The Steorn Permanent Magnet Motor Replication Project: It's FLUX time.

[Kent767]

basically.. from what I gather...

the magnetic attraction is stronger the further you move from a magnet... this is due to the flux (the amount of field lines travelling through a surface),  

By adding the 'balancing' magnet, the shield can be moved without altering the flux
no matter where the shield moves, the amount of covered magnetic material averages out to being 1 magnet)..  Thus the only force to move the shield, is due to the friction on the rails, gravity.  The friction is probably still pretty high, as the attractive force between 1 magnet and the shield ( the force its attracted to the shield at ANY position ) is normal to the movement...  but its better than just moving directly away from the magnet... ( like your sliding a magnet on the fridge analogy)

[Kent767]

great to know allcanadian.. thats reassuring..

This might actually work then, ill have to see if i can get some magnets....

the problem still exists that the bottom magnet ( when the shield is in the 'off' position ) will still exert a force on the other magnets on the rotor...

another magnet needs to exist (from what I can see) to overcome this... I came up with 4 magnets on the outside each at 90degrees of the rotors rotation... I'm not sure if thats ideal or not..

[allcanadian]

Maybe I can explain the setup better, let's say the actuator is laying horizontally, three magnets on a metal plate on a table. The shield is "C" shaped-free to move along the magnets on a rail or arrange the magnets in an arc so the shield can move over the magnets in an arc, because the shield is mounted to a thin disk.If you mounted a rotor with magnets on it over one of the end magnets of the actuator. then as the shield is moved the end magnet under the rotor is covered then uncovered moving the rotor. the question is you are still only using half of the actuator. what about the other end magnet not used? there are 3 magnets in the actuator why not use both end magnets that are covered then uncovered? so you use 2 rotors,one over each end magnet, the magnets on the rotor are offset so as the shield is moved back and forth one magnet on the rotor is always being attracted. the middle magnet just sits there and balances the forces on the shield so it moves easily.

[allcanadian]

Here is another twist on this,why use a rotor at all? If in fact the shield can be moved back and forth with very little effort,which I have verified it does. Then why not mount a "C" shaped coil around both end magnets. When the end magnet is covered it's field does not enter the "C" shaped coil,when the shield is moved the magnet is uncovered and the field enters the "C" coil.One of the coils on one end charges a capacitor that switches a solenoid that moves the shield, the other coil you pull power off of for use elsewhere. Why bother with a motor/generator setup at all,if you just want electricity?
just a thought

[Kent767]

Interesting Idea, but its getting away from the steorn design.. and I think it may be worht looking into, however to stick to the thread topic,

I think that having 2 rotors could cause wierd field interraction 

I think our designs are similar though, (mine and the steornquest site), whereas mine uses 4 lema, with 1 magnet on the rotor, and steornquest uses 2 magnets on the rotor and 1 LEMA,

both should be easy to build, but sticking to steorn's description we shouldn't need a solenoid or any other electrical components..