Description

Application:

The triangular coil motor is a brushless DC Motor realized in AME. In order to make it work properly, a suitable motor controller needs to be utilized. One potential brushless motor controller design is already available on the J.A.M.E.S FrAMEwork, published by the J.A.M.E.S Team. Only a combination of both parts, motor and motor controller will result in a fully functional motor. At the current status of the design, only the stator is available, while the rotating part is not finished yet. However, the realization of a motor functionality by using the third-dimensional freedom of an additively process shows already the new possibility of creating triangular coils without using a mechanical coil winding procedure of (e.g. copper wires). It is even possible to shape AME motor coils in the best functional formfactor.

 
Future field of application:

In order to make the motor work, the design of the rotor needs to be finished. Since the dielectric material of the NNDM DragonFly IV process is mechanically not very stable, it might be suitable to design and manufacture the rotor part in a different printing technology. Based on this, the rotor can be designed in such a way to improve the motor’s strength, while at the same time being as lightweight as possible. Furthermore, by choosing a printing technology that has magnetic material available for the rotor, the performance can be improved even more.
Since the motor needs the connection to the motor controller, a next step of the design could also consist in combining both designs together in one print. This could influence in the fact so that additional wiring cables could be avoided and therefore a smaller and lighter realization of both components would be possible.

 
Current technology limitations:

To avoid shorts in the motor coils, a certain spacing between adjacent conductive lines is required. However, to increase the magnetic field of the coils, the current density through the coils needs to be increased as well. One way to do this is to increase the number of coil windings. Since we do not want to increase the overall size of the motor, the only way this can be achieved is to reduce the required space between two lines. Therefore, increasing the resolution of the printer would directly improve the performance of the motor.
Furthermore, increasing the conductivity of the conductive material forming the lines would reduce the losses of the motor, thus making it more efficient and stronger. This would also allow to get more current through the motor coils without running into issues regarding the thermal stability of the used materials.
In addition to that, also the availability of magnetic material in the printing process would drastically the strength and the performance of the AME Motor.