Monday, April 13, 2009

Toroidal Electromagnet: Mark II

Well, here it is. Same toroidal core with 1673 turns of wire. There are two layers. The inner layer, formed by the coils of the first picture I posted, is 24 gauge and created too high a resistance. The top layers (6 of them) are made of 20 gauge wire, which has about half the resistance. I put on another 902 turns today and as you can see its becoming massive. It weighs about 5 pounds and you can kinda guess the size from the credit card there (its about an inch tall too).

The design expo is on Thursday, so if we can't produce a working product using this, then we won't have another chance and we're just kinda fucked. BTW I would estimate this took me an extra 4 hours to do. After working on it for a while, the stacked coils will begin to slide towards the slot, and have fallen right off many times. This is causing HUGE problems. It slides off and the only way to get it back on is to force it back around the core with a screwdriver. As I'm sure you can imagine, its pretty easy to end up scratching the laminate right off the wire and causing a short. They're not bare wires as I'm sure you would have guessed already. They are copper wires with a nonconducting metal layer on the outside. Anyway, I'll keep you guys up to date. Tomorrow is another big huge testing day for us. Hopefully all goes well.... because we have 3 days to work on this lol...

Oh, and yes... the top layer is very messy. Like I said, the toroid was essentially coming apart so I had to stop where I was. Man, you'd never think of what a pain in the ass this would be till you try and actually do it....

EDIT: I will probably post something like every day until completion... so hopefully you guys aren't already sick of hearing about it lol.

3 comments:

  1. If it doesnt work you could always bash your professor in the head, and mark down an "A+". If that doesn't work go here and all will be well.

    http://calicolightweaponsystems.com/home/

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  2. lol yes, many hand cramps... ok so i weighed it and it weighs more like 2 pounds, but still. This is supposed to chill at the end of a piano key as if there is nothing there lol..

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