STEORN DEMO LIVE & STREAM in Dublin, December 15th, 10 AM

[hartiberlin]

I had another closer look in fullcreen to this video of Steorn:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JikYfmEdF8

They have used really Toroidal-Ferrite coils  as Motor-Drive coils.
So as there are magnets inside the rotor,
the rotor is accelerated without any current input into the
direction of the ferrite toroid coils.

Then when the magnets arrive exactly over the toroidal ferrite core coils,
these coils are pulsed by a Reed Switch from the battery,
see:

http://www.steorn.com/demo/rig/
Part Number 23

and then repelled, so the rotor can rotate on.

One interesting fact here is, that these toroidal ferrite core coils
normally have their magnet fields completely inside the ferrite core
and only leakage flux is coming out of them..
so the rotor will probably have not much torque,
cause this will not repell strongly the rotor magnets.

Also the mechanical Reed switching of the input current will
probably wear down the Reed Switch pretty fast, as the BACKEMF
of the toroidal coils
also goes through the Reed Switch and will
spark a bit inside the Reed Switch.
Also the rotation RPM is thus not very fast, because the mechanical Reed Switch
could probably switch not faster than about 30 to 50 Hz or so...

So the Motor part is not very powerful in torque and not very durable
cause the Reed switch will wear out pretty soon.

On this  Roth Elektronik RE901 PCB board there seems to be
soldered also only a SMD diode,
cause only 2 connections are used.

It seems to be only the blocking diode,so that
the current from the battery will not flow through the
pickup coils, but this diode will only conduct during the
induction spike of the pickup coils recharging the Ansman 10.000 mAh
NiMh accumulator battery.


So all in all it is a pretty easy to build pulse motor
and should be easy to replicate and measure the
input and output currents.

The only effect I could see is, that they use the toroidal ferrite core
coils for the driver part, which could behave stangely,
cause the magnet will also induce current into them,
when they go by and this could reduce the input current...

But how much could only be measured via a scope on a shunt
resistor.

Gruss, Stefan.

[Staffman]

@all

I just did a small test. Not with a toroid but very similar. I took three neo magnets (1/4 inch diameter by 3 inches in length) and three 1/2 inch ball bearings. I then made a triangle with them making sure the poles all attracted. This cancelled the magnetic field (detected by the outside) of the neo magnets. Once the triangle was broken the field came back.

[Quick note... at the junction between the neos and the bearings due to size differences there was a small attraction to the neo by the iron nail I used to the sharp edge of the neo. Yeah, not quite a toroid but you get the point.]

I think this may be what they are doing with the toroids. With no current going to the toroid, the magnets on the rotor attract to the toroid. When the toroid is powered the rotor magnets are no longer attracted.

Does anyone have a toroid to test with? I may have something, an iron pipe that I could cut, but I'm going to have to get some higher gauge wire(36 awg will break on me).

EDIT: Just grabbed a magnet to see if it would attract to the steel ball bearings on the triangle. Yes, it still attracts. I'm going to try making a toroid coil tomorrow to see if this theory pans out.

[lumen]

Now for the arrangement of the double rows of rotor magnets.
There are two rotors and each rotor has two rows of magnets.

My opinion would be that it would be the most effective if the top row of each rotor would be "N" out and the bottom row would be "S" out.
This would yield the most draw to the toroidal core material. (probably ferrite with low saturation)

The coil should cause the field in the toroid to be in a direction where after the magnets pass, the field is in the direction that would push on each of the passing magnets.
It would not actually be pushing but the opposing direction would yield the greatest rejection of any attraction to the passing magnet.

I guess it all seems fairly clear how it should actually work. (and be OU?)

[lumen]

Looks like Steorn put out a new learning module that is very close to the working concept!

http://www.steorn.com/skdb/e-learning/flash-promo/3.1/index.html

[hartiberlin]

Another thing I just realized, when again looking at the video is,
that the generator magnets are located  90 degrees out of phase versus the motor magnets
inside the rotor.

So this makes sure, that motor and generator pulses are not occuring at the same
time but are occurring after each other in time.

So by putting a 1 Ohm shunt resistor onto the plus pole of the battery, it should
be visible on a scope , if the average current out of the battery is positive or negative
over one cycle...
If it will be negative, then surely this Orbo is overunity.

If the integration area is positive over one cycle then the Orbo is underunity.
(in this case heating losses I^2xR of the coils neglected..)