ECM configuration plate

[dave ames]

 the plan:  to directly couple a pair of ECM's for water pumping. one in the air as a windmill and the other on the ground running a mechanical water pump. with the possibility of some battery charging in higher winds?

 the big problem here is that i know that my pencil is not sharp enough to get the coil arrangements right on the first try..or even the second? those of us who have had a go at reconfiguring coils in these things are aware that after unpacking/untwisting/resoldering and repacking these things a few times the wires become as fragile as the legs of roasted grasshoppers and will break with a just a little tweak...

 so as a workaround to these short comings we came up with this one shot modification.

 the pictures can say it better than a page of text.









 can't find the shot of all the cut wires..it looks like an angry sea urchin

 thinking we may end up setting the pumping ecm to be "lumpy" in it's action to help with starting?

 still early days here..any ideas of a good starting point? it will be nice to have a full pallet of choices for both the mill and the pump.

it's all good fun!
cheers, dave

 

[dave ames]

 might be good to include some kind of pump info here..

 just for a jumping off point might try out one of the cheap drill pumps first, seems some of them start pumping at about 800 rpm's?

 let's see what stock star (1-Y) on the mill does coupled with all parallel star (6-Y) for the pump does? ..will still be a few days to work up the mounting and couplings till we are ready for anything real life.


 some scribbles for a visual, let's ignore the battery side of things for now.


cheers, dave

[zap]

Wow ... cool!

[ghurd]

Wow.  Should have got a pencil sharpener!
The plate sure will make testing easier.

I was thinking about those drill pumps too.
Might be suited to a treadmill motor that is too fast for a windmill?  I have a feeling it would use less power than an ECM running fast enough to pump.
I looked at a couple of cheapie drill pumps.  Felt like the operating life would be in minutes or hours instead of days.

G-

[Bruce S]

Dave;
 Very nice copper layout.
It sure seems that it would make changing wiring schemes easier.
One thing I would be a little worried about is the possible shorting of the wire that is close to the copper runs.
One of the closeups looks like the brass nut is shorting on the Neg line and one other looks as if the solder is bridged across itself as well.

Other than that, how difficult was making the copper plate was it, other than the obvious zillion holes that needed drilling?
did you acid dip the plate?

Cheers;
Bruce S

[willib]

that was a lot of work to do that.

It came out nice!

The brass screw connections were threaded rod , on the inside?

cut off in the lathe and re-tapped to clean out the solder?


edit:: i see nw that the brass connections are brass nuts duhh

[Rover]

Wow .. what a lot of work. I'm never showing one of ECM's ever again... lol. Mine look like rats nests with all the wires poking out of the vent holes.

What made you decide to use copper , as opposed to something non conductive such as  formica ?

[ghurd]

How did you get the nuts soldered to the board without lifting the plating?
G-

[TomW]

How did you get the nuts soldered to the board without lifting the plating?
G-

G;

That is kind of a personal question. 

It is an interesting solution to the angry sea urchin syndrome.

So many ways to defur a feline!

You shoulda seen the F&P  I "rewired" 42 coils and 84 tails.

Tom

[dave ames]

 hey guys,

 thanks for having a look, and for the comments.

Wow.  Should have got a pencil sharpener!

hehe. hey G-,  that's the underlying thing though..a guy has to come to grips with his limitations and do his best to take them out of play. i have a good buddy that can tune a stringed instrument in a noisy room with the stereo blasting while talking to you in a few strums and only a couple of seconds! it takes me five minutes in a quiet room using an electronic tuner..same results totally different approach. i guess the point here is when we accept our shortcomings and think things through a bit an average guy can still have a go at some things he might otherwise be locked out of?

How did you get the nuts soldered to the board without lifting the plating?
G-

again with the crystal ball..you mean like this?

that did not show up until we did the crank down test on all the terminals, we can see that connection in the pic "motor thru bolt allowance"..on the left.

did a patch with some copper flashing and jb weld.

Other than that, how difficult was making the copper plate was it, other than the obvious zillion holes that needed drilling?
did you acid dip the plate?

hey bruce, not that difficult at all. just a hand held dremel and some 1/8th FR-4 single sided 2oz pcb board..we rang everything out checking for shorts and ran it up back in stock configuration and it is the same as before (according to my cheap meter) LOL! but that's not saying much.

rover, i bet something like formica might be a another way! why not? we are just looking for reliable connections in a known order..here we can pick any starting point for our coil configuration and all the other connections count off that.

hey tom, had a few goes with the f&p's as well..tons of fun but a bit bulky? even thought of using the outer rim of the f&p as some kind of peristaltic pumping arrangement, might be fun!
"It is an interesting solution to the angry sea urchin syndrome." would have gone with the "scared porcupine" description but glen already coined that one!

cheers willib, yep. brass nuts..the local home store wanted fifty cents a pop for those! got a pack of 100pcs for $3.30 and 100 stainless 6-32 screws for $3.99..and a 10 pc lot of 6x6 fr-4 pcb blanks for $12.00

gonna work up the second one tonight..hopefully, the first one was about three hours. should be able to do better than that this time 'round.

cheers, dave

[willib]

I Think i tried that already ( the running one motor with AC from another motor thingy)
If i recall correctly i used a fairly hefty but not overly large AC motor that i got out of a copy machine and powered it with the AC output from my excer-gen.
it was a fun experiment and worked well

so you should have no problem as long as ya get the three phases in the right order, because if they are out of order i'm sure  it will not work as planed .

But you have both motors so testing should not be a problem, just make sure that in the direction of rotation the three phases are in the same order on both motors.