I'm an electrical engineering student starting my junior year of university. I just found your channel last night and can't get enough. Thank you for the amazing and inspiring content!
I love your vedios and i liked how you uploaded two vedio fast i mean you uploaded this vedio new pcb motor vedio without taking long time that great because your vedios are really inspiring me for electronics
Coreless magnetics has its limits. Some ideas: For motor applications where a flexibility is not required you might investigate a fairly thick, multilayered pcb with a hole in the middle for a press-fit iron disk. A mixed stack built up with a flexible layer and fr4 layers is also a possibility.
Take several of you pcb coils, insulate the vias, glue them together into a composite sandwich, run them in parallel or series. You’ll increase the overal field significantly due to having more windings interacting with each other to form a concentrated fiedl.
I wonder if those sideways motion coils could be used for some kind of active stabilization of the up-down flapping motion, to minimize sideways motion? Don't know how necessary that could ever be, but hey. Really like the alternating layer design too! Reminds me of a feather, kinda.
I remember LEDs on the tip for one of the first videos, one of which was quickly broken. Would it be possible to have fiber optic wires at the end instead, and create a dismay using fiber optic ends?
I was curious if you can get a Nickel finish applied to these coils and if that would make any difference in the performance. My thought was Ni being magnetic may increase your flux density resulting in a higher power coil. I'm not sure if this works physically or if you can even get Ni finishes... was curious what you thought?
Gluing a thin nickel or steel foil on the back to check it out might work. Perhaps pcbway can be motivated to offer that option once it's proven it works.
There can be no better conductor than silver i think, except supra-conductors... And silver sticks to magnets too as i recall, but maybe my memory is failing.
rotate your supply clips 90 degrees, so that the sideways actuating coil isn't fighting to flex the width of the pcb legs(arms?). The legs(arms?) will flex less in the direction that you have them orientated.
The horizontal, uh, flapper not flapping is due to the mechanics of the, uh, arms. The ratio between width and height effect which direction the thing will flex. And having those curves will add to the z-plane rigidity.
I agree the thinner Arms would have helped it move better but I think it's magnetic field strength was still too small for it to achieve the motion I was looking for
@@CarlBugeja see if you can put a gentle 90 deg or 180 deg twist in both arms so that it has a point where it can flex. I don't disagree about the magnetic field strength, but at least give it a fair chance to flex.
For the sideways one, I wonder if it may have moved more if it was working with the natural bend of the PCB material instead of against it. All the other coils force was applied to a single PCB strand and along be narrow flat surface where it will naturally take the least force to bend. The sideways coils force was being applied to two PCB strips, both on their sides. The location least likely to bend and would require extraordinary force. I'm guessing you had the end of the PCB acting like a joint to resuce the force needed, but even if that's the case, it's already trying to push against more material than the rest. I know the profile of the magnet doesn't lend itself to any great amount of force. Still, it would have been nice to see how it would have handled without the higher resistance to movement.
circular coils, either bldc pulsed with alternating magnetic rotor planar or ring with coils around the ring circular solenoid same polarized magnets only down
Hey Carl. I would like to know how do you design the coils in Altium. Is there any tool in order to keep the clearances that you desire ? Or maybe, you are using polar grid in order to design the coil tracks ? Regards, Kostas.
@@CarlBugeja Thank you for the link. I am designing many led lamps and most of them are circular. In AD20 if I am correct they have added "Any angle" corner style and I can design with more routing freedom without designing so many arcs. But in order to design coils or antennas there is not any feature to help the designer and everything has to be made manually. Your video was helpful ! Thank you again.
I think part of the reason the sideways coil may not have worked as well as it could have was the direction of the force in relation to the orientation of the part. If it's possible to create these with a 90 degree rotation in the leg, the forces wouldn't have to oppose as much material in that axis, allowing for more bend
What do you see as a goal for these? Is it just the intrinsic value of tinkering and pushing boundaries of what is possible, or do you have any specific use case in mind for the completed project?
Next to try should be 3 phase coils set up like a linear actuator. To see if you can get it to slide over a halbach arrangement of magnets. You could do it with a bunch of flat coils side by side.
Hi, I would really like to see an axial actuator like a "rolled pancake actuator"! do you think that would be possible or is it just simpler winding something like that..
I have question, maybe tested before. Wouldn't it be better to use two electromagnets instead of neodymium magnets? It came to me when looking at frog design. And with PCB motor, might make induction motor instead of using magnets to cut on weight.
For the sideways ones, what if instead of pushing against a permanent magnet, you sandwhich one of those coils between two others of the same type but driven at the opposite polarity?
