Abstract:
In the motor disclosed, five stator windings are distributed on u groups each having five main poles and coacts with a permanent magnet rotor. Each pole has n+1 pole teeth. The stator windings are connected in series or parallel to form five connecting points. A control switches five switches having an armature connected to a connecting point between a positive and negative potential so as simultaneously to energize the windings as required. The control then shifts the short-circuited condition to other windings in cyclical sequence while energizing the remaining four windings at any time. The pole divisions exhibit the relationships 
     
       T.sub.P = nT.sub.S +α; α=T.sub.S (K+ 0.6) 
     
     
       τ.sub.p &#39; =  nT.sub.S +β ; β=T.sub.S (K&#39;+0.6) 
     
     the ratio of the rotor tooth widths to stator tooth widths at the outer diameter of the rotor is equal or smaller than unity. The number of rotor teeth Z R  = u (5n+4K+K&#39;+3). In this relation n, K, and K&#39; are whole numbers and T P , T P  &#39; and T S  are pitches of adjacent main poles on adjacent groups and of adjacent pole teeth. The angles α and β are pitches between adjacent teeth on adjacent poles and adjacent groups. The control means connect the windings so as to permit operation in one of five stepping angle modes and in a five phase or two phase mode.

Description:
REFERENCE TO RELATED COPENDING APPLICATIONS 
     This application is related to the copending application of the same applicant, Ser. No. 379,223, filed July 16, 1973, and now U.S. Pat. No. 3,866,104, and assigned to the same assignee as the present application. The subject matter of that application is hereby made a part of the present application as if fully recited herein. 
     BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 
     This invention relates to multiphase low speed synchronous motors of the homopolar type intended primarily for use as a stepping motor. 
     Homopolar motors are well known and are available for many manufacturers. Conventionally they take the form of two phase motors with eight stator poles, eight stator windings, and 5 × 8, or 40 stator pole teeth, and a permanent magnet rotor with Z R  =50 rotor pole teeth. Such motors have a number of drawbacks, particularly instability at resonance points, and relatively low stepping frequencies. 
     An object of this invention is to improve synchronous motors. 
     Another object of this invention is to overcome the the many problems and achieve the requirements which stepping motors exhibit, with a minimum of stator laminations and motor attachments and to increase the stepping angle accuracy and reduce the production costs among a wide selection of models. 
     SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION 
     According to a feature of the invention, the stepping motor has a plurality of untapped stator windings which form a plurality of connecting points, a permanent magnet rotor, control means connected to the connecting points for energizing the windings, the stepping motor including u groups each having five main poles, each of said main poles having n+1 pole teeth, the stator windings being distributed on the groups and poles, the value n being an integral number equal to or greater than 0, the control means connecting the windings so as to permit operation in one of five stepping angle modes and in either a five phase or two phase relationship. 
     These and other features of the invention are more precisely pointed out in the claims. Other objects and advantages of the invention will become evident from the following detailed description when read in light of the accompanying drawings. 
    
    
     BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS 
     FIG. 1 is a partly schematic sectional view of a motor embodying features of the invention. 
     FIG. 1&#39; is a detail of the motor in FIG. 1. 
     FIG. 2 is a partly schematic sectional view of the rotor in FIG. 1. 
     FIG. 3 is a partly schematic sectional view of another motor embodying features of the invention. 
     FIG. 4 is a partly schematic sectional view of another motor embodying features of the invention. 
     FIG. 5 is a schematic diagram of windings and control means therefor embodying features of the invention. 
     FIG. 6 is a chart illustrating the switching sequence and resulting polarities of the arrangement in FIG. 5. 
     FIG. 7 is a winding diagram of the poles for a motor using the system in FIG. 5. 
     FIGS. 5a, 6a, and 7a are illustrations corresponding to those in FIGS. 5, 6, and 7 for another winding arrangement. 
     FIG. 8 is a partly schematic sectional view of another motor embodying features of the invention. 
     FIG. 9 is a winding diagram for motor poles embodying features of the invention. 
     FIG. 10 is a connection diagram for windings in a motor embodying features of the invention. 
     FIG. 11 is a voltage-step diagram illustrating the switch actuating sequence, and hence the voltages at corresponding nodes at the varying switches in FIG. 10 in the motor of FIG. 9. 
     FIGS. 10a and 11a are two drawings corresponding to FIGS. 10 and 11 for another embodiment of the invention. 
     FIG. 12 is another polarity state table similar to FIG. 11 for setting forth another arrangement embodying features of the invention. 
