Hi All
I would love to have more info regarding the Steorn stuff, so that i could start building one. But I there are lots of variables still.
1. 4 Magnets on the rotor, (Perhaps of ferrite)
2. One stator, neo
and as far as i know, nothing moves except the rotor which is driven externally.
The only info i am sure about is the Low Energy actuator, since the patent is avalible to view. So in an effort to try and get into the mind set of the Steorn Guys. I am replicating one of their Low energy actuators.
Perhaps after finishing this i will understand what the steorn guys are doing better, and maybe be a bit closer to what they are doing.
A pic is below of my low energy actuator, shield not yet installed but it moves nicely on its bearing so far
Craigy
Hey Craigy...Did you catch any of the forum drama at steorn's forum last night?
Quote from: Craigy on December 16, 2006, 08:01:49 PM
A pic is below of my low energy actuator, shield not yet installed but it moves nicely on its bearing so far
Craigy
Hi Craigy,
Sorry to speak yet without practical test but I think that a third cylinder magnet of the same size and pole's direction like the other two would make the movement of the shield even easier that the the present two, because then the shield could always move inside a 'more uniform' number of fluxlines than in the case of only two magnets. And then the shield would always 'receive' flux from two and not one magnet at a time so its movement would be smoother being always in the majority of fluxlines. (of course the length of the shield should be as long as the covering distance between any two magnets.)
If you find this third magnet as redundant because of you have already tested it with two and settled for it, then sorry for my rambling.
rgds, Gyula
Hi all. What happened on the Steorn Forum?
And to answer the other question, Yes, it works just fine with 2 magnets,
Interestingly tho..if we put 2 magnets with one pole n and the other s uppermost, the linear bearing they are on returns the magnets to the centre of the linear bearing, almost like a self centering device.
Putting magnets of the same polarity together makes that disappear, and the magnets are free to slide along the linear bearing with no apparant force being felt.
I am having trouble bending the shield, it bends , but getting it to bend at the right place is a pain in the butt. So will make it out of ali and stick shield to the ali instead..
Craig
Basically, some of the members were hot on the trail of pinning down the principle behind the effect of Steorn's device, WITH the help of Sean (Steorn CEO). He was dropping hints like it was Christmas! THEN...he deletes like 4 or 5 threads with like 1000s of posts and tons of related info. Someone got a little too close maybe? You kind of had to be there. These threads were getting more posts in an hour than OU.com might see in a week. So if you didn't follow it right up until it got deleted, you missed the boat. I was probably on it for 9-10 hours straight. It was such an "event" amongst the Steorn crew they were ready to make tshirts. :D
Yeah , looks like i missed the boat, i went over there and looked you up and was able to work out what had happened by the various other posts there.
The only snippet of info i got was because someone said that they posted something about a reciprocating magnetic toy then the thread got pulled.
Anyway heres another photo of a steorn Low energy actuator replicated by me.
Craig
Actuator looks good!
reciprocating magnetic toy......Can you explain more...Please..
Hey Craigy,
Nice replication! Join us over on the forum, you will get a lot more feedback there.
Regards,
Joe
Ok i'm now registered
can you at least view it?
It's not closed...the registration for the jury is closed. If I remember correctly, you just have to enter a name and password in the data boxes and you're off and running. Maybe an email address as well, but the forum's registration is pretty quick.
Ok i'm in and posting, although from what i have read and seen so far looks like my linear bearings will come in very handy to replicate the stuff on there.
I couldn't really make out the bearing your using. Do you have a link to something similar?
The Linear bearings are THK, i got 4 off of ebay for 5 or 6 dollars a piece. I was lucky really because i was guessing at these since i have never come accross these before, except that is Drawer slides. Of Course they are far to big unless you want to build a monster first time out LOL....
This is a lot of 2 THK RSR3W linear motion slides. These things are awesome, in basically perfect condition. The rail measures 1 1/2" in length with approximately 1" of travel. The bearings slide smoothly and quietly and the rails are nice and clean, no nicks or dings. These are great for CNC projects and milling applications. More info, technical specs, and cad drawings for your engineering diagrams can be found at: http://www.tos-world.com or http://www.thk.com
.
Now have a nice stainless steel shield installed and what i noticed above is still valid although it self centres regardless of how the magnets are installed. BUT , the force required to move the shield away from the magnets seems less when the actuator has like poles facing upwards.
Craig
Was the shield stainless previously?
Hi there,
no i was using a bit of ali to mount things on, one cent coins and the like. I now have stainless steel
Anyway there was a flaw in my replication, i'm not too proud to say..The magnets when placed directly in contact with the steel linear bearing effectively combine to form a horse shoe magnet thus cancelling all flux acting on the bearing itself.
