Showing posts with label scooter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label scooter. Show all posts

Monday, January 9, 2012

Stator Wrapping Complete!

It's a milestone in an engineer's life when he completes the wrapping of his first stator for a custom brushless D motor. I'm proud to announce that I have hit that milestone, and my thumbs are killing me. First step was to make a diagram for wrapping, which can be found in this post. Over the course of the next 10 hours (not consecutive), thumb and finger health decreased steadily and a few pictures were taken. To help you understand the numbers in the captions, one "Phase" consists of two pairs of two strands (four strands total) each wrapped around two teeth (four teeth total). The A phase consists of two teeth wound clockwise and two teeth wound counterclockwise. Put three of these phases together in the right order with the right orientation, and you've got yourself a motor.

1/4 of phase A wrapped
1/2 of phase A and 1/2 of B wrapped
Phases A and B complete, 1/2 of Phase C
One more tooth to go!
DONE. GORGEOUS.

Finishing this felt amazing (as I loudly proclaimed in N52 when I completed the last turn) despite my throbbing fingers. I've technically been working on this project since late August, and I'm finally getting somewhere. Shortly after I posted this photo to facebook, Shane and Charles displayed their amazement with the quality of the wraps, which is apparently pretty good. Which was what I was aiming for. The next step will be machining the endcaps and spacers to house the stator and rotor. Too bad I'm going back to school in a week and I'm helping the MIT Marine Robotics Team with some stuff until then.

Looks like it's time to get reacquainted with the machine shop. Let the hub motor season begin.

Thursday, January 5, 2012

Stator Wrapping and Xbox Case Mod Preview

I finally got off the ground with (name TBA) scooter's drive system. After many months of planning and procrastination, I began wrapping my stator... and boy do my thumbs hurt. Shane told me before I began that there is a spectrum of quality of stator wrapping from neat and meticulous to quick and dirty. I chose to pursue the neat and meticulous path because a more tightly wound stator would be a more powerful one. A side effect of this path is that my right thumb and forefinger are now throbbing from pulling as hard as I could on wire for an hour straight. I am not looking forward to wrapping another 11 teeth, but it must be done!

This just popped into my head: I might call this project Time Scooter. Because I've been working on it since August. We'll see if the name sticks.

Here are some pictures from the day:

Wrapping configuration diagram
Wrapping two strands at the same time is tough.

Another project I've been doing on the side this past week is creating a clear case for my xbox made from acrylic. Unfortunately 3-402 has been (hopefully temporarily) closed before MIT's IAP starts, at which point it will be occupied full time by a class. I haven't been able to make any new parts, but I have started to model the case in SolidWorks. So far I have taken my Xbox apart four times, designed and made a prototype of the motherboard mount... and that's about it. I was aiming to complete this project before school starts again, but that might not happen because of the fabrication delay.

Let's see what this thing looks like on the inside.


What an Xbox looks like on the inside.
Might be tough to see (it's clear!) but here we have the first version of the motherboard mounting piece.

Hard drive module, disassembled
Ideally I will buy a ~120 Gb 2.5" hard drive and format it to xbox's native system so I don't have to spend exorbitant amounts of money for a tiny amount of space. The current drive was $80 for a 20 Gb USED, which I find to be absolutely ridiculous.

ALASKA UPDATE!
I just got off the phone with Ed Moriarty, who is currently in McGrath, Alaska, and he says the Aurora Bears are a huge success! The kids up there are having a great time making the bear assemblies, and even the superintendent of schools showed up to make one!

Monday, November 21, 2011

SolidWorks and Engineer Magazine


This Saturday, I didn't build anything. Anything physical, that is. Instead I spent several hours learning how to use SolidWorks, which MIT kindly provided for me for free. After several grueling hours of learning the ins and outs of the software and making some lovely extruded polygons, I set out to model my scooter.

Mate. Mate mate. Mate mate mate.
Exploded
This modeling will probably eat up most of my time until I get lazy and just think about the design in my head. That actually isn't such a bad thing, since head-thinking has worked out pretty well so far.

Last but not least, I was interviewed by Mark Dwortzan for Engineer, a semiannual publication about the College of Engineering. The story will be in the spring issue, which will be on the shelves around March (?) of 2012.

Sunday, November 13, 2011

New Scooter

Here's to actually doing projects and having fun doing them. The long anticipated construction of New Scooter (official name TBA, not to be confused with Pneu Scooter) finally got its butt off the couch and went to the whiteboard for some calculations.

So lets say that I want to be able to climb a 10% grade on my scooter.

F = mg sin(theta)
F = 75 kg * 9.8 m/s^2 * .1
F = 73 N

This means that the force of gravity pulling me back down the hill is 73 N, and that I want 73 N pushing me up the hill. Lets say I want to climb the hill at 5 m/s.