Idea: a flex PCB that can be soldered into a cylinder coil. I've no idea whether that might give any advantages over winding it with wire though. Maybe if there is a small enough flex-to-flex connector then such unlockable coil can find some use in sensors...
The real benefit of PCB coils is in planar transformers. If you want a traditional transformer coil shape you're probably better off winding it with wire on a bobbin.
Nuclear magnetic resonance locking coils and probes are commonly made that way with flexible PCBs, though special coil geometries allow you to skip soldering it into a cylinder.
I bet a large part of the reason the displacement was so low on the last one was resistance( to motion, not electrical resistance) from the PCB itself. If you could rotate each arm 90 degrees from the part with the coil on it, you might see a larger displacement. It's like the .1mm versus the 1cm thickness of the PCB in the plane of motion. Pretty sure they can't do that though so might be a dumb idea:(
Hey Carl. Have you thought about printing several connected coils (alternating winding direction) in a line then folding them up like a concertina to get extra layers for ‘free’? Not sure if I’ve described that very well but might be an interesting experiment. Have you tried stacking actuators on top of each other to get the same effect?
Can you use these coil for wireless charging? I mean if I had a project that has a piece that have to be light weighted, can this flexible coil work as a receiver of a wireless charger? Charging rates should be around 4.2 V (like a normal LiPo chargeing rate for 3.7V batteries)…
In theory, yes. Working out how is up to you though. If you're constrained by existing wireless charging standards you'd probably have to tailor your coil to make it work. If you have free rein over both charger and device you can probably make something work. I haven't done it myself, but I'd say put 2 on top of each other and you have an air core transformer. Run it at a high enough frequency that the inductance dominates the impedance (about 300kHz would be the sweet spot for the FlexAR I measured. Too low and the cores will lose a lot of energy as heat in the copper resistance, too high and it will act as a capacitor). If your design allows you may be able to improve things by putting a planar ferrite core in each half such that they come into close contact when your device and charger come together. Now whether you could actually get a useful amount of energy through this transformer is another question.
couldn't have been said better - it is an interesting concept but in really life applications it would be hard to do this while maintaining Qi standards
I already made something similar ruclips.net/video/2uHRviaR2Cs/видео.html But maybe someday I'll revisit this to make a closed loop circular one.. That would be very cool!
I was just thinking of a 4 layer ... but sandwich is probobly way cheaper. Of cause, it will be fairly stiff. Back at my old work we had 40 layer board inductors for micro DC/DC converters.
@@matsv201 You could design the "sandwiching" into a new prototype, so that it still only have a one layer stem, but flair out into several pads, that can be bent on top of each other ... or something :) Like with living hinges.
Would be interesting to see what you would/could do with access to superconducting materials and the cryogenic setup to make it repeatable. And then ofcource a highend many channel Keithley input-out equipment. Also having access to a SEM with EDX and in situ added AFM/STM with a modern harddrive tip (measuring the magnetic field in xyz) added to the normal AFM/STM tip would be a real treat to witness. How well are you with software ? Getting a working brigde working between legacy SEM equipment (Jeol, even new models) and own written software is exceedingly difficult. No support from Jeol or other legacy SEM companies is to be expected. Cannot blame them really but would be awesome. (me personally am mediocre with software but excell at hardware). This series has been great to witness. I miss Uni. Have fun, I'll be watching. What country are you based anyway?
Just discovered your channel and subscribed. Especially impressed with your car-generator to motor conversions and the driving performance rusty gets out of it. As you often complain about excessive pricing for components, it might be a good idea to have a look at buying directly from China. That would slash costs for you and make it more affordable for viewers to build your designs. Same thing for the pcb-mill you won (congrats). Building a cheap chinese kit, then getting it to the correct precision would have been much more useful. But I like your creative ideas a lot, the stubbornness to gett it done and am confident that you will produce lots of more interesting content in the future, now that you're no longer distracted by your day job ;-)
hmm feels like you can print these coil in a halbach array configuration (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halbach_array), i only see people arrange permanent magnet in halbach array configuration. But technically electromagnet should behaves the same ?
You'll have to test it but I think the side-to-side coil would get more flux with a different orientation to the magnet. flush with the side of the magnet like this: N||||S
Do you have seen a fractal antenna? I recommend to you this topic, it's so amazing, and I think it gonna like to you. Un saludo desde Colombia, genial canal, muy buena edición de vídeos, interesantes temas, genial amigo.
What if make a table consist of little magnets or electromagnets (like a square grid) And floating moving things~ looks like self-propelled chess or aero hockey~
I'm an electrical engineering student starting my junior year of university. I just found your channel last night and can't get enough. Thank you for the amazing and inspiring content!
