PTR: For several years now, we’ve been seeing brushless motors begin to dominate the professional tool industry’s drive in cordless tools. That’s great, but what’s the big deal? As long as I can still drive that lag bolt, does it really matter? Well, yeah it does. There are significant differences and implications between brushed and brushless motors.
4 comments:
I like this article; it does a very good job of explaining the basic pieces of a motor, complete with the diagram. I also found the doughnut analogy to be a fun way to relate to the readers as well. I would recommend this article if someone just wants to learn the basics of how a motor works, pretty quickly. So on the subject of the actual brushless motor, I definitely think that is the way of the future, especially if Makita has already packaged it in the more efficient drivers. Lower maintenance and compact motors are always being sought out for all sort of equipment and I imagine that this is not exclusive to the entertainment industry. I see this flourishing in a few ways in the industrial world and then, as we do, we entertainment folks will re-purpose these inventions for our own use. I also do not see this taking so long.
This article was pretty informative and insightful. I especially loved the doughnut analogy in relating the rotor to the stator and describing how a DC motor actually works. While I was following along with human chasing the doughnut description I could not stop thinking of the time when I learned how motor generators worked. It was awful, dry, and not entertaining. If only all descriptions of machinery were accompanied by some Bavarian crème doughnuts, the world would be a much better, more mechanically inclined and probably much more obese place.
All that being said, there was a link at the very bottom of the article to read a little bit about Milwaukee’s new One-Key Tool technology, which was just as exhilarating as the sugar high I would likely have gotten from that Bavarian crème doughnut. Basically, Milwaukee has created Bluetooth technology that syncs with your phone to allow for more precise torque, RPM, and revving up specifications. You can also check the efficiency and location of a specific tool with the new technology as well.
This was a very informative article. I had some idea what the difference is between brushed and brushless motors but I still had a lot of questions, this article answered most of them. I think it is really important to know about the tools you are using and the mechanical workings inside. If you do not know this information it is very possible you could over work the tool and damage it. If you know the mechanical pieces are cheaper materials than some high-end tools (like my impact driver) you need to know the tool’s limit. It is also important to know things as simple as the difference between an impact driver and a drill, something a lot of people who use the tools everyday do not know. Often times one tool is better for a job than another and not just based on the saws function. For example, when do you use a worm drive skill saw vs a standard direct drive saw? The blade spins the same way but they have very different insides.
When they were developing what we currently know to be the electric motor/generator, we thought to ourselves “Why on earth would we make the more complicated and non-electrically static part the spinning part?” and we were right to think so. So we made the rotor out of the permanent magnets and the stator out the electro-magnets, but we didn’t have computerized electronic controllers to modify the polarity of the magnets, so what do we do? We made a separate take off spindle that drove another wheel that was the polarity modifier. In a sense these were brushless motors, but instead of an electronic controller there was a mechanical assembly that drew its own power. For stationary and wall-powered motors, having this extra power drain was fine, then when we started making battery powered motors, we integrated the polarity modifier into the drive of the motor and put the electro magnets on the rotor to improve efficiency. In a way, we always had brushless motors, now we just have better ones.
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