P = linear force * linear velocity
P = 73 N * 5 m/s
P = 365 W

Torque = Force * radius, and I have a 6" diameter wheel.


T = F * r
T = 73 N * .076 m
T = 5.55 Nm

I'm planning on building a 33 volt LiFePO4 battery.


365 W = 33 v * 11.1 A

Now for my new favorite equation: Tea is for nibbler. I mean T = 4NIBLR

That is, Torque = 4 * # of wraps * Current * Strength of magnetic field * Length of stator * Radius of stator

For this calculation, we will estimate that the B field is about 1 T. This is an estimation, but it's really not far off of the actual value.

T = 4NIBLR
N = T/4IBLR
N = 5.55 Nm / 4 * 11.1 A * 1 T * .0254 m * .034 m
N = 144 wraps per phase

Now lets say the maximum current through quadruple 22 guage (four strands in parallel) wire is 40 amps peak. Replacing the 11.1 A in the equation with 40 A, we get N = 40 turns per phase.

If A = 11.1, N = 144 to get me up the hill.
If A = 40, N = 40 to get me up the hill.

Now for the torque constant, in Nm/A.

Kt = T/I = 4NBLR


For 11.1 A we get .5 Nm/A
For 40 A we get .14 Nm/A

1 Nm/A = 1 V/(radian/s)


33 v/(.5 v/rad/s) = 66 rad/s
and
33 v/ (.14 v/rad/s) = 236 rad/s

To calculate speed

66 rad/s * 1 rev/2 pi radians * 60 s/1 min * 60 min/1 hr * 2 pi (3 in)/1 rev * 1 ft/12 in * 1 mile/5280 ft = 11.2 mph

This is too slow. Well actually, it's a pretty safe speed, and at about twice the speed of me comfortably jogging somewhere, I'd be pretty happy going that speed. However, I'd like to go a little faster, so let's calculate my speed if I used the 40 A + N = 40 configuration. By multiplying by 236/66 we get 40 mph. As crazy as I am, I'd like to be able to build more vehicles after this project, so let's see if we can get something a bit slower.

At the advice of Shane, I wrapped the stator to see how many wraps I could reasonably fit onto one tooth.

AutoCAD predicts 95 wraps will fit if I wrap really tightly and ensure that each wire fits neatly in the valley of the two under it.


Realistically, I could fit 72 wraps of single strand 22 guage wire around one tooth, leaving room for some airflow and allowing for error in other teeth's wraps.


If we plug in 72 as N in our favorite equation, we get Kt = .248 Nm/A, which is right where it should be. According to Shane, most electric kick scooters have a Kt of between .2 and .3 Nm/A. The higher side of this range will give a scooter more torque, but go slower, and a Kt on the lower side will go faster, but accelerate slower.

Kt = .248 Nm/A


5.55 Nm / .248 Nm/A = 22.4 A


33 v/ .248 v/rad/s) = 133 rad/s

Going the long way again:

130 rad/s * 1 rev/2 pi radians * 60 s/1 min * 60 min/1 hr * 2 pi (3 in)/1 rev * 1 ft/12 in * 1 mile/5280 ft = about 22 mph

This is about right. Fast enough to actually be used as transportation somewhere, and torquey enough to get me up to speed quickly and scare other people who want to try my little toy.

Hopefully I'll wrap the stator sometime in the next two weeks, and then get to the construction of the body, battery, and turning of the rotor can and spacers.

Let the scooter building season begin...

Friday, October 7, 2011

Deathscooter Brake Replacement Update

Wow. These bike brakes are five times better than the old brakes ever were. I tested them out on Bay State Rd. before I took to the real streets, and I almost flipped over. Oh well... it was either front brakes or no brakes at all. I now have functional (also very sensitive) brakes that will hopefully last until winter, at which point I will probably have to rethink my transportation modes anyway.

Original post here.

Thursday, October 6, 2011

Deathscooter Brake Replacement

Yesterday while riding east down Comm. Ave. I was almost hit by a truck. Twice. The bike lane is never safe. I was wearing a helmet (I think of it as a fashionable plastic hat) which made me feel a little better about the events, but regardless I would have been farther from death if I had full breaking ability, which was currently in short supply. These brakes should have been replaced a few weeks ago, so I can safely say that brake pads have about a month and a half of life on the scooter.


Putting my foot down on the asphalt was more effective than clamping the brakes as hard as I could.

And so I was inspired to travel to a bike shop in kenmore and purchase some $10 bike brake pads. They fit nicely and work very well. I live to ride another day with greater deceleration capabilities.


I'll update on the status of these brakes in a few weeks.