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Self Contained Power Source?

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Mon Feb 20, 2006 08:43 PM
from the magnets-and-fusion-but-can-they-fit-in-my-laptop dept.
Power Hardware
McOSEN writes "Your Server Cabinet could have a 100% self sustained power source. It's called Parallel Path Technology and it's being coined as a revolution in the magnetic motor industry. From Segways to Vacuum cleaners to Server Cabinets. The article talks about the technology but doesn't exactly lay out specifics."
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  • Yet Another Bogus Science Story (Score:4, Informative)

    by shorti9 (307602) on Monday February 20 2006, @08:44PM (#14764735)
    From TFA:

    1. It's a motor, not a generator. It sounds like it could be a neat motor, but it's still not a generator.

    2. "The technology claims to be able to increase magnet motor efficiency substantially, even over the 100% barrier."

    That's right folks! It's perpetual motion machine!

    So, this is about a motor that makes claims that are pretty universally accepted to be impossible. The poster, of course, is affiliated with the site hosting the page, so he really should have read the article the same way I did. Even if he didn't, maybe ScuttleMonkey should have.

    I would be more annoyed, but this fits ScuttleMonkey's past science articles. Could someone send him a few pop-sci introduction texts, so we can stop having the Electric Universe, perpetual motion, and other fringe theories on the frontpage as science?
    • Even if it didn't fit past articles, this one alone should be grounds for an indefinite suspension of story submission rights (for both submitter and editor).

      The slogan here is "news for nerds", not "news for people who have no knowledge whatsoever of the basic principles of physical science"...
      • oooh but just think, if you had a subscription you could've seen it even before the rest of us! ha. ScuttleMonkey has along with that other new editor, managed to flush any last vestiges of science story reputability this place ever had down the toilet long, long ago. This has got to be like the 50th bogus pseudoscience artice from "opensourcenergy" alone he's posted. I would be shocked to learn that /. even has a dozen subscribers left at this point. Who in thier right mind would actually pay to be insulte

      • Re:Yet Another Bogus Science Story (Score:5, Funny)

        by strider44 (650833) on Monday February 20 2006, @09:43PM (#14764939)
        sheesh - you're taking this way too seriously. Don't you know that it says "It's funny, laugh!" if you put your mouse over the foot up here . . . wait a sec...

        Well I thought it was very funny anyway. Especially the bit that says "The article talks about the technology but doesn't exactly lay out specifics".

              • Re:Yet Another Bogus Science Story (Score:4, Insightful)

                by ceoyoyo (59147) on Tuesday February 21 2006, @12:15AM (#14765556)
                :) You can't get energy from magnets. No, a magnetic field is not energy.

                The iron filings move because you're moving the magnet. Don't move the magnet? No little iron filings moving.

                The exception is when you first bring the magnet close enough to the filings to make them move. They will move towards the magnet. That movement is due to their potential energy (energy of position). Now, why don't we harness that? We'll just move the filings away and drop them again... oh, wait, that will take the same amount, or more, energy as we get out. Okay, let's turn off the magnet and them move them away. Oh, wait, you can't turn off a permanent magnet. Okay, we'll use an electromagnet! Oh, wait, the electricity it takes to run the electromagnet is equal to or more than any energy we get out. Oh well.

              • Re:Basic Forces and Zero Point Energy (Score:4, Interesting)

                by iendedi (687301) on Tuesday February 21 2006, @08:38PM (#14773152) Journal
                The power lost in the electromagnet in this scenario is only due to the resistance in the electromagnet. If you were to do this you would notice that the electromagnet would heat up and that heat would account for the energy lost from whatever energy source you used to power the electromagnet. This is the only power loss as long as the other levitating magnet is remaining stationary.

                I am currently dumbfounded by two things. (1) That someone keeps modding these comments down, as the subject is intensely interesting and there is valid debate here, as I shall show (again). and (2) That I get responses like this one which are self-defeating, as I shall proceed to show.

