Electric motor design claims remarkable improvements

Don&#x27;t get me wrong, I saw the title and was excited. I want this to be real.<p>I want to believe.<p>But way too many keyword drops. Disruptive is what red flagged me the most.<p>Way too many promises.<p>Only lab results and &quot;experts&quot; commenting that it should work in theory.<p>But no prototype?<p>Even though it&#x27;s a different motor they don&#x27;t &quot;believe&quot; it&#x27;s going to cost more to make than traditional motors?<p>Only 3d renders?<p>I think there was a medical company that did something similar with blood testing. Didn&#x27;t really work out for them.

How cooling of rotor being achieved ? Energy, power and torque density of other motor designs are limited by their cooling capacity. Reluctance motor being externally cooled, has this as a prime selling point. I think for claimed improvement, it will need external cooling which is not mentioned in article.

A brief history of the evolution of designs of electric motor from the beginning to the electric motor as we know it today be by Professor Eric Laithwaite:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=f5mA4l6xmGs" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=f5mA4l6xmGs</a><p>And the explication of his linear motor for the second half.

The video shows a picture of a motor about 99% similar to that of Cascadia Motion [1] based on the external appearance and cooling apparatus and not at all similar to the picture in the article.<p>1: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cascadiamotion.com&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;5&#x2F;1&#x2F;3&#x2F;0&#x2F;51309945&#x2F;ss_250-090.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cascadiamotion.com&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;5&#x2F;1&#x2F;3&#x2F;0&#x2F;51309945&#x2F;ss_2...</a>

Their site[0] has an animation of their 4-pole design and describes some advantages.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.linearlabsinc.com&#x2F;why-our-motor&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.linearlabsinc.com&#x2F;why-our-motor&#x2F;</a>

Electric cars don&#x27;t usually have &quot;gearboxes&quot; proper. They use gears, fixed ratio reductors. This is not expensive nor is it fragile nor bulky nor inefficient.<p>The benefits that a very high torque motor could bring are real but marginal, a few percentage points improvements on the respective metrics. They could instantly be negated by, say, the lower initial reliability of a revolutionary design.

This reads like BS.<p>They mention increases in efficiency like it matters when electic motors are already ~95% efficient.<p>They mention cogging as a problem, when everyone solved that a decade ago by using FOC drivers.<p>It does field weakening by physically rotating part of itself? That doesn&#x27;t sound like a good idea. At all.<p>A single reduction gear is complex and heavy? Uh no, its probably the cheapest part of the motor

Feel free to educate me...<p>&gt; The HET is a three-dimensional, circumferential flux, exterior<p>&gt; permanent magnet electric motor with some interesting<p>&gt; characteristics. For starters, it runs four rotors where other motors<p>&gt; typically run one or two. The stator is fully encapsulated in a four<p>&gt; sided &quot;magnetic torque tunnel,&quot; each side having the same polarity,<p>&gt; ensuring that all magnetic fields are in the direction of motion, and<p>&gt; there are no unused ends on the copper coils wasting energy. All<p>&gt; magnetism the system creates is thus used to create motion, and all<p>&gt; four sides of the stator contribute torque to the output.<p>I&#x27;m not so sure about the idea that &quot;unused ends&quot; are &quot;wasting energy&quot;. Simply put your finger on a small spinning motor and watch the current go up - increase the work done, increase the power usage. Typical losses in magnetic motors are:<p>1. Friction - Bearings, brushes, etc<p>2. Air - Typically cooling<p>3. Core - Hysteresis (changing polarity is not possible instantly) and eddy current losses (unwanted current flow)<p>4. Resistance - The coils themselves resist high current<p>Brushless motors are typically 85-90% efficient and brushed typically reach 75-80% efficiency [1]. Reducing the size a little, sure, but increasing the torque - I highly doubt for the same power input. I&#x27;m sure we will get to 95% efficiency within the next 10 years or so (with big money from the automotive industry pushing research), but it&#x27;s highly unlikely we will get more than that outside of the a lab with super-cooled conductors.<p>Which is the other thing, increasing the amount of torque and reducing the size means greater heat generation. Any saving in size you&#x27;re getting gets lost again just keeping the motor cool.<p>Anyway, the promises don&#x27;t pass basic scrutiny, I would definitely need to see some numbers on this. It sounds like snake oil.<p>EDIT: Another thing - electric motors are already very efficient, you&#x27;re getting more loss in other parts, such as voltage regulators, motor control circuitry, batteries (if you&#x27;re using them), cooling, etc, etc. I just don&#x27;t think this will translate to a massive improvement.<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;dronenodes.com&#x2F;drone-motors-brushless-guide&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;dronenodes.com&#x2F;drone-motors-brushless-guide&#x2F;</a>

No absolute figure given, so it feels at least fishy.<p>I doubt that the current record of 10kw per kilogram is beatable by any significant extend.<p>This is limited much by limits of material science, and not electromagnetics. Those 10kw&#x2F;kg motors fully utilise close to like 80% of the flux, so much bigger advancements from geometry change are unlikely.

Every broken dream starts with a 3D render.

maybe not in this case, but from a history of machining, motors have made quiet and remarkable strides. original cone lathes for metalworking were driven by steam engines and a PTO driveshaft. aside from being ridiculously dangerous to operate, they had inconsistent results for tight tolerances. It wasnt unheard of for watchmakers to also find themselves as lathemakers in the early 20th century. Motor speed from PTO was largely not variable.<p>During WWII motor speed was controlled with a clutch and transmission system, which arguably allowed for the type of finesse and control you need to run a shaper for a large tank engine, or a mill for certain explosives of the nuclear persuasion. older machinists handbooks will still reference your &#x27;gear&#x27; when making a cut as a feed rate suggestion. old shapers still have a gearbox and shifter.<p>along comes the VSM and its a game changer. The variable motor speed can control RPM maximum down to almost zero RPM. In the early 20th century, this simply was not possible. Previously if you wanted to change speed you had to park&#x2F;reset the lathe and dial your tolerances back in. The way around gear speed change time was to intentionally oversize the part and take it to an automatic filer, but this wears down files and is only an option for certain manufacturers that care about the end product more than the tool wear (WWII again)

This article might not be well written.<p>What they describe I&#x27;m pretty sure I read about something very similar to this in the 90s, and as far as I can tell, never took off; either I am right, and I indeed read about this before, or the article is describing it badly.<p>PR statement via CNET as the source isn&#x27;t helping, either.

Uhm. *Halbach Cylinder&quot; like in<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Halbach_array" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Halbach_array</a> ?

I’ve always wondered why no one is researching motors that use electric fields instead of magnetic?

Perhaps we could just use standard steppers if we reduce real life frames per second.<p>But they do have torque at most frequencies compared to conventional designs, so I think this could work.