Electro-Kinetic Designs Ltd.
Electro-Kinetic Designs Ltd. |
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EKD announced today that it will be launching a range of brushless motor designs based around existing, commercially available stator laminations which it is expected will lead to competitively-priced motor hardware. The first frame size will be based around a 70 mm diameter stator lamination, and is expected to be offered in three different stack lengths. It is planned that the motors will be available in both fully-housed and frameless variants. Designs will be available from late October 2005.
EKD will be attending the SPEED consortium's annual meeting in Ieper, Flanders, one of Europe's centres of excellence in mechatronics. The SPEED meeting will include demonstrations of many new features in SPEED software, and include intensive training sessions on the newest and most frequently used design programs.
EKD will be attending the Paris Air Show at Le Bourget on 14, 15 and 16 June this year, and will be available for consultation. Aerospace clients are invited to contact us in advance to arrange appointments.
The recent successful Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn extended the boundaries of where products designed by EKD founder, Alastair Flew, have travelled. After separation from the Cassini probe, the ESA designed Huygens lander descended through the atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan on 14 January 2005. During the 2 hour descent, samples of the methane-like atmosphere were sucked in to the ACP instrument via a brushless motor-driven pump. The pump was manufactured by Technofan, and the motor was made by Norcroft Dynamics Ltd, now part of Muirhead Aerospace Ltd.
The mission imposed several difficult-to-reconcile constraints on the motor design. Firstly, it was essential that the motor's own constructional materials did not contaminate the atmosphere samples. Secondly, the density of the atmosphere increased as the lander descended, meaning that the motor experienced a continually increasing load throughout the mission. Thirdly, the motor had to survive a long storage life followed by a 7 year flight, at the end of which it had to start up and function as planned for a critical 2 hour operational phase.
Alastair Flew, director of EKD, commented: "In order to avoid contamination of the atmosphere samples, the stator and rotor were each contained in sealed metallic housings, the component parts of which were electron-beam welded together. An unwanted effect of the stator can was that it caused significant eddy current losses, located as it was in the motor's airgap and therefore subject to the rotating field of the permanent magnet rotor. We selected titanium for the can material because of its high electrical resistivity and good mechanical strength when used in thin sections. At the start of the mission, the speed of the motor was around 25000 rpm and iron losses dominated. Two hours later, when the atmosphere was much denser, the speed had fallen to around 15000 rpm and copper losses were much more significant. The thermal analysis in particular presented an interesting challenge".
Other spacecraft mechanisms to have benefited from Alastair Flew's motor design capability include Solar Array Drives, Antenna Pointing Mechanisms and various electrically actuated deployment mechanisms, on programmes as varied as Olympus, Eurostar, Space Telescope, ERS and SOHO.
As part of its commitment to offer electro-magnetically correct design solutions to its clients, EKD has become the latest member of the Glasgow University based SPEED consortium. Along with some 50 other global member companies, EKD will be using the industry-leading SPEED software to design, optimise and predict the performance of a wide variety of motors and generators.
EKD as an independent organisation will be able to offer its services to other SPEED member companies, taking advantage of its broad experience in various manufacturing methods and appropriate design techniques.
Owned and managed by former Muirhead Aerospace employee Alastair Flew, Electro-Kinetic Designs Ltd (EKD) has been created to offer practical and electromagnetically correct design solutions to manufacturers and users of small and specialist electrical machines.
Catering for manufacturers and users of custom designed motion technology products, (particularly motors, generators and position sensors) the company expects to find the majority of its business in the niche industrial, aerospace/defence/space, medical and transportation sectors.
Alastair Flew was brought up and educated in an engineering environment and acquired a broad and instinctive understanding of many technical disciplines before specialising in the electromagnetic design of rotating electrical machines. Aged 46, he has 28 years experience in the design, manufacture and application of small rotating components.
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Last updated 24 September 2009.