lab electromagnet from scratch

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Re: lab electromagnet from scratch

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This forum is fine, especially if it is to be part of a cyclotron or related to some planned fusion effort.

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Re: lab electromagnet from scratch

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First Pull. Seems like a milestone for any electromagnet.
I got there last night, quick and dirty, after weeks of not having time to do it scientifically enough. Measuring BH curves can wait.

In the meantime, I had measured the orange coil's DC resistance: a disappointing 0.99 ohms. While measuring that with no iron core, I got some tiny sparks and, later, made a neon lamp flash. Still want to compute (and measure) the air-core inductance.
DSCN7496.JPG
In the pictured setup, with a current of 1.28 amps and power input of 1.62 watts,
I was able (with care) to lift the whole rig while holding only the top plate.
So lifting force was at least 63 pounds, over 14.5 square inches, amounting to around 4.3 psi.
For that pull, the required B is about 1/4 tesla in the round parts (and slightly more in the end plates).
Figuring the magnetic path length to be about 0.7 meters, and knowing there are 216 turns of wire, the average relative permeability (including air gaps) is around 600. That's plausible.

Next step is to trace a BH curve well into saturation, with this flux path and this coil. For that, I want a bipolar adjustable supply that can do 12 V and 12 A. Am planning to build my first H-bridge inverter, unless someone has a better idea. Anyone want to talk about high-side gate drive methods, not involving GDT's?

[edit] Uh, it'll be simpler to try an adjustable unipolar benchtop supply, with V and I meters, that can do 10 amps. Just need to configure a reversing switch (and will wire in some clamp diodes).
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Re: lab electromagnet from scratch

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At 275 amp-turns that is hard to fathom! It is tough to believe you got a flux of 2500 gauss. Any flux meter on hand to check that? You have a lot of surface area though. That meant that you only put around 1 volt into the system! I would have thought it would have taken a few thousand amp-turns?!

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Re: lab electromagnet from scratch

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Well let's see. 276 amp-turns along 0.7 meters (perimeter of 7" square) is 395 amps/meter = 5 oersteds.
Permeability of 500 would give us 2500 gauss.

Remember the pull strength, and the electric power, are proportional to the SQUARE of the flux density. And the only air gaps in this case are those from crudely finished mating surfaces. (Too bad nobody has invented a ferrofluid or ferroputty with Bsat much above 0.2 T.)

My announced target of 1 tesla through 1 inch of air WILL need more than 20,000 ampere turns. I hope to get that with 25 amps in 800 turns, using different coils whose total resistance is less than that of this orange one. The more metal, the less resistance.
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Re: lab electromagnet from scratch

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Yeah, I forgot this is a completely closed path with decent permeance and just a watt of two in the right coil will give a tremendous flux level within the core and mechanical separation of a core path element would be a bitch.

It's that nasty permeability in an air gap that cuts the flux to nothing in the gap, requiring a lot more amp turns.
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Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
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Re: lab electromagnet from scratch

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For the first time in decades, I have purchased a stamp for philatelic purposes.
An Amp stamp.
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History of Science is a fascinating and valuable subject, IMHO.
What was André-Marie Ampère up to in his lab 200 years ago?
Most images show his hair much more curly than the image in this stamp.
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Re: lab electromagnet from scratch

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You may have seen an image of Ampere in a wig! They were still in vogue into his early adulthood. By the time he died, they were a thing of the past. The stamp image may be of a bust of him in later life. The droopy eyes seem to indicate this.

I have been a stamp collector all my life. Stamps can and do honor science history. One of my favorites is shown below. I have many mint, post office fresh, sheets of 50 each of these and use 'em for "makeup" postage sometimes. Can you believe they ever managed to deliver mail, twice a day, in the city, on foot, to you door for this 3 cent price?! They delivered around 10AM and then a second delivery, about 3:00PM. (in large cities only -rural only once a day)

This stamp was issued after Ike's famous Atoms for Peace speech at the U.N. His words adorn the framed edge of the stamp. This launched the Atoms for Peace Program in the U.S. and made isotopes available to the general public, but mainly for kids in school to help them train for careers in nuclear physics. "Project Plow Share" was a major component of this effort to find peaceful uses for atomic energy. In "Plow Share" they used nuclear bombs for large area excavation and natural gas rock fracturing tests ("Gas Buggy" test series).

