Fall 2007 

The objective of this project is to build a self-starting DC rotor only with the supplied material- a plastic film canister, a strip of metal, a strip of copper, a wooden spool, metal axle, and magnet wire. When connected to power, it should create a motor that runs at 1200 rpm for 5 min at 12V, max 6A.

My design was admirable in spirit but a little too ambitious to implement due to manufacturing challenges. Thus, our motor only ran when supplied with 12 A at 12V. Even then, it required a spin to start and ran at much less than 1200 rpm. This is due to 3 critical errors in our design and construction – cogging due to the misalignment of laminated steel fins, winding loops that were not sufficiently skewed, and a probable short in the windings.