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Forum Index : Windmills : The Seeley Motor Project
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Bryan1 Guru  Joined: 22/02/2006 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1453 |
Hi Guy's, This new thread is designed to instill the seeley motor project is still going as nothing has been said on this subject for a while. Today I fully stripped the seeley stator and I'm wondering about the steel wire on what it actually does?. It was a huge job un-winding the copper then the steel wire inner was even worse but i managed to put it on a old wire spool so it will good fencing wire  Now for a wind genny is the steel inner needed and if so why ?. I counted the turns on each winding and found it to be 37 turns.
My thoughts are re-wind the stator with 14 awg wire and have the the magnet rotor spin. For the Ozzie enviroment a new housing will need to be made and I'm on designing up a a pattern for casting a new one as plastic isnt suitable long term. Anway as I said this post is for new idea's on the Seeley motor conversion so fire way with comments. Cheers Bryan  |
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Gizmo Admin Group  Joined: 05/06/2004 Location: AustraliaPosts: 5116 |
Hi Bryan The steel wire is there to complete the magnet path, just like the steel laminations in a transformer. There was some discussion on Fieldlines about the Seeley, I added my bit, but most inspiring is the work Oztunes has done. Might give you some idea's for your own conversion. http://www.fieldlines.com/story/2008/2/28/12551/7685 Glenn The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, the second best time is right now. JAQ |
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| brucedownunder2 Guru Joined: 14/09/2005 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1548 |
Hi Guys ,,I've 3 of them sitting around waiting for some fun. I got a damaged one from Dennis ,so I unwound all but the last winding ,,to get into the middle or whatever coil I would like to tap into --the other 2 windings are impossible to tap into . The steel wire is quite common in lots of motors, Oztules did a lot of research ,he'll get back into it soon ,I suppose. (Didn't Dennis get Oztules original rework??) I've made a shaft and test stand ,will make an adapter plate for the plastic housing. I think the plastic housing is ok in the short term ,as long as the adapter plate takes ALL the load . winding should be quite easy,even though it will be tiring,,I've got some heavy 1.2mm wire ,so may try that,, Question ,,could we try 3 different wire sizes on the same stator ???.Say one size for each phase winding??. http://www.thebackshed.com/windmill/FORUM1/forum_posts.asp?T ID=646&PN=7 lots of reading here . Bruce Bushboy |
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| Bryan1 Guru Joined: 22/02/2006 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1453 |
Hi Guy's, Well we had a good discussion on irc this morning and dinges ( Peter ) has agreed to do a FEMM simulation on the seeley. What we'll need to to organise is the dimensions, poles distance from the mags to the inner iron core etc. So if anyone has already done this could they post them here. I did some work on the seeley today and I reckon the plastic case will be used. I cut some 19mm MDF rings 1 @ 375x310mm Diameter to sit on the outer 4 posts, next I cut a 375x300mm Diameter disk and nailed/glued it the first ring. Then I screwed both onto the outer and then filled the whole inner void with water putty. I'm now waiting for it to harden so I can machine it to get it running true to the unit then I'll fix a third disk 375 Diameter with a 50mm hole in the centre. This will allow the blades to be mounted on the disk and my idea will be after testing to fiberglass the whole outer shell. When I get abit further I'll take a few pic's. Cheers Bryan |
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oztules Guru Joined: 26/07/2007 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1686 |
Bryan, I have had a few thoughts regarding the seeley of late, and some ideas about what has been said thus far. Bryan, it is not mandatory that the wire is in the center, but without it with the feeble magnets as standard, there will be poor output because of not giving the magnets a return path of any kind. The original steel wire gives a little bit more than lip service to the return path, but is not particularly efficient because : a. The eddy currents have not been minimised. (the wire touches the adjacent wires and so shorts out the eddy current leading to losses. b. The wire wraps are fairly thin in thickness and from a magnetic perspective fairly porus. The net result is a return path which is: a: insufficient (mass compared to normal stator plates or silicon steel wafers) b. has eddy current losses c. the usual iron drag as well. Now thats not to say we would be better off without, just that it is not perfect by any means. Using the original magnets, the losses and drag are not that pronounced, as the magnets are pretty meek. When I used larger block ferrites, the field strength increased in effect by about 100%. The drag seemed to increase slightly more in proportion. Had I gone to full blown N50 neos, I suspect things would become rather pronounced and lots of drag. While it is true that the output would rise quite markedly, and you could use big blades to compensate for the drag, we still have the problem of high impedance in the windings. My stator was the larger output one, but still had 15R between phases. It still produced 54v@120rpm from memory, with big neo's, this would rise to perhaps 200v@ 120rpm (remember there is 7-800 turns of wire in there per phase).... Big blades, neo's and transformers would solve this nicely, and even in the config I had it was capable of quite large output,((1.5kw@500rpm ) but at high impedance and needed an impedance transducer of some kind for battery charging applications.... transformers for me as microwave transformers I can get over here... just rewind them. It lit up 240v flood lights without any problems at all) That leads us to the next step. From here there are two other possibilities I may explore out of curiosity. Rewinding the stator with heavier wire and less turns with neo magnets will produce a satisfactory result in the motors current plastic and ring configuration. We live with the loss and drag, and wire for a larger blade (probably 11 feet or so). We could improve the primary return path by using heavier steel band around the magnets and improve the return path at the magnet end. If we wanted to get rid of the drag, then ditching the inner wire is possible but at what cost to performance? When I built my axial flux, the voltage halved by not using the second magnet disk. What might that mean to the seeley conversion then. In other words when I used the 1" block magnets in the seeley, I doubled the original and got some drag, if I had been able to disappear the steel wire and see the result, i am guessing I would see at the very very least, the original output (25v@120rpm), but with no drag at all.So nothing gained except a lot of work for almost nothing except getting rid of iron loss. (The iron return path wire is nowhere nearly as effective as a second inner magnet ring so I would not expect to lose half by any stretch of the imagination, but I work with worst case scenario in mind) Had I used my 50x12 neos, (without the steel wire somehow ) I reckon I would probably have got 100v@120, because they seem many more times as powerful as the original mags.... this would require a rewind just to get the steel out, so not very useful, but a thought anyway. Another trick would be to use neo's and increase the airgap, keep the steel wire, and rewind the stator with much heavier wire (now there would be room to increase outward another 6-8mm), with less turns. The drag would not go up so badly as the airgap would help mitigate this a bit. This would probably be my preferred option for direct charging. It would still require rehousing into something like I built last time, but that is quick and simple. Anyway, most people don't like long posts so I shall end it there for now. If I can find some steel plate to use as the drum face, I will build one and use a single wire rewind to test each setup perhaps, this will tell the story. The stator has merit, I still think the plastic body stinks, but at least that is easy to fix. ..........oztules Village idiot...or... just another hack out of his depth |
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GWatPE Senior Member  Joined: 01/09/2006 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2127 |
Hi oztules, you are performing a similar elimination process I went through with my axial flux unit. I started woking on my own design after looking at a burnt out davis craig car thermostatic fan motor. good luck with you trials. become more energy aware |
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