I bought a bunch o' isotopes under Atoms for Peace from Oak Ridge, Abbott Labs. I attach a nice little price list I used back when you could get the rad stuff loose in bottles. Mailed in small lead pigs and delivered by postman in his big brown leather mail bag. I mowed more than a few lawns to get the fabulous "9 pack" (click the image to enlarge and read......)

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A list of what you could order sent to you home in 1963.  I ordered many times  1960-1966
A list of what you could order sent to you home in 1963. I ordered many times 1960-1966
Issued in 1955 when I was 10 and already collecting A bomb fallout from my rain gutters and bird bath.
Issued in 1955 when I was 10 and already collecting A bomb fallout from my rain gutters and bird bath.
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Re: lab electromagnet from scratch

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OK, back to the electromagnet. My scrounging of NST's from doomed movie theater is over, except for telling the story about six more 15kV-ers etc. :-)

Plan is to measure, more properly than by pull strength, the magnetic flux vs. magnetizing current in closed-path stackup. The main unknowns are the permeability and hysteresis of the plain old steel materials in these parts.

Flux will be measured by the fluxmeter method. We integrate the voltage induced in a sense coil, as the current is changed. We can measure the flux inside a solid piece of steel, analogous to measuring total current in a solid copper wire using clip-on ammeter. Calibration amounts to knowing the sense coil's number of turns and area per turn. The latter can often be taken to be the area of steel around which coil is placed. To use a fluxmeter on a permanent magnet circuit, we move the sense coil between the place under test and a place where B is negligible.

To get the magnetic properties of my 3" HRS rod material by itself, without airgaps or complicated geometries, the plan has been to fabricate toriod-shaped cores from a surplus section. Then wind force and sense coils on them. That's how specimens are prepared for hysteresisgraphs in real industrial labs. Originally low priority, it became high when my brother said he'll need his hole saws back soon.

So I did the first steps of ring preparation:
1. Face the bad end of the surplus rod stock, which had been cut obliquely with a torch. Had to machine 0.300" off of the high spot.
2. Trepan some annular grooves more than 3/4 inch deep, using bi-metal hole saws from hardware store. It actually worked! See picture. Spindle speed for the 2 5/8" saw was 120 RPM. Backed the blade out every 0.030" of progress, to clear the chips & squirt in more cutting oil. The whole workpiece quickly became hot, in a way reminiscent of Count Rumford, so I set up a fan for continuous cooling (even during breaks from cutting).
3. Not yet done: separate the rings by sawing or parting on a lathe (not my toy lathe).

Note: the work is sufficiently secure in vise. Its non-roundness turned out to be two low areas on opposite sides. The diameter across 90% of circumference is 3.04 inches, but in the short direction it's only 3.02 inches.
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Re: lab electromagnet from scratch

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Fabulous fields can be attained with toroidial strutures. Most often seen when tremendous lifting work is needed. Nice looking work there.

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Re: lab electromagnet from scratch

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Yay! Rich has own work to report, after brushing 18 months of dust from sort-of-big magnet.

While looking into audio amps as coil drivers, I stumbled upon "servo amplifiers" made to drive brushed DC motors. Immediately procured a 30A8T on ebay for about $35. http://www.a-m-c.com/download/datasheet/30a8.pdf Two big terminals receive DC power at 20 to 80 volts. The other two big terminals supply motor with pulse-width modulated rail voltage in either direction. 15 A continuous current, 30 A peak. Four-quadrant operation, as much as the primary supply can sink current.

