Re-Inventing The Wheel-Part1-Clemente_Figuera-THE INFINITE ENERGY MACHINE

[bajac]

Conrad,

I do not think the PWM devices work in the manner that you described. The H-Bridge transistors are switching transistors, that is, they turn on and off, only. There is not intermediate steps. The chopping wave that you see is the average value of the PWM pulses. The losses (heat up) would be too large, if the transistors had worked as linear amplifier or with intermediate steps.

Bajac

[conradelektro]

Conrad,

I do not think the PWM devices work in the manner that you described. The H-Bridge transistors are switching transistors, that is, they turn on and off, only. There is not intermediate steps. The chopping wave that you see is the average value of the PWM pulses. The losses (heat up) would be too large, if the transistors had worked as linear amplifier or with intermediate steps.

Bajac

@Bajac:

I admit doing a bad job explaining multi stepping of a stepper motor and its relationship to the Fiquera transformer.

I also admit that I do not manage to explain why one needs two DACs to drive the DRV8834 in the manner I think it should be driven.

Yes, it looks a bit strange that the two DACs give two voltage wave forms to the DRV8834 which is chopping the two full transistor bridges according to this voltage wave forms (in case you looked at my schematics). But the DRV8834 wants it like this, what can I do. The designers of the DRV8834 thought that a voltage wave form is a very good way of defining a very fine grade current change (and the current change is of course then created by the DRV8834 by chopping). And exactly this gives the very high flexibility of creating any phase shift and any "current change form" one desires.

And I never said that the full bridges in any stepper motor IC are driven in a linear or amplifying manner (all stepper motor ICs which can do MICRO stepping are chopping, switching the bridges on and off very rapidly according to a certain pulse train).

But it does not matter what I say and what I think, please read the data sheets of the stepper motor driver ICs I discussed  (DRV8834 which is very good and LMD18245 which is less suitable) and study the paper about micro stepping I cited ( http://www.stepperworld.com/Tutorials/pgMicrostepping.htm ), it says it much better than me. You will see by yourself what these ICs do and what follows from that.

If you think that the DRV8834 stepper motor driver IC is not necessary, it is fine with me. I have no stake in Texas Instruments and everybody has a different idea about how to do an experiment. I am also not selling my schematics, it is given for free as an example of a very low cost implementation which according to my unimportant opinion will do a very good job when testing the Fiquera transformer. And the ICs I propose can really be bought, they are commonplace (e.g. from Farnelle and from Arduino sellers, and I am not a salesman of Farnell, I just want to hand out useful information).

From the questions which are asked (again and again) and from the stepper motor ICs and boards cited by other people I believe to see a lack of knowledge in the field of stepper motor drivers. This is the reason why I am a bit sarcastic. One should not ask me, the only way to understanding is studying stepper motor ICs and boards and specially the art of MICRO stepping (which happens from step N to step N+1, so, each hard ware defined step of a stepper motor is subdivided into many MICRO steps mainly to make it run smoother and with less torque variations). And only what is happening in between the natural hardware steps of a stepper motor (the MICRO steps) is somehow related to driving the Fiquera transformer.

So, any stepper motor driver IC or board which can just step a stepper motor is useless, the IC or board must be able to MICRO step (at least 8 MICRO steps in order to beat the "commutator + 7 resistors" of Fiquera). In addition, most stepper motor ICs and boards stick to a 90° phase shift (of the two coil groups in a two pahse stepper motor) when MICRO stepping, which according to my humble opinion is a severe drawback when testing the Fiquera transformer (but it might not bother other experimenters).

Please publish your test circuit, I probably will write my opinion about it in this forum (as I wrote my opinion about the other stepper motor ICs and boards cited by other people).

I know that trying to teach is a bad idea, people do not want to learn, they want to build want they think is best. And many think they can beat well known facts or cut corners when doing electronics.

Finally, I do not claim that I understand the Fiquera transformer and that I can make it work better than anyone else. But I think it is a fun experiment which tickles my brain and makes me do some interesting programming. The schematics I published are also a very good circuit for testing various motor ideas which I carry around in my brain for a long time and never experimented with.

Greetings, Conrad

[bajac]

Conrad,

Please, do not take my comments personally or in a bad way. It is ok to respectfully disagree and no one should get emotional about it. We all are here to learn from each other.

It is not my intention (and I also think it is not for others in this forum) to discourage you from doing the experiment your way. As a matter of fact I think everyone here will tweak and play around with this device in different ways. THAT IS WHAT MAKES THE FORUM ENJOYABLE!

If you enjoy putting components together, soldering ICs, etc. I am perfectly fine with that. For my part, if I can take a short cut and avoid putting components together, I will. I already purchased the stepper motor driver from eBay. And, do not take me wrong, I can work at that level. I used to build electronics devices as a hobby. I also worked as an electronics technician for about 15 years. I also spent 10 years building control units with PLCs and VFDs, and writing ladder logic programs. However, for this project my main goal is not to put together a stepper motor driver, but to test Figuera's concept.

I hope everything is clear and that we can keep working together as a team.

Regards,
Bajac

[bajac]

See attached photo for my construction of the Figuera's generator. The C-electromagnets can be adjusted to change the air gap separation distance. This one shows the driving transistors, but I will replace them as soon as I receive the stepper motor driver.


Thanks.
Bajac

[kEhYo77]

Nice build you got going there, Bajac!

Mine is already working, I'll post a video soon.