                As to your comment, above, let us try a simple thought experiment. Imagine two electromagnets sitting on a tabletop and oriented such that their flux will cause a repulsive force when the electromagnets are powered. Imagine that both of these electromagnets are attached to a platform that can move on the table (wheels, low friction surface, whatever). Now further imagine that we place them arbitrarily close together. When we apply power to the electromagnets, what happens? Obviously, the electromagnets exert a motive force on one another and move apart. The act of moving apart clearly uses energy.

                Is your assertion that the energy expended to impart a motive force to the experimental apparatus not originating in the electrical power used to energize the magnetic coils? Or, perhaps you believe that the only energy expended is expended when the aparatus actually moves? If your answer is the first one, then your argument is self defeating because that clearly violates the law of conservation of energy. If your answer is the second one, then let us add aditional parameters to our experiment and see what happens. Since you (in this case) are stating that energy is only consumed when the aparatus moves, let us place two rigid bodies with pressure sensors on the opposing sides of each electromagnet and re-run the experiment. In this case, the electromagnets will exert a motive force on one another, but the aparatus can no longer move. However, the pressure sensors will register presure (active compression) related to the imparted motive force. This constant pressure REQUIRES A CONSTANT EXPENSE OF ENERGY.

                Do you disagree? If so, can you please explain how the electromagnets are causing a measurable compression of the pressure sensor without a constant expenditure of energy?

                Now for the electrons repelling each other; the energy comes from bringing the electrons closer together. So, in order for the electrons to repel each other again, some amount of energy has to be exerted in bringing the electrons close together again. Energy is completely conserved in this situation. Just remember... force is not energy. It also doesn't take a supply of power to maintain a force. While there are problems with our understanding of the universe, this is not one of them.

                It took me exactly 2 seconds to conceive of a simple thought experiment to prove you wrong. I am surprised that you didn't realize the same thiing when you were typing your response to me. I must assume that you are not actually thinking about this subject, but rather blinding regurgitating old, learned, conservation of energy religion. Here it is:

                Imagine a closed system in free space with a large quantity of electrons freely *bouncing around*

                Get the picture yet? Need help?

                Ok, here is help: Those electrons don't have anyone pushing them together (e.g. they are not being accellerated, except perhaps by one another). However, over time they will have essentially infinite electrostatic interactions with one another, bouncing around infinitely, never loosing energy. But here is the kicker: Because of their interactions with each other, they will constantly be exposed to electrostatic acceleration which implies the expenditure of energy. Acceleration is not free. At no time does t

    • Re:"LISA!!" (Score:5, Funny)

      by DesireCampbell (923687) <desire.c@gmail.com> on Monday February 20 2006, @08:59PM (#14764810) Homepage
      "... in this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!"

    • Mod parent up (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Animats (122034) on Monday February 20 2006, @09:03PM (#14764826) Homepage
      Yeah, it's bogus.

      If you like exotic motor designs, check out these "thin gap" motors [thingap.com]. These brushless permanent magnet motors can reach 90% efficiency, which is very impressive. The windings are made from thin copper plates rather than round wires. These are real. You can order them.

      There's some interesting work going on in motor electromagnetics, but the "greater than 100%" motor probably isn't it.

      • 90% isn't that good for a motor, most run between 92 and 98% efficient.

        But definitely aren't going to go over 100%

        I really wish perpetual motion, free energy .... nut jobs would go back into the woodwork. They make the life of engineers frustrating.

        • Re:Mod parent up (Score:5, Funny)

          by DarkHand (608301) on Tuesday February 21 2006, @01:32AM (#14765810) Homepage
          Interesting ... but just wondering, whatever happened to the idea of backup power being stored in giant underground flywheels; the energy would be stored by bringing these up to speed, and released by slowing them down.

          This idea is already in use: Even as we speak, dead physicists the world over are spinning in their graves from the posting of this Slashdot article. We simply need to harness this energy to solve the worlds energy problems!