A motor from a scrapped printer was my first trial load, while measuring the transfer function in voltage mode. The command is for voltage, not duty cycle.
servo_amp_transfer.PNG
Running magnet coil up to 6 amps (a limit set by windshield-wiper-blade-stiffener current shunt) had few surprises. Average current from primary supply is much lower than in coil, because coil inductance makes a buck converter. At 6 A the upper yoke plate could not be pulled off by hand, in spite of corrugated cardboard between vertical bars and lower yoke plate.
DSCN9837.JPG
DSCN9835.JPG
Since then I made a +/- 15 A shunt out of coat hanger wire. First measured some galvanized straps from lawn furniture, and painted steel bands that secured heavy loads: 4 mΩ is impractically long. Stainless-steel bands from lawn furniture and a rotted wooden flowerpot: 4 mΩ is impractically short. Stainless-steel hose clamp including worm gear for continuous adjustment: nearly ideal resistance, but I'm not equipped to solder or spot-weld stainless, and didn't want to drill holes for screws.
DSCN9838.JPG
Next steps are to properly stack the magnetic circuit, apply the fluxmeter, and see how much current is needed for saturation. The coil circuit has no common ground, so I need to find an isolated current sensor before a BH curve can be displayed on oscilloscope. 60 Hz is of no use here because of eddy currents, otherwise the BH curve would have been presented 18 months ago.
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Re: lab electromagnet from scratch

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For a few weeks I was afraid I'd blown something up. Indicated current got squirrely after hitting 7 A. While troubleshooting, soon even the little motor wouldn't go in either direction. Had too-rapid voltage reduction kicked magnet energy back into DC PS? Had to wait before there was time for fresh, systematic attention. Seems I had hit an unexpectedly low current limit setting in amplifier as received (it has fast and slow limits). Also I was using an intermittent control knob.

With a new self-powered and filtered control knob, I got power satisfaction on the 4th of July. For loads of around 1 ohm, the knob goes from -15 A to +15 A. Here's the new, simplified configuration in schematic form:
magnet_sch1.PNG
and for real:
DSCN9902cr.jpg
Forgot to show in schem. that amp switches are set for Voltage Mode. The servo amp is shown converting DC 24.2 V 2.5 A to 7.19 V 7.5 A. A wooden clothespin secures a temporary 15 amp connection without the hazard of a conductive clip lead (whose far end would be energized). Magnet top plate has been replaced with a stiffly-supported crescent wrench.

Electromagnets are naturally more power-efficient as they get bigger, and it's great to see that even with a 3 inch pole diameter. The wrench demo was able to keep it up at 1 ampere.
DSCN9904.JPG
As the drive was turned down little by little after that, we read 313 mA before the still-magnetized wrench fell off.

Next step (same as stated a month ago) is to start measuring magnetic flux. Can skip the DC current sensor with ground-referenced output, if I manually tabulate data read from the analog meter.
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Got me an electric tesla

Post by Rich Feldman »

Finally got to measure some magnetic properties of my "plain old steel".
First, restored the magnetic circuit to a simple gapless configuration. Here the top and bottom plates have much less cross-sectional area than the round pole pieces (27.8 vs 45.6 cm^2), so they will saturate first. My quick-and-dirty sense coil is four turns of wire, conservatively placed about as far as possible from the forcing coil (whose decoration is left over from Halloween 2013).
flux1.PNG
Fluxmeters depend on an electrical conductor going around the magnetic flux of interest. It's analogous to measuring electric current by putting a ferromagnetic core around the place of interest. Both are noninvasive, and can take readings on solid bars or empty space. Fluxmeters measure changes of flux; a change of 1 weber (at any speed) generates 1 volt-second per turn in a sense coil. This unit has an analog voltage integrator with a reset button, a very sensitive offset-adjustment knob, and a digital display.
flux2.PNG
To get flux change from a gapped magnet, one can reset the integrator while sense coil is at the place of interest, then rapidly move the sense coil away from the strong field. With my electromagnet, I could have run demagnetizing cycles and then set the fluxmeter zero. This time, started at 10 amperes and set fluxmeter output to half of known peak-to-peak value, using a slow motion control kluge. (6 volts through 10 kΩ, applied in parallel with sense coil.)
flux3.PNG
One effect stood out which I had never seen while fluxmetering transformers. After each current step that caused a large flux change, but not similar current steps with small flux change, I had to wait for the least significant digit to stop changing. This has got to be an eddy current / skin effect thing. Coil current lags voltage a little. Average flux (esp. the last percent) lags current a lot. It will be fun to see that in a quantitative way.
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Re: lab electromagnet from scratch

Post by John Fenley »

All the work I see here is discouraging me from attempting to build the magnet I need for my proposed fusion reactor... I'm going to need an extremely uniform .5T field over an area of about 18", and the thicker the better.