     FIG. 13 illustrates schematically the movement of rotor poles relative to six stator poles of a 10 pole motor. 
     FIGS. 14, 15, and 16 illustrate the conditions for producing 200 and 400 steps per revolution, FIG. 14 illustrating the winding arrangement, FIG. 15 the switch arrangement, and FIG. 16 the step for each switch operation. 
     FIGS. 17a to 17d are schematic illustrations showing the rotary movement of a rotor as a result of the switching of current to the windings in a motor embodying features of the invention. 
     FIG. 18 is a schematic diagram illustrating the winding arrangement for another motor embodying features of the invention, and FIGS. 18a and 18b are motor schematic diagrams illustrating the use of motor layouts with odd group numbers. 
    
    
     DESCRIPTION OF PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS 
     In FIGS. 1 and 1&#39;, a motor has five stator windings which are applied on 10, (5 × u groups) radially arranged stator main poles 2. 
     The stator body is composed of one or several laminated stator sheets or plates that form salient stator main poles 2 which are completely or partly wound. As more completely shown in FIG. 1&#39; the poles 2 have n+1 stator pole teeth where n is a whole number equal to or greater than 0. The pole teeth form an operating air gap 3 between the stator 1 and a rotor 4. 
     As shown in FIG. 2, the rotor is composed of an axially magnetized permanent central magnet with multipolar soft-magnetic pole caps 7 at both ends. As shown in FIG. 1&#39;, the teeth 4 of the two pole caps or pole shoes are tangentially offset relative to each other by one-half pole division. 
     The number of rotor teeth in FIGS. 1 and 1&#39; Z R  =u(5n+4K+K&#39;+3), wherein n, K, and K&#39; are whole numbers equal to or greater than 0. This corresponds to the structure in the aforementioned copending patent application. 
     Also in accordance with FIG. 1 of the aforementioned copending patent application, the interpolar gap angles between the stator main pole of the stator plate section in FIG. 1, with its 10 stator main poles, are α= T S  (K+0.6). The interpolar gap angles between the two five-phase main polar groups u are β=T S  (K&#39;+0.6). 
     Also, T P  =nT S  +α, and T P  &#39; = nT S  +β where T P  and T P  &#39;  are the pitches between adjacent main poles within a group and the pitches between adjacent poles of different groups respectively and T S  is the pitch between adjacent pole teeth. 
     The windings and the starting arrangement of the five-phase motor according to the invention and as shown in FIG. 1 are normally connected as shown in FIG. 5. See the aforementioned copending application. In this circuit one main pole per pole group always remains unexcited. FIG. 6 illustrates the change of polarity of the 2 × 5 stator main poles of a five-phase pole group for a full cycle. FIG. 7 illustrates the winding connections of the five stator windings for u=2 pole groups. According to an embodiment of the invention, the two windings per phase can be connected in series instead of in parallel. 
     According to another embodiment of the invention the stator windings for u=2, 4, 6, etc. appears as shown in the circuit of FIG. 5a. The corresponding polarity changes appear in FIG. 6a, and the connection of the five stator windings appears in FIG. 7a. 
     With u=2 pole groups, the stator main pole windings W 1 ,2 to W 5 ,2 of the pole group VI to X are connected to a closed pentagon. However, switches S 1  to S 5  connect the windings W 1 ,1 to W 5 ,1 of the stator main poles I to V in a star connection from the nodal points 10 to 14. 
     The stepping and power behavior of this system corresponds to the pentagon circuit according to FIG. 5. 
     As mentioned, the connection of the ten main pole windings can be seen from FIG. 7a. 
     Exact measurements on motors which were built with stator plate sections according to FIG. 1 have shown that the individual step angles are not completely identical due to unsymmetrical stray fluxes (α≠β). 
     This is insignificant with a large number of steps, as determined by the operation, or with normal tolerances for each step angle. However, this may no longer be justifiable under certain circumstances when the individual step numbers are small and the tolerances very narrow. 
     Considerations in this respect led to the stator plate sections shown in FIGS. 3 and 4, where symmetry was improved and a sufficiently high step angle accuracy insured. This is shown in the aforementioned U.S. patent application Ser. No. 379,223. 
     In the stator pole section of FIG. 3, the interpolar gap angles α are made equal to β. For this purpose the extraneous four stator pole teeth 9 in the center of four stator main poles are omitted. Thus, the magnetic stray condition between the main poles become symmetrical, and the step angle accuracy is advantageously increased. The interpolar gap teeth have virtually no effect upon the step angle accuracy. Thus here we have Z R  = 5u(n+K+1) = 50, with u = 2, n = 3, and K = 1. 
