New AC controller now available

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Post by Tritium_James »

Coulomb, ours is 175 in Y, and 100V in Delta, when running from 60Hz. So that agrees exactly with the main part of your post, I think.
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Post by Electrocycle »

coulomb wrote:How do they get driers and ovens to work on that low voltage, I wonder?


the ones I saw in Japan had really thick cables, which ran quite hot.
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Post by coulomb »

According to this page, Japan does have 200 V three phase power. Also, it doesn't list any countries with less than 200 V three phase power.

I guess that there must be a country somewhere that has 175 V three phase mains, and SEW choose to supply this market, but ABB does not.

Edit: It's SEW, not SEA. Sigh.
Last edited by coulomb on Wed, 05 May 2010, 16:11, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by coulomb »

Ok, last post on this subject: a much larger list of 3-phase voltages for various countries.

It turns out that there are several countries with 190 V three-phase. But the lowest 3-phase voltage is... the USA! Though it's probably because the table is misleading. 120/208 and 277/480 possibly means that 208 V is often supplied on a 4-wire outlet with neutral (star connection), so you could wire your three phase load to use active to neutral voltage (like our single phase 240 V). But the three phase supply is essentially 208 V.

Bottom line: I have no idea what country this 175/100 motor is supposed to be for. It's great that SEW make them, but it seems unlikely that we can convince other manufacturers to make them available by using the "what about the X market" argument (where X looked like it would be "Japanese" for a while).

Oh well.

Edit: spalling; SEW not SEA
Last edited by coulomb on Wed, 05 May 2010, 16:13, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Squiggles »

What size cable would they need to run for an electric stove? 8mm^2, very pricey!
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Post by bga »

coulomb wrote: Ok, last post on this subject: a much larger list of 3-phase voltages for various countries.
As many strange receptacles as the bar room lavatories in Star Wars Image
coulomb wrote: ...Bottom line: I have no idea what country this 175/100 motor is supposed to be for. It's great that SEW make them, but it seems unlikely that we can convince other manufacturers to make them available by using the "what about the X market" argument (where X looked like it would be "Japanese" for a while).
SEW has been making VF servo drives for as long as I can remember, so it's possible that these motors were never intended to be directly connected to any mains supply.

PS
Excellent user manual, James. There should be more of these.
Last edited by bga on Wed, 12 May 2010, 11:47, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Tritium_James »

bga wrote:SEW has been making VF servo drives for as long as I can remember, so it's possible that these motors were never intended to be directly connected to any mains supply.
Possibly, but we've asked about the next frame size up to buy and put on the dyno, and it's not available in this winding voltage "yet". They're talking like it's a gradual roll-out from the small sizes moving up. So possibly it's a new lower voltage designed for VFDs...
PS Excellent user manual, James. There should be more of these.
Thanks! Unfortunately writing doco has to be one of the most boring things possible, and there's still heaps of it to go for all our other new products too :(
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Post by woody »

Tritium_James wrote:Possibly, but we've asked about the next frame size up to buy and put on the dyno, and it's not available in this winding voltage "yet". They're talking like it's a gradual roll-out from the small sizes moving up. So possibly it's a new lower voltage designed for VFDs...
Perhaps the growing group of SI units in brisbane would be immeasurably happy to lend you an ABB 131-008 for some dyno time... 230V 2 pole is roughly equivalent to 115V 4 pole :-)
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Post by Tritium_James »

Yes possibly! Guarantees they're getting the most out of their motor too, as we can tweak every last motor parameter to give the highest value on the torque sensor...

The lowest voltage option SEW have for the 160 frame motor is 120V for the DRE type, and 147V for the DRS type. Not sure if that's at 50 or 60Hz. We'll probably be buying one of them anyway. Apparently we are allowed to import a DRS motor even though it doesn't meet the MEPS requirement, as long as we send them a letter stating our application doesn't need to meet MEPS.
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Post by asguard »

....Still figuring out forum quote reply function....

In Response to Johnies above post....

Hi there, not sure about commercial, but open source, could probably utilize the 1200V & similar amp rated IGBTs that are available with the customizable project from 2008 at CircuitCellar issue 217.
http://www.circuitcellar.com/archives/v ... index.html.



Last edited by asguard on Mon, 26 Jul 2010, 08:35, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by bga »

Hi asguard,
I'm making a controller along the lines of that article, using 1200V IGBTs and gate drivers from Powerex. The DsPIC30F they are using as the controller should be up to the task, as it's been designed as a three phase motor controller with DSP-like capabilities and should be able to generate the waveforms at about 30k steps per second, plenty fast for 200Hz PWM sinewaves.

One disquieting thing about the circuit cellar project was the banana plugs and lack of the other motor controller stuff like (giant) bus filter capacitors and IGBT bypass caps.

I have compiled their source code and compared it to the stock microchip reference application, it is virtually identical with the exception of the USB and CAN bus interface parts and some customisation.
Considerable work will be needed 'productise' this application into something that can be used easily in an EV.