Fortunately, I realized that MRI machines have fields that meet my requirements. I'm going to be trying to get a permanent magnet MRI machine to act as a basis for my reactor.
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Re: lab electromagnet from scratch

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Magnetics can be fun and exciting. I actually put out a two hour long VHS tape on an introduction to magnetism back in 1993 titled "Minimal Magnetics" as part of my Tesla coil educational series of VHS tapes. I think there were 7 or 8 of these 2 hour tapes back then and about 60 of my 2 hour Tesla Coil report tapes.

Magnetics can be frustrating and very limiting due to the limitations in the permiability of metals which can concentrate and focus large field flux. Air, of course, is infinitely permiable, but then there are those pesky amp-turn limitations leading to meltdown with no core only conquered by either pulsed operation or Liqiud nitrogen or both.

As noted many times way back, there is only charged mass and gravity that manufacture the secondary and tertiary forces of all magnetisim and all light. (note at the very far end of light it seems only collapsing nuclear forces can make extremely hard gammas, but again, these nuclear forces are only there to constrain and contain the electrostatic charge forces of charged mass within the nucleus. The intense charge field relaxation of the nuclear force braking down might be he source of those hard gammas.

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Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
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Re: lab electromagnet from scratch

Post by Rich Feldman »

Good luck, John, with getting a permanent magnet MRI setup. Fusor.net has some discussions of permanent magnet systems shaped for small cyclotrons.
My electromagnet project is just slow to be executed, not really complicated. Magnetic flux path model is 1-dimensional, with a few discrete segments. Each has a length and area, permeability, saturation, and hysteresis. Pole diameter is only 3 inches to keep the steel weight manageable and the machining requirements easily accessible.

In other news, I got a bit Andrew Robinsoney on my pole pieces. Removed the mill scale by pickling in dilute hydrochloric acid, then gave them a nice coat of paint. Drilled carefully centered holes for alignment pins, to be followed by threaded holes for machine screws.
DSCN0213.JPG
Here is the "carrying case" for a 29 pound set of pole pieces.
DSCN0216.JPG
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Re: lab electromagnet from scratch

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Nice pole pieces!
Do you know the permiabilty of that steel? It is probably pretty good.

I am sure the field produced by the future magnetics will appreciate the paint job and keep that steel that is just itchin' to rust and rot, protected against future humid magnetic events. No one likes something that is rotten to the core.

Couldn't resist that one.

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Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
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Re: lab electromagnet from scratch

Post by Tom McCarthy »

Ain't talking about magnetics Richard? I know you've said it before...

Anyone? :wink:

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Re: lab electromagnet from scratch

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Rich Feldman wrote:I got a bit Andrew Robinsoney on my pole pieces.
HAHAHA LOVE IT! Looks great Rich!
I can wire anything directly into anything! I'm the professor!
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Re: lab electromagnet from scratch

Post by Rich Feldman »

Chris Mullins's project inspired me to get back to work on the electromagnet learning experience.
Two pieces of steel for the yoke had gone missing around the garage. They're still missing.
Last October, while passing a metals store in San Jose, I decided to buy replacements.
bars1.JPG
Two 12 inch lengths of HRS, rectangular bar, 1" x 4". Should have asked for them to be 12 1/4 inches each, instead of "please cut them long enough to be 12" when squared up". Measured back home, one was dismayingly too short (by about 1/4 inch) and the other might barely make the grade. A week later I took the short one back & asked for it to be replaced. The cutting man chose a mill-finished bar end and prepared to guide his torch with a well-worn T square. Then changed his mind and carted the work over to a big abrasive-wheel saw, which took about a minute to make the cut. (The pieces I'd lost were from Alan Steel, cut with a bandsaw, and had no shortness or roughness problems.)

A few weeks later I had time to square up the ends on the Bridgeport at work. Or at least get pretty close, after adjusting the vise angle but not the spindle angles. Rarely are users obligated to leave machines as square and parallel as some next user might need.
I stopped at about 12.05 inches, when the first bar still had some flame-cut kerf areas on both ends.
bars2.JPG
The other bar in picture has interesting patterns on three sides, after metal raised slightly by the steel mill's shear was cut back to the original surface planes.

