Perpetual Commotion: "New Discovery ... Permanent Magnet Motors - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: benbradley
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: November 17, 2018, 02:13:40 am
content: I've seen this forum for a while, and so especially with Dave's videos debunking various crap, I had to sign up and post this here. I found the article a few days ago. Though it's a year old, it doesn't seem to have gone far (that may be fortunate), and despite the on-site comments, I think it needs more beating up on. Googling found a reddit thread on it, but apparently only the author posted and commented.I had thought that everything about permanent magnets had already been known, and by the time I got a ways into this article I decided I was right."New Discovery Could Lead to Commercial Production of Permanent Magnet Motors"I wondered what could be new, as permanent-magnet motors have been around for a really long time. But no, this motor has two rotating permanent magnets ... and nothing else!https://www.powerelectronics.com/alternative-energy/new-discovery-could-lead-commercial-production-permanent-magnet-motorsThe editor posted a few days later, but with no apparent clue about any theoretical problem with the idea:https://www.powerelectronics.com/alternative-energy/permanent-magnet-motor-feasibleWho makes up this BS ...

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 17, 2018, 02:31:45 am
content: People who have never gone through the educational process beyond the bare minimum thats who, or people who did but who weren't listening.Even some degreed engineers are not that well versed in such things. Incredible as that may sound.

author: Wan Huang Luo
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: November 18, 2018, 03:30:55 pm
content: “It works, but we won’t let you see it. Patent pending. Please send money post haste.”

author: Domagoj T
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 18, 2018, 04:00:58 pm
content: That reminds me of Steorn, guys who, over 10 years, milked more than $25 million out of clueless investors. They even bough a giant ad calling for scientists to form a jury to test their claims.http://dispatchesfromthefuture.com/images/steorn_economist_ad.jpgI remember they had a forum that they promised to open at some point in the future. I applied, but never got the message that they opened it.Anyway. scientists responded to their ad, formed a jury and tested the device. The verdict? It doesn't work.

author: wbeaty
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: November 22, 2018, 01:29:10 am
content: You know what would really mess with these scams? A toy perpetual motion machine: a real device which spins for a few minutes, while demagnetizing its own magnets.When it stops, just stick in a fresh, full-strength magnet!I bet it's not impossible. After all, many crackpots have already claimed success.And that was by accident, without even an intentionally-designed, efficient demagnetizer.

author: Cyberdragon
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 22, 2018, 06:04:25 am
content: It's not about whether it would eat the magnets or not, it's that permanent magnets with static magnetic fields are terrible at making a motor. The magnetic friction would act more like a brake than a motor.

author: T3sl4co1l
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 22, 2018, 06:20:31 am
content: Quote from: wbeaty on November 22, 2018, 01:29:10 am^ Kids these days probably? won't know the legendary Bill Beaty, by the way. I remember the name from articles (and ads) back in the days of Electronics Now.If it's fringe electronics, this guy knows.Tim

author: IanMacdonald
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 23, 2018, 10:14:50 am
content: One YT demo makes the claim that a magnet motor nearly works because at one particular rotation speed - the 'sweet spot' as they call it - the rate of deceleration is greatly reduced compared to other speeds. They reckon that if they could improve it a bit more they would have sustained rotation.However, I wonder if they did a control experiment to see if the rate of deceleration is any less than the same setup with nonmagnetic masses in the rotor in place of the magnets. I suspect if they tried that they'd find the answer is no. In other words, it's just that at one particular rotation rate the magnetic friction is minimized, but not eliminated.

author: AndyC_772
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 23, 2018, 10:25:25 am
content: FFS, magnetism is a conservative field. The line integral of the work done in moving a magnet along any path from a point in a magnetic field back to that same point is zero. Ergo, absolutely no useful work is done by the field, regardless of how any magnets move relative to each other.Nobody seems to pretend it's possible to make a motor that does useful work by only using springs. Why can't they get their heads around the fact that the same applies to permanent magnets?

author: vk6zgo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 23, 2018, 03:14:52 pm
content: Quote from: AndyC_772 on November 23, 2018, 10:25:25 amYou can, but you have to wind the spring up, first!Quote

author: BenonymousII
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: November 29, 2018, 04:31:34 am
content: I followed the Steorn circus, it was very entertaining. These "magnetic" motors keep cropping up. The people who tout them can get them to spin OK but what you never see is anyone putting a load on them and by that I mean a mechanical load. Why? because it would slow down and stop in a very unimpressive length of time

author: Cyberdragon
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 30, 2018, 05:46:27 am
content: It's not possible for a magnet motor to spin at all, except under momentum, as has been explained. The magnets can only provide resistance, a normal flywheel would store more energy. All those fake things you see have hidden motors and batteries.

