×
INTELLIGENT WORK FORUMS
FOR ENGINEERING PROFESSIONALS

Log In

Come Join Us!

Are you an
Engineering professional?
Join Eng-Tips Forums!
  • Talk With Other Members
  • Be Notified Of Responses
    To Your Posts
  • Keyword Search
  • One-Click Access To Your
    Favorite Forums
  • Automated Signatures
    On Your Posts
  • Best Of All, It's Free!
  • Students Click Here

*Eng-Tips's functionality depends on members receiving e-mail. By joining you are opting in to receive e-mail.

Posting Guidelines

Promoting, selling, recruiting, coursework and thesis posting is forbidden.

Students Click Here

Jobs

Future of Electric Motors

Future of Electric Motors

Future of Electric Motors

(OP)
As everyone here enjoys solving "electrical problems"... Can I rear the ugly old question of... "What's Next"?

What's going on in this ever changing industry that we... as (Electrical People) need to be ready for.

What are you working on? What's next?
Any "heads up"?

John

RE: Future of Electric Motors

There were rumours that ABB was working on a new DC motor concept. Far from what has been known so far and expanding the envelope in many directions. But not sure if that survives the Baldor incident.

Gunnar Englund
www.gke.org
--------------------------------------
Half full - Half empty? I don't mind. It's what in it that counts.

RE: Future of Electric Motors

Baldor incident??

Bill
--------------------
"Why not the best?"
Jimmy Carter

RE: Future of Electric Motors

ABB bought Baldor. It looks like development is moving from Västerås to Baldor territory.

Gunnar Englund
www.gke.org
--------------------------------------
Half full - Half empty? I don't mind. It's what in it that counts.

RE: Future of Electric Motors

Thank you Skogs.
Yours
Bill

Bill
--------------------
"Why not the best?"
Jimmy Carter

RE: Future of Electric Motors

On-line condition "partial discharge" monitoring using coupling capacitors or slot couplers is relatively new in the past 15 years or so. That's about the only thing "new" to hit my plant.

Switched reluctance motors was the old "new thing" that never really exploded the way some people thought it would. There was a thread on that in the past.

We have heard lots of talk of magnetic bearings and superconducting windings for awhile... I haven't seen any find their way to manufacturer's offerings when we've bought motors recently.... I guess the high tech sexy stuff is reserved for special applications with space/weight constraints that justify the cost. Maybe shop people get involved in a wider variety of motors. I'd be interested to hear about the unique new motors that show up in repair shops.

=====================================
(2B)+(2B)' ?

RE: Future of Electric Motors

The latest and greatest for my tiny segment is just an increase in larger horsepower motors than previously built, and the use in either colder or hotter ambient conditions than normal.

RE: Future of Electric Motors

Magnetic bearings and superconductors is something I heard about when I started at ASEA/ABB HQ in the sixties. As Pete says, it has been the "news" for a long time. SKF and others have magnetic bearings. But for specialized machines only. Are there any superconducting motor/generator windings out there?

Gunnar Englund
www.gke.org
--------------------------------------
Half full - Half empty? I don't mind. It's what in it that counts.

RE: Future of Electric Motors

ABB bought Baldor?? when was that skog? superconducting - cryogenic-cooled winding perhaps?


"..the more, the merrier" Genghis Khan

RE: Future of Electric Motors

thnx skog for the link..Baldor is about to sink.
hope i see one supercoducting machine in the industry, somewhere out there.


"..the more, the merrier" Genghis Khan

RE: Future of Electric Motors

We've been working on some permanent magnet motors that seems to be the future.

A nightmare to work on though. Litz wire, high frequency, very little insulation for what we have to test them to. Lots of ground faults.

Link

RE: Future of Electric Motors

Not only that, Motorwinder, you also need a clean-room. I had several PM motors in a paper machine where the bearings were destroyed by PWM stray currents. It was not possible to change bearings on site because iron filings and dust was attracted to the poles and couldn't be removed once it got there. Had to bring them to the manufacturer's site. These motors were between 200 and a little more than 1000 kW. Distance between paper machine and manufacturer's site was 1 854 km - one way. Took a truck more than three days to make the round trip - bearings were changed in a few hours.

Permanent magnet motors are not always the best solution.

Gunnar Englund
www.gke.org
--------------------------------------
Half full - Half empty? I don't mind. It's what in it that counts.