I just finished four months ago. Dont worry, the fun starts with the real job.
What about making a PCB speaker?
Aren't the piezo buzzers he made technically already that?
ruclips.net/video/36KwlUBadrg/видео.html
look up planar magnetic headphones, they're essentially the same thing - coils in a lightweight film suspended between strong magnets.
I love your vedios and i liked how you uploaded two vedio fast i mean you uploaded this vedio new pcb motor vedio without taking long time that great because your vedios are really inspiring me for electronics
Coreless magnetics has its limits.
Some ideas:
For motor applications where a flexibility is not required you might investigate a fairly thick, multilayered pcb with a hole in the middle for a press-fit iron disk.
A mixed stack built up with a flexible layer and fr4 layers is also a possibility.
thermal glue on stacked PCB coil maybe
Nice , i was waiting for your video man !
Watching the flexes spank the magnets was so unexpected 🤣
Take several of you pcb coils, insulate the vias, glue them together into a composite sandwich, run them in parallel or series. You’ll increase the overal field significantly due to having more windings interacting with each other to form a concentrated fiedl.
I wonder if those sideways motion coils could be used for some kind of active stabilization of the up-down flapping motion, to minimize sideways motion? Don't know how necessary that could ever be, but hey. Really like the alternating layer design too! Reminds me of a feather, kinda.
Perhaps there's a performance difference when adding more layers?
I remember LEDs on the tip for one of the first videos, one of which was quickly broken.
Would it be possible to have fiber optic wires at the end instead, and create a dismay using fiber optic ends?
What about a series of coils that together with a magnet rail make a lineair motor?
Its always fun to see your experiments! Learning new things!
I was curious if you can get a Nickel finish applied to these coils and if that would make any difference in the performance. My thought was Ni being magnetic may increase your flux density resulting in a higher power coil. I'm not sure if this works physically or if you can even get Ni finishes... was curious what you thought?
PCBs with gold plating (ENIG) have a layer of nickel between the copper and the gold. But it's probably not very thick
Gluing a thin nickel or steel foil on the back to check it out might work. Perhaps pcbway can be motivated to offer that option once it's proven it works.
There can be no better conductor than silver i think, except supra-conductors... And silver sticks to magnets too as i recall, but maybe my memory is failing.
rotate your supply clips 90 degrees, so that the sideways actuating coil isn't fighting to flex the width of the pcb legs(arms?). The legs(arms?) will flex less in the direction that you have them orientated.
That's another perspective which might end up with something really cool 😇🤩
The horizontal, uh, flapper not flapping is due to the mechanics of the, uh, arms. The ratio between width and height effect which direction the thing will flex. And having those curves will add to the z-plane rigidity.
I agree the thinner Arms would have helped it move better but I think it's magnetic field strength was still too small for it to achieve the motion I was looking for
@@CarlBugeja see if you can put a gentle 90 deg or 180 deg twist in both arms so that it has a point where it can flex. I don't disagree about the magnetic field strength, but at least give it a fair chance to flex.
Never knew about PCB coils until i saw his videos, this is very interesting
Wow! A new video in less than a week from the previous one.
This is brilliant!!!
Did you ever consider adding an iron backplate to your motor stators?
Could you maybe use via's to route the wire sort of around the flex PCB?
And then maybe make it 4 layer so you can have a "core" of sorts in the middle
Congratulations! You have invented the Magnet Smacker!
For the sideways one, I wonder if it may have moved more if it was working with the natural bend of the PCB material instead of against it. All the other coils force was applied to a single PCB strand and along be narrow flat surface where it will naturally take the least force to bend. The sideways coils force was being applied to two PCB strips, both on their sides. The location least likely to bend and would require extraordinary force.
I'm guessing you had the end of the PCB acting like a joint to resuce the force needed, but even if that's the case, it's already trying to push against more material than the rest.
I know the profile of the magnet doesn't lend itself to any great amount of force. Still, it would have been nice to see how it would have handled without the higher resistance to movement.
Netflix: Are you still watching?
Me and GF : 01:45
circular coils, either bldc pulsed with alternating magnetic rotor planar or ring with coils around the ring circular solenoid same polarized magnets only down
Hey Carl. I would like to know how do you design the coils in Altium. Is there any tool in order to keep the clearances that you desire ? Or maybe, you are using polar grid in order to design the coil tracks ?
Regards, Kostas.
check this out :) ruclips.net/video/_-YDuCqEwuw/видео.html
@@CarlBugeja Thank you for the link. I am designing many led lamps and most of them are circular. In AD20 if I am correct they have added "Any angle" corner style and I can design with more routing freedom without designing so many arcs. But in order to design coils or antennas there is not any feature to help the designer and everything has to be made manually. Your video was helpful ! Thank you again.