     In the stator pole section of the embodiment of FIG. 4, the stator pole teeth 9 are displaced laterally in one direction of rotation from the center of the stator pole teeth. Thus again, α is not equal to β. In this case, however, twice the number of smaller interpole gap angles β are formed. Tests have shown that this produces accurate stepping angles. In this case we have Z R  =u(5n+3K+2K&#39;+3)=2(5.sup.. 3+3.sup.. 1+2.sup.. 2+3)=50. 
     Naturally, the extraneous stator pole teeth 9 can also be omitted between the center and the end of the pole tooth group. 
     A complete symmetrical stator construction is obtained if the condition Z R  =u(5n+3), with u ≧ 1 and n ≧ 0 is satisfied. 
     With all other rotor teeth numbers Z R , an integral multiple of the rotor tooth pitch, which is not divisible by 5, cannot be distributed evenly over the main pole group. 
     A completely symmetrical stator plate section for a five-phase motor is shown in FIG. 8. Here the number of rotor teeth is Z R  =u(5n+4K+K&#39;+3)=2(5.sup.. 2+ 4.sup.. 1+1+3)=36 with n=2;K=K&#39;=1. 
     The change of polarity of the 2 × 5 main poles as a function of the steps corresponds to that of the table in FIG. 6. 
     Thorough investigations have shown that the stator tooth pitch T S  can be made somewhat greater than the rotor pole tooth pitch T R , without any changes in the rotor step angle. 
     For the given example the stator tooth pitch is T S  = T R  (n+K+o,6)/(n+K)=1.2T R . 
     A tooth pitch dimension according to the foregoing relation has a number of manufacturing advantages while changing the torque produced only slightly. However, attenuation is increased. Basically, according to the invention, the stator tooth pitch T S  can be selected to be between 0.9 T R  and 1.1 [(n+K+0.6)/(n+K)] × T R  for all sectional embodiments with a predetermined rotor tooth number T R . As a prerequisite the centers of the tooth images of the main poles are spaced to correspond exactly to the equation τp=(n+K+0.6)T R . 
     If the 10 main pole windings I to X are connected to FIG. 9, and the five stator pole windings W1 to W5 thus formed connected to the current source E in FIG. 10 through the 10 transfer switches S 6  to S 15 , and if the switches are actuated according to the switch position diagram in FIG. 11, the polarity state shown in the table of FIG. 12 for the 10 main poles at the control steps 1 to 21 is obtained. FIG. 13 represents the development of six poles of a schematized motor with 10 main poles. To this end, each respective rotor position is shown according to the polarity states from the 12th to the 21st step of FIG. 11. It can be seen that the motor moves from step to step by (1/20)T.sub. R. Every second position is identical to a position of the previously described selection circuit of FIG. 5, where the rotor moves from step to step by (1/10)T R . 
     With the two winding connections of FIGS. 5 and 9, it is possible to obtain φ 5  = 7.2°/10=0.72° and φ 9  =7.2°/20= 0.36° from a motor whose construction is such that Z R  =50, T R  =7.2° and u=2. The selection circuit of FIG. 5 allows us to obtain five hundred steps. The circuit of FIG. 9, however permits one thousand steps per revolution. 
     According to the invention, the number of steps per rotary revolution is varied utilizing the same mechanical motor construction. The condition for two thousand steps per rotor revolution can be satisfied, according to the invention by the circuit of FIG. 10a corresponding to the polarity state table in FIG. 11a. In the aforementioned two types of circuits, an entire phase winding W, composed for example of two main pole windings, is connected or disconnected. In the circuit of FIG. 10a, only one main pole winding W/2 of a phase winding W is, according to a feature of the invention, connected, disconnected, or switched per unit time. If the polarity state diagram of FIG. 12 is considered for example, which diagram is associated with the circuit of FIG. 9, it can be seen that in the transition of step 0 to step 1 the phase winding W 1  jointly deenergizes the two poles I and VI. In this condition these two poles are not excited. 
     According to the polarity state table of FIG. 11a for the circuit of FIG. 10a, only the winding of pole I is disconnected in the first step, while the winding of pole VI remains connected. Only in the second step is the winding of pole 6 similarly disconnected (unexcited) according to the invention. This way, the stepping angle φ 9  =1/20×T R  corresponding to the circuit of FIG. 9, is, according to the invention, cut in half to φ 13  =1/40×T R . In the motor with the selection circuit of FIG. 10a, with Z R  equal to 50 rotor teeth, a stepping angle of 360°/50×40=0.18° and 2000 steps per rotor revolution is obtained. 