        • Re:Mod parent up (Score:4, Interesting)

          by Dun Malg (230075) on Tuesday February 21 2006, @01:38AM (#14765818) Homepage
          whatever happened to the idea of backup power being stored in giant underground flywheels

          Nothing happened to the idea. It's been used for decades. My father worked for a defense contractor in the late 60's who had their computer rooms powered via a motor-driven generators with a 6-foot diameter reinforced concrete disks affixed to the shafts between the motors and generators. The inertia of the spinning disks easily kept the big iron powered up during brownouts, and during blackouts they provided enough interim power for the generators to come online.

          If you specifically mean those super high-speed flywheels we hear about from time to time, well, those require such exacting construction that they're still too expensive to replace batteries or generators. Someday maybe, but not yet.

    • I don't know if this is exactly the same concept I read about some time ago, but I heard about a patent using similar terminology. And while the claim is over unity power output (the patent I read involved no moving parts) the fundamental idea was to harness the degradation of flux in permanent magnets.

      In other words, they are using a permanent magnet as a type of high-density chemical-free battery, releasing the energy that was required to magnetize the material in the first place. The magnets would eventu

      • Time for magnetodynamics 101 (Score:5, Informative)

        by rubycodez (864176) on Monday February 20 2006, @10:27PM (#14765135)
        The energy stored in a permanent magnet (from rotated domains held from returning to their equilibrium condition) is called magnetic energy density, and is given in SI units of KJ/m^3. A more common unit used to be the Mega Gauss-Oersted (MGOe). T [1 MGOe = 8 kJ/m^3]. For most nifty permanent magnets, the KJ/m^3 value will be in the 20's to 30's. Now consider the volume of magnets that would fit in a motor you could hold in your hand, and thence calculate the energy density. Then calculate the effect of releasing ALL this energy in one minute, say of a 100mm x 10mm x 10mm magnet, releasing its 0.3 J in 60 seconds, for a whopping 0.005 Watts of power, leaving an unmagnetized lump of metal. Impressed?
    • It's a motor, not a generator. It sounds like it could be a neat motor, but it's still not a generator.


      That's the beauty of it! You connect the axes of two of these things together. Power one, and use the power exceeding 100% efficiency to power the other as a generator!

      Can anyone tell me why there's no big foot on this story?

      -Peter

      • Re:You emphasized wrong words (Score:4, Insightful)

        by MindStalker (22827) <jlarsen AT fsu DOT edu> on Monday February 20 2006, @09:52PM (#14764973) Journal
        Read it again. The adverb is substantially. So the question is "How much are they increasing efficiency?" The answer is "Substatially." The then elaborate that total effiency is over 100%. Technically I'd agree with you though, if the word Barrier wasn't there, it implies and increase over a specific known barrier, thus is the 100% efficiency barrier.

        Let say I was to say

        "This will increase your runnning speed substatially, over 4 minutes in a mile"

        You could assume to you would be cutting 4 minutes from your mile.

        If I were to say

        "This will increase your runnning speed substatially, over the 4 minute mile barrier"

        The assumption would be vastly different.
      • Good point, there is an ambiguity there. However, I stand by my reading of it.

        100% isn't a barrier if it's a relative increase, as you correctly point out. It is a barrier if you're talking about absolute efficiency. By talking about it as a barrier, the author almost certainly intends for us to read it as "100+% absolute efficiency."

        I'd be happy to be corrected by anyone affiliated with the posted site, but until then, I strongly believe that they're talking about a motor that's more than 100% efficient

  • Developed for the phantom (Score:5, Funny)

    by gentimjs (930934) on Monday February 20 2006, @08:47PM (#14764747) Journal
    I hear this was developed specifically for the new Phantom gameconsole and online service. I cant wait to get duke nukem whenever going on that baby!

  • Wow.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by fred911 (83970) on Monday February 20 2006, @08:47PM (#14764751)
    I thought they were called squirrel cages. And they're not perpetual, someones gotta feed the squirrels!

  • Obligatory Simpson's quote (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 20 2006, @08:47PM (#14764754)
    "Lisa, in this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!"

  • Bah... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 20 2006, @08:49PM (#14764760)
    Yet another 'Coming Soon' thing that will always be 'Coming Soon'
    Did someone forget entropy?

