Just wondering.
http://fdp.nu/mikelldevice/thedevice.asp (http://fdp.nu/mikelldevice/thedevice.asp)
The whole story looks really dubious to me. I can't see why it would work, but at the same time, I find the image of the magnet-covered donut form interesting somehow, so I've been playing around with some 3mm neo cubes stuck to some MDF, using bits of an old ceiling fan as a base for it to spin on.
It's spun repeatedly by itself for up to almost a quarter revolution, but I don't know why. It could have just been a strong repulsion action followed by a comparitive lack of magnetic reaction.
There's what I'd call a wavy corrugated effect you can feel when slowly rotating the disk, where you can feel the magnets repulsing each other line by line. When you let the disk go at the top of one of these waves or corrugations it will often jump up over the next wave and keep going for a little while. As I said, the furthest Ive seen it go was about a quarter of a revolution (or something under 90 degrees).
I'm not really sure if I want to keep dabbling with this, so just thought I'd share the information before I put it away. It might help prevent others from unecessarily covering the same ground.
Here are some pictures. I've since redone the donut with the magnets on a more angled spiral, but have found it less effective.
Les.
Nice pictures and work. The design seems to be similar to a Perendev magnet arrangement where more magnets are in attraction mode than in attractive lock or repel. Golden ratio... I have found that it takes away the rotational strength of a device if any magnet is allowed to fully encounter an opposing magnetic field.
I spent about $50.00 and a couple weekends making my, "sound theory," permanent magnet motor. That was when I learned about the unanticipated sticky spots.
If it were easy to make a permanent magnet motor work then everyone would be making them. I have not completely lost my faith that it is possible. I still enjoy entertaining the idea. However, my threshold of construction initiation is much higher now. I would rather pulse some coils these days.
I echo Liberty's endorsement of the Golden Ratio. My latest musings entertain a concept very similar to this post involving Golden Spirals and Fibonacci Numbers:
If you look at the end of a pine cone you will see eight rows of nubs spiraling in one direction and thirteen rows of nubs spiraling in the opposite direction. Eight and thirteen are Fibonacci Numbers. Every nub of the pine cone belongs to both of these counter rotating spirals at the same time.
(If you look at all of the spirals in this proposed design series at the link posted, you will see only one direction of spirals taken into account. Yet, the individual magnets are like pine cone nubs in that they are points, not lines. We may find a connecting spiral pattern in the opposite direction of the current design by accident, but I do not think that it was a design intent.)
Once the memory of my previous failure fades, I may attempt to pursue this line of thinking. Perhaps I will use an actual pine cone and glue magnets directly to the nubs. Size, shape, and orientation of the magnets are undecided at this point. Perhaps it will come to me in a dream.
Excellent work LWH
You must have hell of alot of patience, that must of taken ages.
I played with laying spirals out on Plexiglass a few months ago, like the small model he shows, but it did not do alot must admit.
Keep up the good work
Regards
Sean.
Thanks for your replies.
It's funny you mention the counter-rotating spirals on the pine-cones Rosphere, as I noticed the same thing developing on the later, more angled, magnet arrangements I tried (not pictured). And it did make me wonder if it was somehow crucial to the design.
To deliberately and accurately lay out the magnets in a way that keeps both spirals in a proper line would be very difficult though, and I don't think I have the patience for trying that at the moment.
Les.
IWH: Of course, a video will show how it works?
Br.
Vidar
.
Low-Q, if you were asking me to show a video, I don't have any, sorry.
Les.
Hi lwh,
Nice work, but I don't think your design is right.
I think this motor should be built with a male/female - push/pull structure.
Half the motor should attract and the other half should repel. You need to use both sides of the torus! The rotor should not be flat, but enter and exit the toroid opening on both sides like this: 0>I<0
Good luck and nice work.
You might find some ideas to help you in the files section of my yahoogroup:
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/magnetech-research/
Regards,
Dan LaRochelle
Suppose two magnets are held together in opposition(like north pole on north pole).
Is the force with which the two magnets push apart equal, or less than the force it took to actually put them in this position of opposition?
The same can be asked about attraction: Is the energy that can be generated from two magnets attracting each other equal, or less than the energy it will take to pull them back apart?
These spiral designs can be elusive. The work that is done by a magnet has to be "undone"(thats why you get sticky spots).
@xpenzif,
Undoing can be accomplished by properly superimposing another conservative field such as the gravitational filed leading to producing more energy out than in. This is how SMOT violates the principle of conservation of energy.
@omnibus
I have a question. Which point is lower?
A: the starting position where the ball/object is placed.
B: the position where the ball comes to rest after dropping off of the peak of the ramp.
@xpenzif,
Answering these questions will not help you to understand why SMOT violates the principle of conservation of energy.
If that?s what you need to understand (and that?s what?s really important) observe http://omnibus.fortunecity.com/smot.gif whereby, obviously, the gravitational potential energy spent is mgh1 while the gravitational potential energy lost is mg(h1 + h2), that is, greater than the gravitational potential energy spent when the loop is closed, which is a clear violation of the principle of conservation of energy. All this in a closed A-B-C-A loop in the magnetic field which means that no magnetic potential energy has been spent or lost when the loop is closed.
So far SMOT, constructed so that two conservative fields are properly superimposed, is the easiest reproducible way to demonstrate violation of energy conservation beyond doubt.
Can't see the image but I looked at a couple others.