author: wbeaty
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: December 01, 2018, 11:57:56 am
content: Quote from: Cyberdragon on November 30, 2018, 05:46:27 amYes, you'd have to spin it like a flywheel. But magnets don't provide resistance. Instead they provide cogging. They slow the rotor going "uphill," but then it recovers velocity going "downhill." Magnets make the rotor violently vibrate as it spun, unless they were carefully designed to produce a nice smooth sine-force. Imagine one big fuzzy "thump" per revolution. (Keep any large conductors far away, so you don't get eddy currents, hot metal, and a major drag force.)Once you can make a magnet-rotor spin smoothly, next figure out how to weaken the magnets slightly per revolution. Is this even possible? Sure, and done wrong, it's just an example ferrite hysterisis loss, and produces a net drag force as the magnet polarities change.I'm speculating that it's possible to adjust things so the repelling magnets get slightly weaker when they're far apart. That, or have your attracting magnets get slightly weaker when they're close together. This gives a small net kick to the rotor during each revolution. Obviously the energy required to demagnetize the magnets would have to be smaller than the energy recovered as they demagnetize. And obviously, even a slight mechanical load would mess everything up. The magic motor would spin, but do no useful work (I mean, work besides dishonestlyattractinginvestor dollars, while beingrepellantto scientists and engineers!)Yes, the above might be impossible.OR ...maybe if you're crazy, and you BELEIVE, then you'll futz with such a device for years, until it actually starts spinning by itself! (Experiment always trumps theory, and if "it happens, then it must be possible.") In that case you haven't created perpetual motion. You've just figured out how to reduce friction to a low level, and then located the narrow window where slight "drive kicks" spin the rotor as your massive magnets demagnetize themselves.If it's possible to do this, then we should notice crackpots demonstrating magnet-motors which really spin for minutes/hours, and which really don't have any hidden batteries when disassembled. What a great scam! Skeptics would be very confused.On the other hand, crafty hoaxers are really good at hiding both the batteries and the connecting wires. See the late Dr. David Jones of the journal Nature, with his hilarous "Dreadco(tm) perpetual motion wheels" being exhibited in science museums. They actually spin for nearly a year. But then they require, ahem, "servicing." The bearings "need lubrication." (David Jones famously invented fullerenes decades early. He also predicted that humans could fly in high-pressure neutral-bouyancy chambers full of extremely dense oxygenated Xenon. Later investigation shows that, oddly, the totally inert Xenon is a much better drug than Nitrous. Xenon-huffing is a thing!)

author: Cyberdragon
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 01, 2018, 01:20:54 pm
content: No, it's not possible to "weaken the magnets" to extract energy, it only dissapates into entropy. Magnets are a force only, they only provide energy when energy is put in. It also takes energy to destroy the magnets, so no.