  • Ahh Physics (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TheUnknownOne (810624) on Monday February 20 2006, @08:50PM (#14764767)
    So the first lines of the article basicly claim it's a perpetual motion machine, and than later in the article it says this is impossible. Wonderful when even the articles contridict themselves. I really enjoy the part where they state that they recieved a patent, like it actually means something.

  • Perpetual motion machines (Score:5, Insightful)

    by isomeme (177414) <cberry@cine.net> on Monday February 20 2006, @08:51PM (#14764773) Homepage Journal
    Why is it that every new PMM for the last two decades has involved permanent magnets? Is there some kind of mad-scientist cabal that decrees these things? Will the fashion turn to something else soon, like, I don't know, materials so bouncy that they rebound with more energy than they hit the surface with? (Name that classic SF story.)

    Seriously: Editors, please shitcan perpetual motion machines before we have to waste precious seconds on them. When a real PMM is possible, you'll know it's happened because suddenly the universe will have stopped working properly, and you'll be instantaneously and very thoroughly dead.
    • It is, of course, Flubber! [imdb.com]

    • Why is it that every new PMM for the last two decades has involved permanent magnets? Is there some kind of mad-scientist cabal that decrees these things?

      Wikipedia's entry on Perpetual Motion Machines has a good explanation of the obsession with permanent magnets:

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_motion [wikipedia.org]

      Take a look at the "techniques" section. The core mistake in these theories is that work done by permanent magnets doesn't weaken the magnet.

    • Re:Perpetual motion machines (Score:4, Insightful)

      by drgonzo59 (747139) on Monday February 20 2006, @09:25PM (#14764875)
      People who do not have a particularly good relationship with math and real science are fascinated with the "crazy" and "wonderful" action at a distance. Much like my cat is fascinated at the strange red dot that is there moving but then disappears all of the sudden, when I turn the laser point off. These kind of people will say stuff like "OMG! Wow! Look Ma! Two pieces of metal attract each other and they are not even touching!" Then of course they make the obvious step from there and say "Aha! I know, I bet I could build a perpetual motion machine, I'll be famous and solve the world's energy problems..." As they get older they don't necessarily get smarter, they just make their designs more complicated and use a lot of buzzwords, then they apply for patents, and people just like them from the patent office grant them those patents, then they create websites, attract investors and become famous.

      What is most sad about the story is that it appeared on the front page of Slashdot. "News for nerds" turned into "News for idiots". This leads me to believe that if even the supposedly scientifically minded Slashdot editors and submitters are willing to believe such crap, the general public will probably be even easier convinces.

      Sad, sad, sad... I blame the primary education in this country.

      • You hardly need a perpetual motion machine for that. Just some 98% efficient solar panels or a form of nuclear power that uses unregulated minerals would do it. It's funny, when I first learned how nuclear reactors worked as a kid I was shocked at how rediculously primitive they are. I remember asking my school teacher why they had to heat water and couldn't just generate electricity directly. Later in life I learned even moreso how primitive nuclear technology is.. we don't even control the emission of
  • Bra-vo /. Not only is the story utter crap (greater than 100% return on input energy), but the headline has absolutely NOTHING to do with what's in TFA.

  • Mod article down (Score:3, Insightful)

    by the eric conspiracy (20178) on Monday February 20 2006, @08:53PM (#14764785)
    Why are we bombarded by these nonsense articles? This sort of thing should be recognized as B.S. by even a reasonable competent High School student.

  • What could it be? (Score:5, Funny)

    by OriginalArlen (726444) on Monday February 20 2006, @08:55PM (#14764791)
    Wow, intriguing! I haven't bothered to read the article because even the write-up says it's light on details. Unhampered by preconceptions, the possibilities are endless!