The object has more gravitational potential energy at the peak of the ramp than what it started with, but the only reason the work generated by the magnets isn't being undone is because the starting point needs to be higher than the resting point- If point C were as high as point A then the work would have to be undone because it would be too close to the magnets.
Just an idea, I could place a piece of metal on the floor and wave a magnet over it and have the metal "jump" and cling on to the magnet I am holding. Now the metal has more gravitational potential energy than it had on the floor. Free gravitational potential energy. I will only get to do it once, but I guess thats the same problem with smot.
"Suppose two magnets are held together in opposition(like north pole on north pole).
Is the force with which the two magnets push apart equal, or less than the force it took to actually put them in this position of opposition?"
I'd say less.
"The same can be asked about attraction: Is the energy that can be generated from two magnets attracting each other equal, or less than the energy it will take to pull them back apart?"
I'd say less.
This is why I don't believe any mechanical design or process will work.
When magnets are attracted to each other, a greater or equal force is required to separate them. And when magnets are repulsing each other, a greater or equal force is required to join them.
The best you can get is a force applied once which balances the magnets and allows them move freely in relation to each other, but with an overall greater degree of inertia. The analogy I think of is like a huge stone disk that is balanced so it can spin freely and will do so for longer than a lighter object similarly spun. I hope that makes sense.
So if I believe this, why would I bother with the magnetic toroid? Because I wasn't sure if it was a mechanical magnetic set up or powered by some other means. Which is to say, "These spiral designs can be elusive."
Also, what I believe to be true and what I wish to be true are sometimes different things, but I'm free to act on both (and neither).
Les.
@xpenzif,
This is incorrect. Read again what I wrote and try to understand it.
Quote from: lwh on February 26, 2007, 03:19:06 PM
Low-Q, if you were asking me to show a video, I don't have any, sorry.
Les.
I assume you have a digital camera when I see the quality on your pictures you posted. Digital cameras also have a video function, some poor, but it will do for this task I believe - even if it might be your friends camera, I'm sure he/she will borrow you the camera. Could you please take a short video of it and let us see that it works?
Br.
Vidar
Low-Q, the camera I borrowed can take video's, but when I took those photo's I hadn't yet seen any more than ten or twenty degrees of rotor movement and didn't think it was worth filming. I was also in a hurry at the time.
I don't know many people who have camera's who'd be willing to lend one to me or who I'd be willing to ask. The camera I used is one I bought for my mum and she lives too far away to justify travelling here just to let me take some photo's. On top of that, there'd be nothing to see except a piece of round wood moving for a fraction of a second then stopping. And to cap it all off, that configuration of magnets has since changed and would be a real pain to set up again. Sorry if this all sounds like excuses but it's just the way it is.
I'm not even sure the degree of rotation I did get was due to the device partially working as designed, or whether it was just some other useless effect.
Imagine the rotor magnets as a 'ball' balanced at the top of the first of a series of 'hills', the 'hills' being the rows of magnets on the toroid. When I rolled the 'ball' up and over the first 'hill', it went up and over the next one, then the next, and kept going up and over about nine of these 'hills' before stopping. I have no idea if these 'hills' were all the same shape and size (magnetically speaking), whether it was just the initial impetus keeping it going, or what. At the time it did look like it was somehow re-pushing itself along, but I can't say that it definitely was. It could simply be that there was a sticky spot at the start that required more force than usual to roll over, and that once I applied that force it was enough to keep the thing going longer than normal, even though at the time I got no sense of this being so.
I don't know what else to say. It's only that I think about it now, and since other arrangements haven't produced the same effect, that the movement seems in any way significant. I pretty much dismissed it at the time, in the interests of trying to do better, and I'm still not inclined to place much importance on it. That may be a mistake, I don't know.
Sorry if I've wasted your time by making you think unecessarily about all this. I just considered my own results inconclusive at best and wondered if anyone else had any other results or suggestions while I've still got all the bits and pieces at hand.
Les.
lwh:
I did not waste any time studying your device. I think all kind of ideas are useful, working or not, including yours. Thanks for sharing it with us, and I'm not "mad" at anyone who make mistakes in the struggle to find a way to make an over unity motor. Without tries and fails, no one will ever learn, or succeed.
Br.
Vidar
Interesting thought.
What is the most efficient angle to bring two magnets into alignment that uses the least force and then letting the magnets depart at a different angle, again with the most efficient configuration to gain more energy on the exit than on the entry.
The Steorn conversations went down this avenue, Fast in to sway the magnetic domains, Pause and let the domains align and then exit kick creates more energy than the input. But no conclusions seemed to come around, just theories.
If we get this sussed then the rest is easy!!
Regards
Sean.
Quote from: xpenzif on February 28, 2007, 04:04:20 PM
Suppose two magnets are held together in opposition(like north pole on north pole).
Is the force with which the two magnets push apart equal, or less than the force it took to actually put them in this position of opposition?
The same can be asked about attraction: Is the energy that can be generated from two magnets attracting each other equal, or less than the energy it will take to pull them back apart?
These spiral designs can be elusive. The work that is done by a magnet has to be "undone"(thats why you get sticky spots).
Quote from: CLaNZeR on March 02, 2007, 06:16:28 PM
What is the most efficient angle to bring two magnets into alignment that uses the least force and then letting the magnets depart at a different angle, again with the most efficient configuration to gain more energy on the exit than on the entry.
This quote nicely sums up our intentions.
Why its so difficult is because the force a magnetic field exerts on a charged particle is always at right angles to its motion.