I think part of the reason the sideways coil may not have worked as well as it could have was the direction of the force in relation to the orientation of the part. If it's possible to create these with a 90 degree rotation in the leg, the forces wouldn't have to oppose as much material in that axis, allowing for more bend
What do you see as a goal for these? Is it just the intrinsic value of tinkering and pushing boundaries of what is possible, or do you have any specific use case in mind for the completed project?
Just pushing the boundaries to investigate more micro actuators that can be used in robotics and other applications
"hey I made this thing now let's figure out what to do with it"
How about a sideways one that consist of two parts or can be folded, to allow for an iron core?
Next to try should be 3 phase coils set up like a linear actuator. To see if you can get it to slide over a halbach arrangement of magnets. You could do it with a bunch of flat coils side by side.
I already designed something similar 🙂 ruclips.net/video/2uHRviaR2Cs/видео.html
Hi, I would really like to see an axial actuator like a "rolled pancake actuator"! do you think that would be possible or is it just simpler winding something like that..
I wonder if you could stack a bunch of these to create a linear actuator.
Any update status on your pcb heater experiments?
I have question, maybe tested before.
Wouldn't it be better to use two electromagnets instead of neodymium magnets?
It came to me when looking at frog design.
And with PCB motor, might make induction motor instead of using magnets to cut on weight.
I've discussed this in this video 🙂 ruclips.net/video/XfVz9Otxzyo/видео.html
I love your channel.....post videos more often...
Can you do more layers? If you think about a wound coil you have hundreds of turns
For the sideways ones, what if instead of pushing against a permanent magnet, you sandwhich one of those coils between two others of the same type but driven at the opposite polarity?
Idea: a flex PCB that can be soldered into a cylinder coil. I've no idea whether that might give any advantages over winding it with wire though.
Maybe if there is a small enough flex-to-flex connector then such unlockable coil can find some use in sensors...
Interesting idea I think it might offer some benefits to sensored applications
The real benefit of PCB coils is in planar transformers. If you want a traditional transformer coil shape you're probably better off winding it with wire on a bobbin.
Nuclear magnetic resonance locking coils and probes are commonly made that way with flexible PCBs, though special coil geometries allow you to skip soldering it into a cylinder.
Ohh! Because the PCB is flexible, can you print a rollable tube origami thing for the sideways actuators!!
excuse me, what application does the master use in pcb manufacturing?
What about making vortex coils, like rodin?
Also I am trying to make a surface conductor speaker with these ...
You could make a Swiss roll of flex PCB to form a coil.
I bet a large part of the reason the displacement was so low on the last one was resistance( to motion, not electrical resistance) from the PCB itself. If you could rotate each arm 90 degrees from the part with the coil on it, you might see a larger displacement. It's like the .1mm versus the 1cm thickness of the PCB in the plane of motion. Pretty sure they can't do that though so might be a dumb idea:(
Hey Carl. Have you thought about printing several connected coils (alternating winding direction) in a line then folding them up like a concertina to get extra layers for ‘free’? Not sure if I’ve described that very well but might be an interesting experiment. Have you tried stacking actuators on top of each other to get the same effect?
Have you consider use more phases in you motor?
you could make some kind of planar magnetic speaker!!
ruclips.net/video/36KwlUBadrg/видео.html
To bad they don't work very well 😔
But they look really cool! 😀👍
Where did you made them?
And were thay expensive?!
I made them at pcbway.. These were sponsored but flex PCBs start at around $100 for 10 boards
@@CarlBugeja thanks for the reply! 👍☺️
Hey Carl.. these short videos are very good..
Thanks! 🙂
Exactly how much is its heating point is
Keep up the good work!
Can you use these coil for wireless charging? I mean if I had a project that has a piece that have to be light weighted, can this flexible coil work as a receiver of a wireless charger? Charging rates should be around 4.2 V (like a normal LiPo chargeing rate for 3.7V batteries)…
In theory, yes. Working out how is up to you though. If you're constrained by existing wireless charging standards you'd probably have to tailor your coil to make it work. If you have free rein over both charger and device you can probably make something work. I haven't done it myself, but I'd say put 2 on top of each other and you have an air core transformer. Run it at a high enough frequency that the inductance dominates the impedance (about 300kHz would be the sweet spot for the FlexAR I measured. Too low and the cores will lose a lot of energy as heat in the copper resistance, too high and it will act as a capacitor). If your design allows you may be able to improve things by putting a planar ferrite core in each half such that they come into close contact when your device and charger come together. Now whether you could actually get a useful amount of energy through this transformer is another question.
couldn't have been said better - it is an interesting concept but in really life applications it would be hard to do this while maintaining Qi standards
Thanks for the answers! 😊
I will try to come up with an own design in the near future! 😊
If we want to make it cheaper we can use an old transformer copper coil & it works great Dude 👍
what about making a pcb coil "track" that a magnet sled could travel around on?