author: wbeaty
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: December 04, 2018, 02:47:17 am
content: Quote from: Cyberdragon on December 01, 2018, 01:20:54 pmOf course it is! But then the motor stops.It's even a trivial demonstration: assemble a group of small PMs into a single larger magnet, then give them a shove and let them collapse, performing mechanical work as they go. The single larger magnet stored energy, and we got some of it back as the small magnets randomized themselves. Yes, this is only an analogy. The small magnets are like portions of a magnetic material, or like single domains. The collapsed pile is a large weakened magnet. The magnetic domains don't individually weaken as a ferrous magnet demagnetizes. And, as my cluster of small magnets collapses, the surrounding field disappears, and this field-collapse can induce currents in a nearby pickup coil. (Measure the integrated output watts.)Clearly the scrambling of domains can emit electrical energy and not just heat.But can a weakening magnet emit net useful energy? (Don't answer yet!)Quote from: Cyberdragon on December 01, 2018, 01:20:54 pmNo, magnets aren't a "force." It takes energy to magnetize a PM, and that energy comes back out during demagnetization. The same is obviously true of all common ferrous-core inductors, but without such a large hysterisis-loss as with steel etc.Quote from: Cyberdragon on December 01, 2018, 01:20:54 pmYes, energy is put in when we magnetize iron (for example, transformer laminations.) The energy is recovered during demagnetization. No, it doesn't take enormous energy to demagnetize a laminated-core inductor. But yes, it takes energy to exceed the small B-H hysterisis of the transformer core, and takes far more to exceed the BH threshold for steel and other permanent magnets. In my above analogy with the collapsing small magnets, we must perform some work to start the collapse. But this is a catalyst or trigger, and as I understand it, is unrelated to the energy which was stored in the magnet-array, and unrelated to the energy recovered by external coils (or attracted objects) during demagnetization.Specifically,if the energy recovered by the pickup coil is lessthan the energy required to demagnetize a material (say iron,) then some net energy can be collected as the magnet is demagnetized. This is similar to having the field of an energy-storage inductor collapse, injecting energy into the external circuit.Note that iron-core inductors don't have zero hysterisis loss, so they give us a real-world example of the Permanent-Magnet effect I'm discussing. When the laminated core weakens, it delivers a huge kick to the inductor wound around it.Or, if the energy required todemagnetize a high-hysterisis material (say steel) is larger thanthe energy collected by a pickup coil, then as you say, no net useful energy can ever be recovered. We can only put energy in during demagnetization, and at the end, the removed magnetization ends up as heat.Do all permanent magnet systems always consume net energy during demagnetization? I expect the answer isn't as clear as you seem to think.---For example, if we have two magnetized steel plates with alike-poles facing, we can let them push apart, then force them back together. If their final positions match their initial positions, no net energy is been recovered or injected. Follow? We could even build a "crackpot test-motor" to demonstrate this, with magnetic steel plates carried by stator and rotor. With good bearings it would just coast along after being spun up.OK, next, let the two steel plates push wide apart, and while they're apart, slightly demagnetize one of them. We could demagnetize a small stripe-pattern on the steel by using a tiny, powerful magnet brought close. Or we could do it with a brief current-spike in a coil. Now force the two steel plates back together. It takes less work this time, so some energy came out of the 2-plate system.Here's the big question: what actually happens when we sum up all the energies? Not speculation, calculation. Or experiment. Did the energy required to slightly demagnetize one of the steel plates exceed the net work which accelerated the moving plates? Can a hoax-motor be (temporarily) driven by demagnetizing its own magnets?First, don't be confident of the answer. Second, figure out what actually happens. "Faraday-style" is to let the experiment be made, since one simple demonstration is worth any number of pages of spreadsheet. (No, I haven't build one myself. Yet.)I certainly accept that I may be wrong, and there may be no way to demagnetize a steel plate while collecting net energy from a flywheel (or net energy from a pickup coil wound around it.) But the answer doesn't look obvious whenever mechanical forces are part of the system (rather than, say, winding a coil around a steel bar.) I notice that it's not breaking laws of physics to get useful work out of a demagnetizing permanent magnet.Hmm. Also, if it turns out to be impossible for steel, might it be possible for some other ferromagnet having a weird nonlinear BH curve, Weigand wire etc? Do the crackpots use normal magnets, or instead some weird materials?What if some of the "magnet motors" are still a hoax, but they honestly don't contain any hidden batteries?!! To properly debunk them, build one that "really works," and measure the weakening of the net B-field. Heh, or ignore the second part, and go start your own scam company!

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: December 04, 2018, 03:27:23 am
content: Quote from: Domagoj T on November 18, 2018, 04:00:58 pmSteorn was amazing in that they were able to keep it going for so long. You almost have to take your hat off to them.

author: wbeaty
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: December 04, 2018, 03:43:33 am
content: Quote from: EEVblog on December 04, 2018, 03:27:23 amThey followed the rule worked out by several earlier scammers of the 1970s/80s:never grab the money and run. Not ever.Since the investors are expecting all scammers to eventually bolt to Argentina, then as long as they keep the scam running for years/decades, they can rake in money and soak up enormous salaries. Or even medium salaries. By not changing their names and moving to New Zealand, they can keep screwing investors continuously, forever.After all, because they refuse to take the money and run, that proves it must be legit! Right?GENIUS!

author: MrMobodies
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 05, 2018, 03:06:53 am
content: Is the idea similar to that of the Delorean that hovers on a magnetic base in EEVblog #924 - Hovering Delorean! ?

author: Domagoj T
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 08, 2018, 10:09:02 am
content: Quote from: EEVblog on December 04, 2018, 03:27:23 amQuote from: wbeaty on December 04, 2018, 03:43:33 amIt does take a bit of brains to pull off a successful scam and get away with it.A failed investment of a venture capital is just that, a poor judgment and a business risk for VC. If you tried to pull it off with individuals it would be a criminal offense.I might try that, only if I didn't consider myself a half decent person...

author: IanMacdonald
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 10, 2018, 06:04:41 pm
content: On a related subject, saw on YT the other day that an aircraft service center was quoting $1100 to rewind the armature of a small commutator motor. Only they decided it was BER because the field winding was kaput too, and that would put it over the $1500 price of a replacement.The magnet motor guys are in the wrong business.