If I ever get a holiday from crazy (work-type) sofware and interface projects, it'll get pushed along again.
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Post by woody »

Hi James,
did you get to Dyno the ABB 131008, or have you got Dyno results/printout for the SEW?
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Post by a4x4kiwi »

Or the cheap Chinese made motors you mentioned previously.

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Post by Tritium_James »

We haven't got hold of the cheap Chinese motor yet, the seller is still holding out for a minimum purchase of 100. Bit much for something we know nothing about...

Woody, we have data for the 132 frame SEW, but not as a simple torque/speed chart or similar. Unfortunately (and this is why EV drivetrains are hard) the performance you get from the motor is fairly closely wrapped up in what the controller and batteries are doing. A chart for the motor alone is almost useless.

We have the Weber/Coulomb ABB motor at our premises, but it's waiting on the rotor to come back from machining - not sure what the mech boys are doing there...   Their system is all ready to go on the dyno when the motor is assembled back together.
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Post by woody »

I'm happy with whatever numbers you're happy to give me :-)
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Post by aegidius »

Just a question on low voltage and ACIM's - assuming the motor has multiple pole pairs, could you split the windings and reconnect in parallel? Then your Japanese 100V-per-phase motor becomes 50V, or even less if there are more things to connect in parallel. (I assume they are already in delta connection?)

EDIT: Browsing yielded this: viewtopic.php?t=1237 so it has been thought of before (I expected as much).
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Post by coulomb »

aegidius wrote: Just a question on low voltage and ACIM's - assuming the motor has multiple pole pairs, could you split the windings and reconnect in parallel? Then your Japanese 100V-per-phase motor becomes 50V, or even less if there are more things to connect in parallel. (I assume they are already in delta connection?)

EDIT: Browsing yielded this: Changing an induction motor voltage, so it has been thought of before (I expected as much).

Yes, alas, it seems that most motors have windings in parallel already. Also most 415 V motors seem to be wired in delta for 415 V, so that the only other easy rewiring is to star, which makes it a 720 V motor.

It probably has a lot to do with many turns of fine wire being easier to work with than fewer turns of thicker wire.

We ordered our motor with the "S" (for Star) option, so it is 415 V star and 240 V delta. Others have remarked how the motor seems to be chock full of copper (see for example More photos here you go).
Last edited by coulomb on Sun, 05 Sep 2010, 10:34, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Mesuge »

James, on his October 8th show Rickard said something to the effect, he was considering your WS inverter as a replacement for the MES-DEA, however, you seemed to indicate to have some issues with your subcomponents delivery, is it a question of the Semkiron powerstage supplier, capacitor bank, or what else of critical nature is on backorder? So, the first batch of ~25units was rather successfull, right?
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Post by Tritium_James »

The leadtime on the bus caps is 16-20 weeks. This is normal, and not an exceptional circumstance, so we can plan around it. We order well in advance, and our next delivery is due in 2-3 weeks. So our quoted 8 week leadtimes for controllers are valid.

Jack wanted a controller *tomorrow*, and seemed unhappy that I couldn't do that for him.
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Post by Mesuge »

Thanks for the prompt clarification.
Any take on the related discussion in other threads? Namely the idea, WS running 2nd hand OEM PMSMs, e.g. by Toyota and friends, that's massproduced item by now, they make them upto ~120kW, so eventhough you can't reach their proper higher voltage and rpm (without booster or HV inverter version), it could be still interesting at derated level, ~half the power and say 2500-3000rpm? Also, what's kind of unfortunate because of the IGBT powerstage architecture, that hypothetical ~60-80kW peak WS "Lite" version couldn't be priced much differently, right?
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Post by 7circle »

Wondering if the Wavesculpter (WS) Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) control can apply a "purr" to the motor. Along the lines of a noise generator.

It's very hard to reduce humm from mageneticly resononating/clinchining parts so rather than pushing the frequencies higher, perhaps applying a small Frequency Modulated (FM) shift to the IGBT drive signals could produce a harmoniuous purr for those finding a constant mid kHhz humm painfull.
Efficiency is very important so I would not want to reduce this by much.
Compared to the power of the sound system needed to drown out the hum could be taken into consideration.

I haven't heard your WS running a motor. A video of an EV driving using your WS would be great to hear and see. But as the construction of the Motor and other parts are what produces the humm sound the Controller manufacturer can only do so much to address the problem.
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Post by Tritium_James »

7circle, the WaveSculptor switches at 10kHz, with interleaved switching between phases, so the frequency 'seen' by the motor is 20kHz. It's above the audible hearing range (for humans, anyway...) so the issue you're talking about is non-existent with our controller. But yes, we probably could do that sort of thing without too much trouble if we wanted to.

Mesuge, yes you're correct, unfortunately the version with a smaller silicon 6-pack wouldn't be that much cheaper, plus our gate drive PCB and associated bit and pieces are designed to fit the larger part, and are quite full. It would be a challenge making them smaller than they are now. But there's no reason we couldn't drive one of the Toyota motors as far as I'm aware.
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