Could have lived with the voids, which are a tiny fraction of the contact area carrying magnetic flux. Or changed the yoke design to use 11.95" bars. Or replaced the deficient bar, without quibbling, for less than $15 including tax. But no, Rich wanted to try filling in the low spots with a TIG torch.
Then nothing happened for about four months, except I took off the black scale by pickling in diluted HCl, then WD-40'd the bars for storage.

Filling-the-pits opportunity came last night, at the home of a friend I hadn't seen since he retired. My previous TIG experience was a few minutes with the same machine, about 10 years ago, cosmetically closing some cracks in a home-made brass casting. Long story short: after 2 hours, the bar looks like this on both ends.
bars3.JPG
Not without some porosity, I bet, after puddles got bubbly in a couple of places.
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Re: lab electromagnet from scratch

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Rich,

Ironic, since this thread was very helpful and a source of inspiration for my magnet construction originally! E.g. I stole your idea of using an extension cord for a quickie coil as shown here: https://mullinscyclotron.weebly.com/upl ... 5_orig.jpg

I experimented with copper and aluminum tape, and came to the conclusion that if all materials are bought new (and assuming copper), ACR copper tubing was the cheapest way to go. You got a great score with that wide Al foil tape! I was thinking of posting more on this if it would be helpful for others, but this is a rough dollars per pound for copper in various forms:

1" wide by 55 yard copper foil tape https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01HA31M4M: $54/pound of copper
16 AWG magnet wire, 50,000 foot quantity from http://mwswire.com/: $9.45/pound
1/4" ACR copper tubing, in 100 foot lengths http://coppertubingsales.com/copper-coi ... 1-8-7-8-od: $5.12/pound
bulk copper commodity price (absolute floor for pricing) https://www.scrapmonster.com/comex/copper-price/353/9: $3.15/pound

I had trouble finding bulk pricing on large rolls of foil tape, so that 1" wide was a low-cost representative example.

I was surprised that ACR tubing was cheaper than magnet wire, but that's what I found. I went through another analysis of tubing size (1/8" up through 5/16"), and 1/4" was the cheapest/pound of copper among ACR tubing sizes. Of course the big problem with copper tubing is that it's not insulated - we had to slide some sleeving over the entire length, which was extremely tedious and added to the overall coil diameter. On the other hand, cooling is much more feasible with the tubing.

1/8" ACR tubing is about $8.38/pound. Even though it's more expensive than 1/4" (per pound), it would have been a little cheaper in total, since the coil size was smaller for the same number of turns. I was worried about cooling with that small a diameter, and also that put the coil resistance higher than I wanted for the power supply. For a smaller diameter pole piece, I'd probably use 1/8" tubing.
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Re: lab electromagnet from scratch

Post by Rich Feldman »

Chris, thanks for the electrical conductor price-per-pound data. Its importance is one of the main learnings and teachings of our projects.

Now an update on the three-inch magnet. Filling voids using TIG torch, in my inexperienced hands, was not worth the trouble. Minor "pits" remain after both bars were finished to the target length, with ends flat and square, within about 0.001". (As we pretend that 1" x 4" shapes can be called square.) Then it was only a matter of drilling a few holes, and tapping four of them, before a declaration that yoke assembly has begun.
DSCN0367.JPG

Ever wonder about teenage amateur scientists driven by birthday deadlines? I'm facing the horrible spectre of five years elapsed since original post about this project. Here's one statement from early on:
This magnet project is to:
* get my hands dirty
* test my purported knowledge of E & M, engineering, and practical scrounging
* explore the low-cost low-power corner of magnets producing 1 tesla in 1 inch air gap.


Here's the post which presents the starter plates. Sort of like the stone, or nail, with which to begin making a tasty and wholesome soup. Also the first scale drawing. viewtopic.php?f=15&t=8600#p59448

As mentioned more than once before, and as the Mullins family well knows, electric power requirement is not very sensitive to pole area. But it goes up as the square of air gap length, and as the square of flux density B. And it goes down in direct proportion to conductor mass going up, if the average turn length doesn't change.