    • infrared solar cells lining cabinets absorb all heat passively - saving money on fans and the power to drive them - one rack per row contains a small steam (or hot water) powered generator.
    • Arrays of pigeons
    • batteries! They're self contained, after all
    • 256-port power-over-ethernet switch bonds multiple ports into one 240v supply
    • convection-powered 'wind' turbines. Ajax-heavy Web2.0 content will obviously be more eco-friendly due to the warm gusts of hype
    • Helldesk phone receivers connected to flywheel. List the phone, add some revs to the flywheel
    • ...my imagination fails. Well, it is nearly 2am... note to self: must stop posting to slashdot in bed.

  • lab? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by widget1985 (956045) on Monday February 20 2006, @08:56PM (#14764798)
    I love how the "Lab" in the picture looks a whole lot like a kitchen.

  • Warning, warning! (Score:5, Funny)

    by mentaldrano (674767) on Monday February 20 2006, @09:04PM (#14764834)

    Bullshit detector overload!

    This is Slashdot, for crying out loud. We're nerds, we don't fall for this idiotic screed even a high school freshman could debunk.

    Ooooh, big words are scary! Stator, rotor, magnetic flux. Dammit, both the editor and article submitter should hand in their geek cards.

    This guy does have a real patent, though. I don't know which is worse, the ignoramus patent examiner who allowed this one through or the baboon who posted it to Slashdot. Check the USPTO link here [uspto.gov].
  • Infinite Energy magazine runs out. Sure, I'm all for the occassional "Crystal Chakras Power Generates Excess Neutrons" story, but after awhile, it gets ridiculous.

  • Don't get too excited yet... (Score:5, Informative)

    by retro128 (318602) on Monday February 20 2006, @09:07PM (#14764843)
    Like many here, I read the article and got the idea that they were talking about a perpetual motion machine (could be the "The technology claims to be able to increase magnet motor efficiency substantially, even over the 100% barrier." at the beginning of the article that gave everyone that impression...), but the only place that I can find such a claim is from the author of the article...From the way it's written, it just doesn't appear that he knows what he is talking about.

    I glanced through the patent [uspto.gov] at USPTO and it appears to me that what this is is a more efficient electric motor, not something that outputs more energy than is put into it.

  • Sadly Misunderstood (Score:5, Insightful)

    by goodie3shoes (573521) on Monday February 20 2006, @09:27PM (#14764878)
    It's clear that the writer of TFA didn't understand much about what (s)he heard/read about this. I'm sure that the developers of the technology make no silly claims about greater than 100% efficiency. More likely, this is just an improvement on existing technology that gives, perhaps, somewhat better efficiency, or higher power in a smaller size, less weight for a given power, etc. Any of these would be good, but violate no physical laws.

    • ^ Mod Parent Up ^ (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anti-Trend (857000) on Monday February 20 2006, @10:05PM (#14765049) Homepage Journal
      They're absolutely right. The submitter was wrong about the subject matter, and the subject matter obviously had many misonceptions about how the technology works (greater than 100% output... WTF?) But here is a look at how the technology actually works. [osen.org] It seems to be a motor that is simply more efficient, which is indeed a positive and achievable goal.

  • It's real... (Score:5, Informative)

    by chuckw (15728) * on Monday February 20 2006, @09:29PM (#14764887) Homepage Journal
    I really wish these kooks could separate the perpetual motion crap from reality here. They are not "over-unity", perpetual motion, or what have you. The do in fact obey all laws of thermodynamics. These motors are real and can deliver as much as 98% efficiency. We've seen them, they work. I was at the presentation recently by Boeing Phanton Works that featured these things. ..Chuck..

      • Re:It's real... (Score:5, Informative)

        by chuckw (15728) * on Monday February 20 2006, @10:04PM (#14765048) Homepage Journal
        The cited web page is wrong, and if I were Flynn, I would be emailing them to explain that their title description is blatantly incorrect and is making him look bad. If anyone bothered to go to his website [flynnresearch.net], they'd quickly be able to see that PPMT is grounded in basic magnetic physics. PPMT is not free energy or crap like that. It is workable technology that produces a very efficient motor.