author: Kilrah
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: December 10, 2018, 06:30:24 pm
content: There are these permanent magnets that can be enabled/disabled electrically (I think Dave actually received one in a mailbag some day).Theoretically you could make a motor with one of them and a permanent magnet rotor, and enabling/disabling the switchable magnet every half turn would create a "permanent magnet motor" as per the title...Obviously it likely doesn't work that fast and switching the magnet on and off is bound to require as much or more energy as running a "normal" motor, but the investors don't need to know, and anyway it's "just a control signal, not a power one so it doesn't count!"

author: T3sl4co1l
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 10, 2018, 08:42:27 pm
content: Quote from: Kilrah on December 10, 2018, 06:30:24 pmThe "Orbo" stuff from some years ago, was kind of like that. They were using switched reluctance (saturation) to pull things along. The catch of course is, that switching doesn't come for free, and if you correctly measured the power consumed in the process (they didn't, and didn't allow anyone else to do so), you'd find the difference is right there.In other words: a nonlinear inductor (one that saturates) isn't lossy, in and of itself. Some flux is consumed on the way up, and released on the way down. The nonlinearity just means the amount of current required, to draw incrementally more flux, goes way up at some point. As long as it's conservative (same released in discharge as put in during charge), it's lossless.What you'd actually measure in a practical* motor of such design, is nonconservation, or hysteresis or such: you get less flux out in discharge than in charge, and that difference, times the current, is the work performed (real energy dissipated).(Flux, by the way, is the product of voltage and time, or more specifically the integral. Volts times amps is power, and power times time is energy. Where resistors are a ratio between voltage and current (Ohm's law), inductors are a ratio between flux and current.)*It's worth emphasizing that, if you try to make a perpetual motion device, you at least need to start by using good bearings. If it spins for a long time without energy input, then very little will be required to actually keep it spinning. A practical motor -- one that is doing actualwork, not just looking shiny -- requires a serious (and more easily measurable) power input, much harder to delude yourself with!Tim

author: Kilrah
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: December 10, 2018, 08:54:52 pm
content: Quote from: T3sl4co1l on December 10, 2018, 08:42:27 pmI've seen some scams based only on that. A wheel that needs to be "started" and then runs "indefinitely" - just a heavy wheel on incredibly good bearings with a lot of totally useless wiring and decoration around to make it look fancy - It slows down, but people just get bored of it and walk away/get distracted by the host way before it becomes noticeable. Or there's a small battery and coil well hidden somewhere that's enough to compensate the tiny amount of friction.

author: wbeaty
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: December 12, 2018, 09:23:55 am
content: Quote from: Kilrah on December 10, 2018, 08:54:52 pmThat's the easy technique. Not nearly sneaky enough. What else we got that wouldn't show up on x-rays?There's microwaves and rectennas. Easily power a little DC motor forever. As long as a crowd of people aren't standing in the beam. And for transmitters, I hear that some of the newer microwave ovens use mosfet arrays. Cheaper than magnetrons, no loud fans, not recognizable as a hundreds-watts microwave generator. Those "plasma floodlights" certainly do it this way. Five hundred watts, running quite cool (24VDC at 10A supply, times two.)There's winding a drive-coil around the building. Drive it at 200KHz, then have a resonant pickup loop inside your motor. Quite large milliwatts can be communicated like this, especially if using a heavy high-Q resonant receiver coil.Then there's the Vandegraff In The Ceiling. Give it a needle pointed down towards your magic motor below. And rig the motor to have an electrostatic mechanical drive. Needs a ground wire though. Or a chunk of radioactive material, to blast an ionized path to Earth.Aha, infrared laser in the ceiling. Few-watts laser diodes can make a little hotspot below, right where the little hole is, with the hidden PV cell peeking out.Or do it oldschool! Like earlyperpetual motion hoaxer Charles Redheffer: Upstairs, Fulton found an old man who was turning a hand-crank with one hand and eating bread with the other. The angry crowd tore the machine to pieces. Redheffer fled NYC, but later moved back to Philadelphia and started up the same scam again.

author: rrinker
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 14, 2018, 07:01:04 pm
content: Interesting story - good on Coleman Sellers there to notice the cogs were worn on the wrong side and exposing the fraud in the Philadelphia one.

author: amyk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 15, 2018, 07:14:03 pm
content: "New Discovery Could Lead to Commercial Production of Permanent Magnet Motors" sounds like a plausible headline for a news article... over 100 years ago.