What i did, was to make a nice brass plate with magnet holders on it..(Yes a bit of a plonker i know) thus the magnets were attracting the runner to the center. This was easy to fix, i just dilled holes through the brass plate so that the magnets are in contact with the steel. Now i can test the thing
Still, who wants to patent a self centering device LOL....
Ok heres a video, There is also a thread riunning over at the steorn forum
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ME6dnwtbBE4
Nice video Craigy,
would be nice to see it set up with a solonoid triggered by your motor disc.
Well blatantly forced ,to work,
what came to my mind is,can you get a mechanism to automaticly pull that slider back and forth which is driven when it turns???
so that it actually keeps spinning?
I Am, thinking about this with that video, >>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_engine .
so that it keeps on spinning,and if it gets faster then the slider moves faster,in rhythm with it spinning.
WIth out you haveing actually to be there,hey i think that will likely to work, then you have a self running device.
how hard was the flux force,when you pull that slider back and forth?
The possible bottlenecks would be the slider,
well there are my thoughts,that came up when i saw the video,
or a nother way, Electric driveing to slide that instead of hands, like pulseing,and you can have sensors which tell it when to move when it has almost completed it's circle,so its in near enough time to slide and keep it going like when it spins and when the sensors activate when they come into contact the electric motor slides it into place to keep it moveing (?)
hey you saw the video did you?
well theres my thoughts,although i do not have enough understanding on electric but for someone like me who was not taught on that, those are my thoughts to get it more nearer to ''self running''.
@craigy
is there any growing with low energy actuator?
you moved magnets in video. why do not you move the shield? and why do not you hold it up vertical?
Hi There, I could move the shield, or the magnets, but as the patent has the magnets on the rail and not on the carriage i copied the patent . Sorry i forgot to hold it up vertical, it will fall under its own wieght, but these are easy to make, try for yourself , i'm not trying to hide anything..LOL
Craig
thanks for reply.
i dont have mechanical equipments. i try to buy magnets. i dont speak english very well, so youtube videos are understandable.
thanks again for your sharing ;)
I wish more people posted photos and videos, They make understanding a lot easier even if you speak english..LOL
Craigy,
Nice videos. Are you going to go any further on this? I would think that this could be setup with maybe four of the shields and use ramps to move the shields. Sort of torbay style.
Also, the video shows that your magnets are sticking to the stainless. Magnets do not stick to stainless steel. Maybe that's why you got it so cheap ;D
There are different grades i assume, i know my stainless steel nuts and bolts don't attract whilst the spoon , the sink and the pressure cooker do to varing degrees some more than others and they all perport to be stainless. But in the shield that is not so much of a problem as the forces are equaled out so that the magnets of shield can move freely. In fact it is more the magnetic permiability properties we are after, ie, that the shield does not get magnetised overnight that is most important..
i have lots of projects half built at the mo.. so not sure when i will return to the shield, i built another using 3 x 15mm round magnets, now they are strong, and the shield or magnets can fall down under their own weight. So it works, you saw how attractive the errm, stainless i was working with is. lol..
i was thinking of building a revised torbay, with just 3 stators or lemas, to see if that would work.
still so many things happening , what with steorn and others, not sure what project to finish next..
Craig
I think the actuator is older steorn technology - if a year or so can be considered old. I listened to an interview with the Steorn CEO and he said he had a self running machine and it worked with magnets pulling on ferrous metal. This interview was found on the Steorn website.
Craigy, like iadcw I noticed Steorn said they had pmagents working on ferrous metal. That's the approach I tried, because I didn't want the shield to interact with magnets on both sides. If you use a shield that strongly interacts with the magnet and put it as close as possible without touching (like in the LEMA patent) then you can turn off the magnet and expose it's full potential when you turn it on (because the magnetic field decreases so quickly with distance). Then of course the problem is moving the shield because it wants to stay right on top of the magnet. I hooked up a crude mechanism that used an elastic band to balance the shield's desire to be over the magnet. I got very close to equilibrium where it took very low energy to move the shield. Since the shield was reactive with the PM it meant you could basically touch the ferrous metal to the outside of the shield and there was very little attraction (almost perfectly turned off).
A picture of my mechanism: (https://overunityarchives.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.overunity.com%2Findex.php%3Faction%3Ddlattach%3Btopic%3D171.0%3Battach%3D6347&hash=3e2e437d83a7800490f399a5879248ed5591a687)
Reade
Yes i see, you are countering the attraction force with a spring force, but that is not a low energy actuator in the true sense of the expression. In your diagram if you add another 2 neos either side of the one there at the moment you will find that the shield will not be attracted to just one of the neos, it will move freely over and between them, until the shield gets to the extreme end of one side or the other.
The neos should be placed on a metal plate with all of the same poles facing upward, the shield will require little or no force to move from end to end
Craig
Thanks Craig. Yes, I'd like to try that and see if I can replicate what you describe. Excellent work and I'm looking forward to hearing more of your advancements.
Regards,
Reade