The scale drawings below illustrate that principle, and the 2015 evolution of my design. Grid is 1", just like in that early drawing. In all cases the cross-sectional area of flux paths in the yoke is slightly more than that in the cylindrical pole pieces. All coils have the same winding area and current density, and generate the same flux density in air gap. All pole pieces are 7" long, a consequence of my coil conductor choice.
em_evol2.PNG
The 6" magnet is 20" x 20" on the outside, and to my eye has an ordinary aspect ratio.
The 3" magnet in the middle uses 22% as much steel but 71% as much conductor and power (same as ratio of average turn length).
The 3" magnet on the right is what's being assembled. The original flat-finished plates go on the sides instead of the ends. That makes the air gap length infinitely adjustable, without any precision turning or boring. Predicted and measured steel weight is 56 lbs for the four central parts, and forecast to be 102 lbs when side plates are included.
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Re: lab electromagnet from scratch

Post by Chris Mullins »

Rich,

Having an adjustable pole gap would be really useful. That feature was way beyond my construction abilities. You mentioned another temporary winding, at 100V and 100A to get 1 Tesla with a 1" gap. Even with much less current on a temporary winding, if you can adjust the gap continuously you could experiment with saturation limits. Are you still planning to use that aluminum foil tape for the final winding?
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Re: lab electromagnet from scratch

Post by Rich Feldman »

Yes, Chris, I want to use the aluminum strip coils. The material will need some work to make connections to the inside, and to avoid any shorted turns on the exposed edges. Any rewinding onto different spools will need a fixture, I think, and a way to clean up damaged edges on the way through. Facing a sort of deadline, and not much spare time, I might shoot for 1 tesla-inch using lesser coil(s) and lots more power. Duty cycle could be 2 seconds on and 2 hours off. Must avoid throw-away work just to meet the demo date. :-)

Here's the first re-assembly after degreasing and painting the yoke parts.
Joints between horizontal and vertical bars are clamped with 1/4-20 threaded rods. Just as tight as they would be with two 1/4-20 machine screws at the same torque, like the pole piece connections, but without thick-steel drilling and blind-hole tapping.
DSCN0385r.JPG
At the bottom we see a low-profile caster cart, presently on a flat concrete block while glue dries.

The upper pole piece and top plate are secured with an identical clamp set. Presently the gap is set to be 1 inch.
Without further ado, it's my pleasure to present:
DSCN0388r.JPG
Next step is to do some magnetizing. Another high priority is making some accessory parts for aligning the upper pole, and placing the upper clamp at the right height. Clamp rod tensions are matched by sound, like bicycle wheel spokes. If the upper clamp had a quick release feature, this contraption might make an effective mousetrap. :-)
All models are wrong; some models are useful. -- George Box
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Rich Feldman
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Re: lab electromagnet from scratch

Post by Rich Feldman »

My confidence was shaken to the core the other day, during casual magnetization experiments.
DSCN0390r.JPG
An unexpected phenomenon, which I think is from flux leakage, immediately reared its ugly head. The pole farther from the coil is _much_ weaker than the nearer pole. I bet the factor is worse in this slender design than in cores with stubby poles and stubbier gaps, like the Mullins'. Adding a coil around the upper pole won't improve the "loss" factor, it will just superimpose a strong pole on top and weak pole on the bottom.

Not explainable by the one-dimensional magnetic circuit model, indicated by blue lines in the scale drawings above, and in this signed one from a 2013 post:
3in_magnet.JPG
3in_magnet.JPG (35.56 KiB) Viewed 15934 times
Never previously considered by me.

No time for discussion now. Anyone else want to chime in, or point to a magnet design book? We can measure flux any place we can encircle with a wire. We can simulate using FEMM, but its restriction to axisymmetric geometries limits the realism in this case. Who has access to a real 3D FEA simulator for magnetics, or even for static heat flow or electric conduction?

If the problem is what I fear, then three remedies come to mind. Use more ampere turns, change the thick steel design, or magnetically insulate the flux leakage paths with sheets of superconductor. :-)
All models are wrong; some models are useful. -- George Box
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Richard Hull
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Re: lab electromagnet from scratch

Post by Richard Hull »

Simple variable gap systems of your design are fine, but all systems of your type design have coils over each round pole section and much thicker flux path pieces equal to or of greater cross sectional area than the round poles of carefully chosen high permeability steels. It all depends on the final use for the magnets. Hysteresis loses in such special steel is not an issue in DC magnets, of course.

Richard Hull
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