  • Didn't they make the Flux Capacitor? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Belseth (835595) on Monday February 20 2006, @09:36PM (#14764909)
    Hey at least they didn't claim it ran on Zero Point energy. My favorite current flavor of snake oil.

  • Bogus (Score:4, Informative)

    by viking2000 (954894) on Monday February 20 2006, @09:52PM (#14764972)
    Current electrical motors/generators are up to 99% efficient, and the loss is mostly in resistive loss in wire.

    There is no room for any meaningful improvement unless you claim to have more than 100% efficiency, and they do. Lunatic bin right here!

    Current electrical motors/generators are up to 99% efficient, and the loss is mostly in resistive loss in wire.

    There is no room for any meaningful improvement unless you claim to have more than 100% efficiency, and they do. Lunatic bin right here.!

    I was curious as to what they based their claim on?

    First, go to http://www.flynnresearch.net/ [flynnresearch.net] to se some details on this.

    The answer is:
    Just doctor up formulaes: Force is proportional to magnetic flux. Se http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/physics/ [wolfram.com] Look up 'amperes law', 'magnetic force' and 'Lorentz force'. As you can see they are all _linear_. I.e. F=B*k. (Force = Field times some constant. Flynn makes the relationship quadratic: F=B^2*A/2u.

    To translate for /. readers: You have one C++ programmer, and you need more work done. Just hire one more programmer, and to your surprise, you get 4 times as much done.

  • 100% *increase* in efficiency? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by toybuilder (161045) on Monday February 20 2006, @09:57PM (#14765010)
    Perhaps what was originally claimed is that the power efficiency of the motor is improved by more than 100% over conventional motor designs. TFA doesn't claim that the output motor power exceeds the input electrical power - instead, it states that there is better containment of flux leading to more motive force:
    Testing and Finite Element Analysis show that the Parallel Path system indeed manages to not only increase the magnetic flux in the core by a factor of four over conventional electric motors, but manipulate the flux to act in the direction of motion, generating considerably more motive power than conventional motors.


    Is it reasonable to assume you can get more output power with better efficiency? Try this article titled
    Increase Efficiency 10 Percent and Double Output:

    Improvements in motor efficiency also mean improvements (increases) in continuous torque ratings and reduction in dissipated power. Continuous torque ratings of any electric motor are limited by the internal losses (dissipated power) in a motor which produces heat. Any electric motor's performance is limited to its ability or inability to store and dissipate heat. Face mounting precision motors on recognized aluminum heat sinks have become an important procedure for specifying performance as described in NEMA's ICS16 (step and servo motor) standard. The table below illustrates this condition.

    Power-Watts
    Efficiency In Out Dissipated
    80% 100 80 20
    90% 100 90 10
    90% 200 180 20

    By increasing power efficiency 10%, output power is more than doubled (180/80), while maintaining constant heat loss. This is a 125% improvement in output power and motor shaft speed at rated load. The power consumption does not increase because it is tied to the line-to-line input current squared and multiplied by the hot line-to-line resistance (I2R).


    I think the original poster/editor misunderstood the original claim...

  • Had to get out my hip waders just to get past the first paragragh. Another article with lots of Bull$hit Bingo words in it. The fraudsters love to play mind games containing magnetic fields and it's quick flux fixxer-upper. Small wonder that the geomagnetic poles are trying to swap ends, the North Pole has just about had enough of hearing about it, conned the South Pole into thinking that it's place is better.

    Even the title reeks of faddish words. Remember last year's warm fusion fraudster? This year is mirroring Cell processors and the tech that it uses.

    It makes me wonder who is really submitting these articles to Slashdot.

  • It is truly a quantum leap! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by AyeRoxor! (471669) on Tuesday February 21 2006, @09:29AM (#14767271) Homepage Journal
    Parallel Path is a quantum leap in electromagnetic motor technology

    At least they're being honest. As a scientist would know, (and they purport to be scientists), a quantum leap is the absolute least amount something can move without standing still. And they didn't say whether it was a leap forwards or backwards.

    So basically they probably mean that this is a tiny tiny step backwards for them. I'll can believe that.

