Hot-rodding the Toyota MGR

[e*clipse]

Paul,

Sorry this has been so much trouble.

Can you get a simple, slowly rotating magnetic field (no feedback) to work? What happens in that case?

I'm going to test my free spinning rotor ( no stator ) with a piece of iron. It should simply align with that iron

- E*clipse

Originally Posted by MPaulHolmes

I've been trying to get it running for the last couple days. I've got the resolver to encoder working, and the PI loop tuned. I've never seen behavior like that before when tuning the PI loop. At 48v it would take around 0.01 sec to converge. Every other motor I've ever tried would converge in 0.001 sec to 0.002 sec. When I tried 120v it would converge in 0.003 sec. Also, I got it to run "smoothly for a fraction of a revolution, and then it sloshes back and forth (but very smoothly). I'm becoming convinced that it's like 50% synchronous and 50% reluctance. I don't think you can just ignore the reluctance component, even for casual testing to get it to spin. What seems to be happening is, it rocks back and forth between where the reluctance component is near zero and where the synchronous component is near zero. So, what I"m going to do is get the reluctance correction code running on the Leaf motor (since that seems to be like 90% synchronous 10% reluctance), and then switch back to the mgr.

[e*clipse]

This is a follow up about the rotor test.

I placed a piece of iron ( the MGR's counterweight ) near the rotor. If you rotate the rotor while holding the iron near it, there are 8 evenly distributed distinctive places of magnetic attraction. This is a very strong attraction - it can really hurt that finger that is between the iron and the rotor...

I also tested the rotor with a small magnet. This is one of those magnets used to retrieve parts you drop when working on your car.
The result were quite different - about 12 non-evenly distributed attraction places. This is probably due to the v-shaped arrangement of the magnets in addition to the magnet's polarity; I'm not sure.

I'm not sure if this helps; it certainly makes it difficult to visualize the rotor's alignment with a magnetic field.

E*clipse

[thingstodo]

Originally Posted by e*clipse

I placed a piece of iron ( the MGR's counterweight ) near the rotor. If you rotate the rotor while holding the iron near it, there are 8 evenly distributed distinctive places of magnetic attraction.

8 'magnets' would be 4 pairs - that makes some sense - to me at least

I also tested the rotor with a small magnet. This is one of those magnets used to retrieve parts you drop when working on your car.
The result were quite different - about 12 non-evenly distributed attraction places.

With the external magnet there should be 4 magnetic points of attraction, ignoring the reluctance stuff?

If each of the magnets has a pair of sympathetic 'poles' where the motor's magnetic flux is strong enough to attract the magnet .. that would be 2 for each of the 4 magnets expected ..

If this is right, a different magnet where you can use first N then S in the same test should show 12 non-evenly distributed areas for N and 12 different ones for S but mapping them all together it should be 24 points evenly distributed .. assuming for the moment that the rotor is built to have balanced output torque ... which it should so it does not vibrate ...

I'm not sure if this helps; it certainly makes it difficult to visualize the rotor's alignment with a magnetic field.

IMHO - Data is ALWAYS useful. If it doesn't fit the present theory - the theory needs to change. OR if the data is not reproducible, we need to find out why ...

[jackbauer]

Got the GS450h MG2 spinning tonight :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maNbqMkMcTg

[MPaulHolmes]

AWESOME!!!!! Hopefully I can join you in a spin tonight or tomorrow morning. Way to go!! I wish it was cold here. Oh well. haha. I'm so glad that little encoder board thing is working too! Hurray!

My kids are happily watching "A pup named scooby doo", so maybe I can sneak away tonight to the shop.

[MPaulHolmes]

haha. It works beautifully now! Super duper smooth. You can command any torque or regen torque (make it spin forward or backwards too). It converges in about 0.002 seconds to whatever torque you want. And it is VERY stable at that torque. I also have the field weakening working with it. So it's flat super stable Id and Iq currents until you run out of voltage. I should have just asked e*clipse! I had a misunderstanding about how many resolver revolutions per electrical revolution the toyota MGR produces. It does 1 resolver revolution per 2 electrical revolutions!!!!! The leaf does 1 resolver revolution per 1 electrical revolution. I emailed e*clipse and he was all "I could have told you that!" hahaha. I had been so proud of discovering it. LOL. From now on, I am going to email him instead of taking apart the motor.

I'll post a couple videos later. That motor is sooooo smooth and glorious. I don't want to punch people from Toyota anymore.

[thingstodo]

Looking forward to the video(s)

[MPaulHolmes]

So, my iPhone is out of space for making a video. No problem, I just add an external storage device like every other phone. ooh awkward. you can't. OK, so I delete some stuff, and then find out that I have to "super duper" delete it until it counts. That gives me maybe 45 seconds of video. So, I decide to try to hook up the iphone to the computer that doesn't start with an i. The computer couldn't see the data. OK, so I download itunes, because I totally wanted a song sharing who knows what thing on my laptop. So I want to just get the pictures, copy them, and then paste them into a directory on the laptop. Of course you can't do that. Instead I hit "sync", and it "backs up" who knows what, and who knows where. So, I don't know if it's really safe to erase the stuff on the phone now or not. The files don't appear to actually exist on my computer. How on earth is it that there are more than like 2 people on planet earth that bought this pile of crap.

I mean, "i photos" are still data, right? They may even be in a format that computers that don't originate with apple could read. Why is this so complicated!!

[freebeard]

I don't want to punch toyota anymore...

You want to punch Apple?

The music part is all because of the MAFIAA (Music and Film Industry Artists Association. But I don't think Apple is helping with iPhoto. When I plug in my camera to my desktop machine iPhoto launches and starts putting pictures somewhere until I tell it to stop so I can put them where I want and expect them. I'm so far from filling the drive I don't even try to find and delete them.

Good news on the resolver—I recall something in the Texas Instruments Youtube videos about that. I guess I'd better get cracking on those motor mounts.

[MPaulHolmes]

Here's a video of the motor spinning at 120vDC with saliency constant of +infinity (so treating it like a regular permanent magnet motor. Id = 0, Iq = throttle. I'll run some tests later to find the ideal Id to get the most torque per amp). First is the motor spinning with the case off. Then we stick it back together and put the oil back in (not overfilling it this time!! Thanks e*clipse!!). My wife got the data transferred and made space on the phone. I'm so grateful for her. She also did the video. Josiah did the lighting. He was practicing with a vase of flowers for a couple hours. He likes to experiment. Actually, part of the reason there was no room on the phone was due to there being 9000 pictures of flowers in a vase. haha.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfaFjHTOboc