I do however, include some diagrams and tables from my project that should assist you in your understanding.
There are tons of references available online (see below for some recommendations). If you are going to do this project, I recommend that you spend the time to thoroughly understand how a BLDC works and is controlled. Specifications and purchasing information can be found at these two links: Note: Mike Anton has designed and is selling a product that will take the place of the power electronics and hall sensors circuits I show in this instructable (it uses back EMF sensing for control).
#BLDC TOOL MOTOR DETECTION TUTOR DRIVER#
ST Microelectronics L6234 Three Phase Motor Driver IC Two 100 uF capacitors One 10 nF capacitor One 220 nF capacitor One 1 uF capacitor One 100 uF capacitor Three recifier diodes one 2.5 amp fuse one fuse holderģ Honeywell SS411A Bipolar Hall-Effect Digital Position Sensors Three 1 K resistors One Arduino Duemilanove microcontroller Three 120 k ohm resistors six ~400 ohm resistors Linear or Rotary Poteniometer 100 k ohm Several (3-6) of the silver disks from a hard drive A second small motor (DC brushed OK) rubber band or (preferably) belt to turn the BLDC with another motor Electronic Breadboard solid core wire 22 AWG for breadboard connections Machine Shop and Rapid Prototype Machine (These were extremely helpful, but with a little ingenuity I think the project can be done without them).īLDC motor from a computer hard drive A magnet ring (half of the motor) from another hard drive. I hope you find it useful and please post your comments and suggestions.ĭigital Multimeter (DMM) - It's helpful if your DMM has a frequency meter Oscilloscope (Preferably with at least 2 channels) T8 Torx driver (you need one of these to open up any hard drive). Whew! It was a lot of work to write up this instructable. Note that the motors from this web site do not have Hall sensors. These are not too expensive and building one is a worthwhile experience. There's also an RC website called "GoBrushless" that sells kits for putting together your own BLDC. I noticed an 86W motor for sale on eBay for around $40.00 that seems like a good candidate. I would like to try using this controller with a larger motor that can do some "real" work, but I don't have a suitable motor yet. If you try controlling a larger motor, please do add overcurrent protection, to protect your motor, and for your own safety. However, it would not be too difficult to implement overcurrent protection with the current hardware, and perhaps I will do it at some point. As it is, the worst thing that can happen is that you burn out the HD motor. One thing that this project doesn't have that should be included in any practical motor controller is any safety features, such as overcurrent protection. If you don't have access to a scope, I have added some suggestions for how it might be done without one (step 5). Note that having access to an oscilliscope is extremely helpful, if not essential, to doing this project.
#BLDC TOOL MOTOR DETECTION TUTOR HOW TO#
This instructable describes how to implement BLDC control with one of these motors, an Arduino microcontroller and Hall- Effect position sensors, in both motoring and regenerative braking modes. The motors used in the project are small BLDCs scavenged from broken computer hard drives. The idea for the project was to demonstrate a scale model of a hybrid electric vehicle with flywheel energy storage and regenerative braking. This instructable started out as a demonstration project in a class on real-time computing, and which I continued after the class ended. Also, if you are interested in doing regenerative braking, or using a BLDC for power generation, I have not found many products that are suitable for use with small motors or much information on how to control a 3-phase generator. So far, I have not found any comprehensive descriptions of how to do BLDC control with an Arduino microcontroller. For those wanting to delve more deeply into BLDC control there are also many different micro controllers and other electronic hardware intended for industrial users and these usually have very good documentation. For example, there are lots of small BLDCs controllers for RC airplanes that work really well. Many off-the-shelf products exist for this purpose.
There is a lot of interest these days among hobbyists in controlling brushless DC (BLDC) motors, which have improved performance and better energy efficiency over traditional DC motors, but are more difficult to use.