I already made something similar ruclips.net/video/2uHRviaR2Cs/видео.html
But maybe someday I'll revisit this to make a closed loop circular one.. That would be very cool!
Sandwich them ... 3-4-5 on top of each other. Or even more to maximize field strength?
I was just thinking of a 4 layer ... but sandwich is probobly way cheaper. Of cause, it will be fairly stiff.
Back at my old work we had 40 layer board inductors for micro DC/DC converters.
@@matsv201 You could design the "sandwiching" into a new prototype, so that it still only have a one layer stem, but flair out into several pads, that can be bent on top of each other ... or something :)
Like with living hinges.
@@ZappyOh Yes that would of cause be resonable
Would be interesting to see what you would/could do with access to superconducting materials and the cryogenic setup to make it repeatable. And then ofcource a highend many channel Keithley input-out equipment.
Also having access to a SEM with EDX and in situ added AFM/STM with a modern harddrive tip (measuring the magnetic field in xyz) added to the normal AFM/STM tip would be a real treat to witness.
How well are you with software ?
Getting a working brigde working between legacy SEM equipment (Jeol, even new models) and own written software is exceedingly difficult.
No support from Jeol or other legacy SEM companies is to be expected. Cannot blame them really but would be awesome.
(me personally am mediocre with software but excell at hardware).
This series has been great to witness. I miss Uni.
Have fun, I'll be watching.
What country are you based anyway?
Very nice video keep up mate
Here we go again 😍
Isn’t that a major part of a linear motor? I’d be into that.
What procedure do you use to make spirals in Altium? ( v19 or earlier? )
One application might be a self-actuating Picard face-palming PCB.
Just discovered your channel and subscribed. Especially impressed with your car-generator to motor conversions and the driving performance rusty gets out of it. As you often complain about excessive pricing for components, it might be a good idea to have a look at buying directly from China. That would slash costs for you and make it more affordable for viewers to build your designs. Same thing for the pcb-mill you won (congrats). Building a cheap chinese kit, then getting it to the correct precision would have been much more useful.
But I like your creative ideas a lot, the stubbornness to gett it done and am confident that you will produce lots of more interesting content in the future, now that you're no longer distracted by your day job ;-)
I’m surprised you did not make a hollow coil.
Leave the center open with a hole and then place an axially polarized magnet through the hole.
i already tested one in this video :) ruclips.net/video/XfVz9Otxzyo/видео.html
I#d like to use such a spiral pcb coil design in a ZVS induction heater circuit.. possible?
we need to see a miniature, flying, flapping bird!
Why don't you just place a SMD coil on the flexible substrate?
Is there such a thing?
Tesla coil secondary flex pcb?
hmm feels like you can print these coil in a halbach array configuration (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halbach_array), i only see people arrange permanent magnet in halbach array configuration. But technically electromagnet should behaves the same ?
pls make a electromagnet captain america sheild.
The T-shirt is the most underrated joke over.
Cool
I wonder what a 5 or 9 layer coil looks like when each layer represents a platonic solid..
Hiii I saw u on tv on gadgets~
🙃
You'll have to test it but I think the side-to-side coil would get more flux with a different orientation to the magnet. flush with the side of the magnet like this: N||||S
which cad software is this
Altium
Can you make transformer with that?
PCB speaker when?
ruclips.net/video/36KwlUBadrg/видео.html
Thought this was about vaping. LOL
Do you have seen a fractal antenna? I recommend to you this topic, it's so amazing, and I think it gonna like to you. Un saludo desde Colombia, genial canal, muy buena edición de vídeos, interesantes temas, genial amigo.
yeah !!! magnets need to be slapped !
naughty naughty magnets
Try design something that works after rolled up
epic
This video makes me flappy.
Use for transformer font!!
I want your shirt...
It's available on my merch store carl-bugeja.creator-spring.com/?
It's afraid
Вот это у тебя акцент. Ты че с России?
o,o
hey Carl I sent you an email, need help to build an architectural project, can you help me ?
Early
What if make a table consist of little magnets or electromagnets (like a square grid)
And floating moving things~
looks like self-propelled chess or aero hockey~