I don't think too much of it was actually going to the coils. There was no flow through the motor at all,
when I did a smoke flow test on it.



Theres not a lot of room for blades, about 1/2", but I think just going for one direction will be an improvement, and
getting the angle of attack right would help.

The main purpose of the spacers is to space and connect the two rotors rigidly, and the cooling fan action is just a plus.
Maybe just make the spacers 'spacers only', and make sheet metal louvers in between? Any ideas?

 

[Thecoco974]

I plan on doing something like this with my coreless build :

The part with the blades is machined as one piece with the bake iron on a disc of steel. It makes sense for me since it's a rather thin motor but for you not so much !
Another thing to look at is that mine is made to turn all the way to 7500 rpm, so a lot easier to make some airflow at those speed I guess.

 

[Dui ni shuo de dui]

Finally have a line on a new (refurbished) PC, but the acquisition is taking time. Tower, new OS, and nice big monitor.

One of the loose ends on the new motor is the spacer design. The last motor had spacers that were unidirectional, but
thats not really necessary, and although they looked nice,.. they didn't work to good. They made a lot of air move around
the diameter, but I don't think too much of it was actually going to the coils. There was no flow through the motor at all,
when I did a smoke flow test on it.

Spacers.jpg

Theres not a lot of room for blades, about 1/2", but I think just going for one direction will be an improvement, and
getting the angle of attack right would help.

The main purpose of the spacers is to space and connect the two rotors rigidly, and the cooling fan action is just a plus.
Maybe just make the spacers 'spacers only', and make sheet metal louvers in between? Any ideas?

Unless there is something I understood wrong, I think your cooling solution was almost correct, but it was actually backwards.
If you want to move air through the motor, you want to suck fresh air from the center of the motor, near the axle, and expell it from the motor perimeter. That's how most of the fans/centrifugal blowers work.
So basically, instead of trying to scoop the air from the perimeter, try to find a desing that expells it.

 

[APL]

Very nice Thecoco974! Have you given much thought as to the angle of the blades? And also, should they be pushing air
in, or pulling air out? Or does it make any difference?

I think your right Dui, ni shuo de dui, the rotors are already throwing air outward, and the blades should be reversed so
that they scoop air out.

There needs to be a flow though, and on this new motor there isn't going to be much space between the coils, hopefully
enough, it's going to be tight.

 

[APL]

Might be a few millimeters though, now that I look at it. Should be enough?

 

[Dui ni shuo de dui]

Don't want to beat it to death, so I'll edge it back over to motors for a while. I found this 2015 article on an 18/16 axial
thats similar to this motor, in that it uses straight through cores and double windings. Looks a lot like Dui ni shuo de dui's
graphics a few pages back with the center pegs. They didn't leave much room for wiring though.

IMG_2067 (1) copy.jpg

That's awesome, I'm glad to see that someone had the same idea as I did and actually built the thing!
Too bad there is no information about how it performed in the end.

I think their design for the tooth holders is overly complicated, a simple screw going down would be much easier and much cheaper, but aside from that it is pretty neat!