Will I be able to use this motor for anything?

[mettleramiel]

I got this brushless motor off of a wheelchair about a week ago and though that I would play around with it. The motor is designed for 24v and provides a considerable amount of torque, enough to haul someone much bigger than me with more weight (in a wheelchair) alot faster up a hill than my scooter can do. I'm not so sure if I can use it with a scooter controller though. The motor has 3 power leads, which is good, but then the 5 wires that I thought were for the hall sensors have me a little less convinced. 4 of them go straight to the small circuit board in the fuzzy picture below and the last one (black) seems to be a ground or neutral wire.

Here's the motor. The big, rusty coloured thing in the middle is a brake and will be removed.

The thing I expected to be a hall sensor. Sorry about the terrible picture. The big white rectangle on the bottom right of the first pic is for the wiring harness.

Any ideas, people?

 

[fechter]

That looks like a pretty nice motor.

If you can get a better picutre of the little circuit board, we might be able to tell if it has hall sensors on it. There should be a way to test the board, but it would be good if you can identify some of the parts on it first.

Worst case, you could run it with a sensorless controller.

 

[wasp]

i thought wheelchairs had dc motors?

 

[mettleramiel]

Yes, it is a DC motor. What made you think it wasn't?

I know that the circuit board works, as the motor works on the wheelchair controller. I'll try to get a better picture of the board. If there are hall sensors on the board, they don't look like any that I've ever seen. If they don't have any, where would I find a sensorless controller? Never heard of that.

 

[wasp]

Yes, it is a DC motor. What made you think it wasn't?

I know that the circuit board works, as the motor works on the wheelchair controller. I'll try to get a better picture of the board. If there are hall sensors on the board, they don't look like any that I've ever seen. If they don't have any, where would I find a sensorless controller? Never heard of that.

ah....you thinking it had hall wires¿

 

[wasp]

Yes, it is a DC motor. What made you think it wasn't?

I know that the circuit board works, as the motor works on the wheelchair controller. I'll try to get a better picture of the board. If there are hall sensors on the board, they don't look like any that I've ever seen. If they don't have any, where would I find a sensorless controller? Never heard of that.

you also wrote it was a brushless motor¿

 

[Sacman]

I got this brushless motor off of a wheelchair about a week ago and though that I would play around with it. The motor is designed for 24v and provides a considerable amount of torque, enough to haul someone much bigger than me with more weight (in a wheelchair) alot faster up a hill than my scooter can do. I'm not so sure if I can use it with a scooter controller though. The motor has 3 power leads, which is good, but then the 5 wires that I thought were for the hall sensors have me a little less convinced. 4 of them go straight to the small circuit board in the fuzzy picture below and the last one (black) seems to be a ground or neutral wire.

The thing I expected to be a hall sensor. Sorry about the terrible picture. The big white rectangle on the bottom right of the first pic is for the wiring harness.

Any ideas, people?

I was looking at my dad's electric motor chair this past weekend as well. The motors and controller on these things are setup to run at high torque and low rpms... and extremely quiet. Those electric motor chairs are setup to move up to a 350 pound person at only 5mph. And yup... similar to yours it runs at 24v on 70ah SLA batteries. The motors aren't setup symetrically to easily make a hub motor. You could use it along with a pulley and chain (or belt) to drive a very quiet and very stealthy low speed vehicle.

 

[mettleramiel]

Yea, I knew that it wouldn't make a good hub motor, that would require alot of modifications. I wanted to know what kind of controller I could use on this thing and then try cranking up the numer of volts. This particular motor can be programed to move a max of about 500 pounds (person, chair and batteries) at a max of 8.5mph and it stays that fast on some pretty steep hills. I figured that it could handle more than 24v and maybe actualy push me along at a decent speed.

 

[fechter]

It might make a good BB drive if you remove the wheel and put a chain sprocket instead.

Sensorless controllers are very common for RC models. The problem is the control interface, which I am presently working on. There might be some other sensorless controllers out there that work, but selection is very limited.

From the picture, it looks like it would be relatively easy to install hall sensors if you can figure out the right spacing for them. The sensors just need to pick up the flux from the magnets, so it looks like you could glue them along the edge of the stator so they sense the sides of the magnets. On Crystalyte motors, there are little recesses milled into the stator iron for the sensors. This approach might work well too.

If the motor runs with the existing controller, you should be able to measure the voltages on the wires coming from the sensing circuit to determine their function. With the power on, measure each wire against battery ground while very slowly turning the rotor. If you do that, we should be able to figure out the wiring.

Another idea would be to modify the existing controller for higher voltage.