Electrical Motors in Today's Society

Electrical motors play an important role in today’s society, from powering domestic appliances like blenders to industrial equipment such as trains. It almost seems impossible to not use an electric motor in our daily lives. In the comfort of our home, electric motors will operate fans, refrigerators, and air conditioners to just name a few. Researchers are constantly looking for new ways to incorporate electrical motors in our lives.

Electrical motors function by converting electrical energy into mechanical energy by using the energy stored in the magnetic field (Sarma, 1981). The mechanical energy (torque) is produced when opposing magnetic fields try to lineup. Therefore, the center line of the north pole of a magnetic field is directly opposite to the centerline of the south pole from another magnetic field (Fitzgerald et al., 1981). The opposing magnetic fields in a motor are generated by two separate concentrically oriented components, the stator and a rotor (Figure 2-5).

Figure 2 5 Rotor and stator schematics of a three-phase DC motor

The stator is the stationary component while the rotor is the rotational component of the motor. Usually magnetic fields are created when an electric current is applied to a set of conductive wires wound together (Dixon, 2001). Magnetic fields can also be created using Permanent Magnets (PM). Electrical motors can also work as electrical generators (Correla, 1986). Electrical generators are devices capable of converting mechanical energy into electrical energy. An example would be a wind turbine which works as an electrical generator. It converts the mechanical energy of the rotating shaft caused by wind into electrical energy (Correla, 1986). The focus of this research will ...

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...a patent, is the embedding of copper filaments into FDM-fabricated parts. In order to embed the copper filament in the thermoplastic substrate, an ultrasonic energy 20kHz and a 500W power supply (equipped with a 12.7mm exponential horn) was installed to allow a wire to be fed along a central axis (Espalin et al, 2013) An alternative method of fabricating cavities and channels was to use a YAG laser micro-welding system (model LW5AG, Miyachi Unitek, Monrovia, CA). This process produces solder less joints between the filament and the electronic component. Espalin et al, (2013), Shemelya et al., (2013), and Aguilera et al., (2013) use this embedding method to produce a touch probe sensor and a functional three-phase DC motor, respectively. The three-phase DC motor discussed throughout the rest of this thesis is a continuation of the work of Aguilera et al (2013).