RE: Future of Electric Motors

Still on the motor theme, one big thing on the horizon for us is effective sinusoidal filtering of variable speed drives. As Skogsgurra says, PWM stray currents can be destructive and filtering is one solution - the current batch of filtering technology on the market have various trade-offs that depending on the application can cause more dramas than they solve. Newer designs - NFO Sinus, current-source topologies, etc., could have a huge impact if they scale well.

On the electronics design front, Functional Safety design is a lumbering elephant on the horizon. Perhaps already pervasive in aviation and automotive, "Proven" operating systems, redundant architectures, voting systems, quantitative FMEA, formal specification languages, all have the potential of fundamentally changing the way we operate.

And on the silicon level, massively parallel architectures will be one of the next big things - chips are already being manufactured with hundreds of parallel processing cores, but the software and algorithms to get the most out of them is still playing catch-up. As we approach physical limits in clock speeds, parallelism will be the next way forward.

RE: Future of Electric Motors

Aw crap, just re-read the subject. You specifically were referring to motors. Oh well, ignore the last two items!

RE: Future of Electric Motors

Quote (Skogsgurra)

Not only that, Motorwinder, you also need a clean-room. I had several PM motors in a paper machine where the bearings were destroyed by PWM stray currents. It was not possible to change bearings on site because iron filings and dust was attracted to the poles and couldn't be removed once it got there. Had to bring them to the manufacturer's site. These motors were between 200 and a little more than 1000 kW. Distance between paper machine and manufacturer's site was 1 854 km - one way. Took a truck more than three days to make the round trip - bearings were changed in a few hours.

Permanent magnet motors are not always the best solution.

We were lucky and got stators only. I wouldn't want any part of that rotor.

RE: Future of Electric Motors

LiteYear

I think that the combination drive/motor is important. So, your posts are relevant. You mention the NFO Sinus, and I have been working with the late Ragnar Jonsson. I regret that he passed away a couple of months ago in the midst of testing a modular multi-phase system that can easily be scaled upwards by parallelling modules. The Switch Circuit is inherently a current source and load sharing is extremely well-controlled. The interference-free operation of the Switch Circuit and the excellent torque behaviour at low speeds are the main benefits of that type of a drive.

Ragnars idea was to parallel four modules to form a "plank" that is good for around 50 kW. Four such planks can be combined to form a "square" that delivers 200 kW and four such squares build a "cube" that can deliver 800 kW. Of course, more squares can be added to form 1000 and 1200 kW units.

I think that future drive systems may be built using principles like that. The modularity makes massive use of low-power components, which keeps cost low, and all drives will use the same components, regardless of rated output power so that one-size spare parts fit all drive sizes. Redundancy is inherent and a faulty module can be automatically isolated and then hot swapped.

Gunnar Englund
www.gke.org
--------------------------------------
Half full - Half empty? I don't mind. It's what in it that counts.

RE: Future of Electric Motors

Is that it, all down to reducing Friction, winding, and core losses? Nothing new here, except how to do it and cost.

Has anyone tried using something other than AIR for cooling, and to reduce wind losses? Maybe something like Hydrogen. They already do that for large generators, and have for over 50 years.
But it hasen't tranlated to smaller motors or generators.

I think any changes will come down to cost, and value (savings). Variable speed drives is a big step for motors that may not be fully loaded, and are cost competive for motor starters (I haven't priced any, but from what I hear).

I once thought thermoelectric chips would be a big thing, but turns out they are also big energy hogs.

RE: Future of Electric Motors

I know what didn't happen, not yet anyway. I was working at a corporate R&D center about 30 years ago and heard of a project. Instead of winding motor coils they were going to shoot in sections of wire and just weld the ends. So every motor would have like a thousand little welds. It was one of those blue sky projects trying to bring robotics into motor manufacture. Never followed it.

RE: Future of Electric Motors

How about the "Iron Nitride Permanent Magnet, Alternative to Rare Earth and Neodymium Magnets"? If this works out there will be some interesting results for the motors and actuators that use permanent magnets. . .

http://www.license.umn.edu/Products/Iron-Nitride-P...

Red Flag This Post

Please let us know here why this post is inappropriate. Reasons such as off-topic, duplicates, flames, illegal, vulgar, or students posting their homework.

Red Flag Submitted

Thank you for helping keep Eng-Tips Forums free from inappropriate posts.
The Eng-Tips staff will check this out and take appropriate action.

Reply To This Thread

Posting in the Eng-Tips forums is a member-only feature.

Click Here to join Eng-Tips and talk with other members!


Resources