    • RTFA submitter, all they claim it to be is a higher efficiency electric motor. No self contained power source....

      From TFA:

      The technology claims to be able to increase magnet motor efficiency substantially, even over the 100% barrier.

      It may be described primarily as a motor, but if it could generate excess power then it would also be a "self contained power source." Of course, it can't, but TFA does imply that it is one.

      If I'm reading the text of their patent correctly, it's not for the motor, but for the ma
      • If I'm reading the text of their patent correctly, it's not for the motor, but for the magnet assembly used in the motor. Maybe I'm missing something, but even with that limitation the patent looks pretty weak. Doesn't it cover just about any use of permanent magnets in a variable configuration to modify a magnetic field?

        Yeah, their pseudo-science is laid on thick, but it looks to me like a variant on the Lutec scam which is, funnily, always going to be ready "at the end of the year X" where X is whatever c

    • HOW IT WORKS and DOESN'T WORK (Score:4, Informative)

      by goombah99 (560566) on Monday February 20 2006, @10:16PM (#14765093)
      There's a good explanation of how it works here [osen.org].

      As I understand it, the claim of above unity energy utilization in the articel summary is (of course) false and not being made for this motor.

      What they are saying is above unity torque production. And here unity simply means the ratio with respect to a particular arbiratrily chosen standard. It's not a magic number. Just a way to avoid using units in the discussion.

      Now what appears to be happeing is that if the rotor were stopped and one measured the torque on the rotor (or linear actuator) then you would find that this force was four times as high as a motor without the parallel path technology, running at the same current and the same number of windings.

      Now we can see that this is sort of misleading. If we kept the current constant and the windings constant then the force or toruqe is higher in a non-moving rotor or actuator. But in a non-moving system one can, for the same current always increase the number of windings to increase the force. The ultimate limit comes from several practical realities. 1) increasing the windings increases both the impedance and residual reactance of the motor making it lossy and limiting it's frequency response. 2) The upper limit is reached when the magnetic flux is no longer contained by the ferrite. Both motors probably have a problem with #2 but the parallel path motor has fewer windings for the same level of force as a conventional motor.

      Okay but that is still begging the question since were talking about non moving motor. adding in a permenant magent to boost the force is a lot like adding a spring to boos the force. You pay for it by the energy it took to load the spring.

      Once this motor starts moving then one has to do a dynamic anayis to the flux collapsing as the rotor or actualtor moves is drawn into the field. What does this do the current in the motor? What does this do to it's complex impedance? I don't actually know the answers to those questions. The static analysis is simply bogus for concluding that. But if one were to maintain the "spring" analogy then it seems like one could not possibly be getting any net gain.

      what this device does seem to be doing however is to make an assymetric pull on the acutator. that is it pulls on one arm of the motor with 4 times the torque and the other arm with no torque at all. That might possibly lead so some sort of alteration in the lead-lag curve of of the phase response of the motor at different speeds. If so it might somehow make a motor with a given amount of windings and ferrite optimally usitize it's material content better.

      So if there is any gain at all here I suspect it lies with this latter effect. But I cant' do the analysis to be sure.

    • Re:Anyone want to buy a bridge (Score:5, Funny)

      by John Hasler (414242) on Monday February 20 2006, @09:34PM (#14764904)
      > Electric motors are already 80-90% efficient, while this might make
      > it closer to 100% it won't go over, unless someone discovered some
      > new laws of physics.

      The only natural law involved here is "There's a sucker born every minute".

      • Re:Anyone want to buy a bridge (Score:4, Insightful)

        by chuckw (15728) * on Monday February 20 2006, @10:44PM (#14765220) Homepage Journal
        And if you'd looked into it a *BIT* more, you'd know that this technology (PPMT) has nothing to do with free energy or perpetual motion. Flynn has been done a profound disservice by the cited website. Check out his website [flynnresearch.net] for the real scoop. Nowhere in there does it say anything about free energy. What he has is simply a very efficient motor that can act as a generator when an *EXTERNAL FORCE* is applied to the shaft.

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