     According to an embodiment of the invention the condition for 200 and 400 steps per rotor revolution is satisfied when the stator windings of pole I to X corresponding to the two-phase windings W 6  and W 7  are connected with each other as shown in FIG. 14 and excited with a current source through the switch arrangement of FIG. 15. 
     The winding W 6  is composed of the stator windings of poles I, II, III, VII and VIII. The latter are connected with each other and excited so that juxtaposed poles exhibit different polarities. 
     The winding W 7  is composed of the stator windings of poles IV, V, VI, IX, and X, and the latter are connected with each other in a manner corresponding to winding W 6 . 
     Each winding is thus composed of two mutually overlapping groups of stator windings, with one group having three stator main poles and the other group having two stator main poles. 
     Actuating the switches S 16  to S 19  produces the particular polarity states illustrated in FIGS. 17a to 17d for the individual steps. That is to say, FIGS. 17a to 17d show the rotary movement of the rotor as a result of the switching of the windings in a motor embodying the invention where P=10, main poles n=0 and Z R  =16. In such a motor the rotor is moved by T R  /4. This is done by forming the magnetic attraction regions on the circumference of the working gap. The regions&#39; centers change 90° from step to step as shown schematically in FIGS. 17a and 17b. 
     According to an embodiment of the invention, the number of North South poles changes step by step from 3u North and 2u South poles at one step to 2.5u North and 2.5u South poles at another, as well as to 2u North and 3u South poles at another. Thus only an even number of groups u=2 can be used for this division. According to another embodiment of the invention, a motor with Z R  =50 rotor teeth and T R  =7.2° with the above described winding arrangement and selection circuit has a stepping angle of 1.8° corresponding to 200 steps per rotor revolution. According to another embodiment of this invention this angle is cut in half to φ =0.9°, and 400 steps per revolution are obtained by alternately exciting two phases at one time during one step and only one of the phases the next step. 
     According to another embodiment of the invention, this motor is also operated, using the aforementioned winding arrangement, as a two-phase synchronous motor or a single phase synchronous motor with an auxiliary condensor phase. The synchronous speed is 60f/Z R  R.P.M. 
     According to another embodiment of the invention a (3/2)u division is used. This makes it possible also to use motor layouts with an odd group number n=1. FIGS. 18a and 18b illustrate this principle. In the example of FIG. 18a, showing a motor with 10 main poles, the poles I, II, V, VI, VII and X form one phase, and the poles, III, IV, VIII and IX form the other phase. As shown in FIGS. 18a and 18b, two magnetic attraction regions are again formed with the number of north and south poles changing from step to step. However, at every fourth or sixth step, the individual polarity states are identical to the polarity state diagram in the five-phase operation outlined in FIG. 12. With the polarity sequence according to the switch positions of FIG. 16, step angles varying from step to step, namely in the sequence (3/10)T R , (2/10)T R , and (3/10)T R , etc. prevail. The sum of two successive angles is always the same, namely (1/2)T R  . 
     According to another embodiment of the invention, the motor, when operating as a synchronous motor, has the same rotary speed as the motor described with respect to FIGS. 17a to 17d. If such a motor is to be driven as a stepping motor, external circuit means, such as high resistances or constant current regulators, cause the phase currents to have equal values. 
     With a parallel circuit, and when all 5 u windings have equal winding data, the phase current divides itself over 3u poles in one phase and 2u poles in the other phase. In a motor whose working point is below the knee of the magnetization characteristic, the stepping angle of (3/10)T R  is thus slightly reduced, and the following stepping angle of (2/10)T R  is slightly increased. On the average, a stepping angle of (1/4)T R  prevails. 
     The present invention thus permits formation of stepping angles of 0.18, 0.36, 0.72, 0.9, and 1.8° with the same mechanical motor structure by changing the winding and switching arrangement. The invention permits operation of the motor with optimum performance in two-phase connection according to FIG. 15 as a two-phase synchronous or single phase condensor motor. This affords considerable economic and manufacturing advantages for these motors. 
     While specific embodiments of the invention have been shown and described in detail to illustrate the application of the inventive principles, it will be obvious to those skilled in the art that the invention may be embodied otherwise without departing from its spirit and scope.