Panorama, Initials. (2007). Robotics. Retrieved from http://www.epanorama.net/links/robotics.html
A robot is driven by an electric nerve system and a mechanical body. To make the robot do something useful, you have to be able to program inside of it some sort of intelligence. You could use built in circuits used in early robots or codes in microcontrollers. The thoughts about building a robot should include electric motors, metal working, and mechanical engineering. The kinds of electronic systems are separated into the three groups which are power drivers, microcontroller, and electronics. To build a robot, you would probably need to know at least a little of each aspect.
Something else related to robots is Computer-Numerical Control (CNC). A CNC is a programmed language used in robots or computers. The most used CNC program is the G-codes, which is a more familiar name for EIA-274D. Its first intent was for it to be read from paper tapes. Gerber is used to control the photoplotters (a type of machine) for printed circuit board industries. Gerber is a way of transferring circuit board information to different kinds of mechanisms. There are also many other types of CNCs.
That is a little of how robots and CNCs work.
Howstuffworks, Inc., Initials. (2010, October 30). How electric motors work. Retrieved from http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/motor.htm
A motor has 6 parts: the armature or rotor, commutator, brushes, axle, field magnet, and DC power source of some kind. In an electric motor, the armature goes as the nail. It is an electromagnet with coiled wire around a metal pole. The armature has an axle, to which the commutator is connected to. The commutator is just a pair of plates connected to the axle. The plates are the connections for the coil for the electromagnet. The commutator and brushes is the part of the electric motor that “flips the electric field.” The commutator and brushes work together to create the electric flow for the electromagnet and to reverse the direction of where the electrons flow. The brushes are wires of strings of metal or carbon that connect to the commutator and the power source.
An electric motor is much about magnetism. Magnets inside a motor create motion. Since like poles repel and unlike poles attract, in an electric motor, the magnets make a spin that creates motion. That is how an electric motor operates.
An electromagnet bases the main parts of a motor. For example, you could wrap a wire many times around a nail. You would also connect the wire to a battery. Then, you place an axle in the middle of the nail and put it in the middle of a horseshoe, having the like poles facing each other. The nail would flip until the unlike poles were facing each other. Then, the field of the electromagnet flips, causing the nail to spin again. This creates a rotational motion inside a motor.
That is how an electric motor works.
Singlephasemotorwiring.com, Initials. (2010, October 31). Single phrase motor wiring. Retrieved from http://www.singlephasemotorwiring.com/
This is how single phrase motor wiring works. There are three coils; one is wound clockwise and the other two are counterclockwise. In the motor, there are three phases, so for each pair of magnets there needs to be three coils. A pair of magnets is when one magnet faces north and the other magnet faces south.
In the first phase, the magnets that are the North Pole magnets are covered. The next phase is set up as follows. The first three wires are A, B, and C. The next three wires are D, E, and F. The output wires would be A, C, and E. E is also a start wire. It is at the end of an output and a magnet runs over it in second phase. It also is inactive during the first and third phase. Since it is set up that way, instead of being tied up facing the wrong way, the ends are reversed.
After all of that, you connect the ends of the AC and DC. To then create a current, you could use one of two types of rectifiers.
That is how you set up a single phrase motor wiring system.
Lux, J. (2001, December 18). Robot motors. Retrieved from http://www.luxfamily.com/jimlux/robot/motors.htm
This is about motors and gear trains.
There are three types of motors. There is the stepper, the AC (good for a big robot), and a DC (common in many robots).
Small DC motors usually are much faster than other normal motors. A DC motor can make a few thousand revolutions per minute (RPM). Most other motors make sixty RPM. Some DC motors are slower, but usually are too big or weigh too much to be a proper power outage.
To make a motor work faster, you could add a gear train, a pulley, or a lead screw. The motor and gear train package can me more efficient than just a motor.
You could make your own gear train; however, it is fairly hard to make with lots of possibilities of not working. Pulleys or belts are easier to make, but can have backlash problems. Lead screws are to turn rotary motion into linear motion. There are several different ways to carry that out.
That is how motors and “motor enhancers” could affect a robot.
Davidson, M. W. (2010, October 31). Generators and motors. Retrieved from http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/electromag/electricity/generators
Magnets are certain types of metal that can attract different kinds of metal. There are always two sides of a magnet, the North Pole and South Pole. North and South attract, while two like sides repel or push away.
A magnetic field surrounds a conductor if a current is going through it. The lines in a force increase if the current flow also goes up. A conductor can be shaped or twisted in a coil. A coil produces a current when it cuts through the lines of force. If the coils are wrapped around a nail, the current grows. The more coils that are wrapped around something or are made, the stronger the magnetic field will get.
Induction is when a conductor goes through the force of a magnetic field. Cutting through the lines of force creates a current. There are three rules for this.
Rule one is that voltage and a current is created when a conductor cuts through a magnetic field. Rule two is that for this to happen, the conductor or magnetic field will need to be moving. Rule three is if the direction of the cut changes, the direction of the current or voltage also changes.
Voltage is decided by the number of coils or turns in a coil. It is also determined by how fast the coil is cutting through the magnetic field. Also, there are two types of current. DC means direct current, and is when a current never changes direction. AC, or alternating current, is when a current changes direction or goes from negative to positive.
That is how magnetism and currents in a motor works.
Woodford, C. (2007). Electric motors. Retrieved from http://www.explainthatstuff.com/electricmotors.html
The simple way to explain how electric motors work is that an electric current, or electricity, flows through one end. On the other end is an axle that spins, providing power for the machine. A way to show this is you take a piece of wire and loop it. You lay the loop of wire between the north and south poles of a permanent horseshoe magnet. If you attach the ends of the wires to a battery, the wire will “jump” shortly. This happens because the electric current creates a magnetic field. If you put the wire near the horseshoe magnet, the two magnetic fields interact. The wire’s magnetism either attracts or repels the magnet’s force field, so it jumps.
There is a type of electric current called the alternating current, or AC. The AC reverses the direction of the electric current. In most batteries, there is a commutator at the ends of the coil. The commutator is a ring separated into two halves. Each time the coil goes through half a turn, it reverses the direction of the electric current. Connected to each end of the coil is a half of the commutator. The motor’s terminals are connected to the electric current that comes from the battery, or power source. The terminals give power to the commutator through a type of connector called brushes, which literally brush against the commutator. There are also two other parts of an electric motor. The stator of a motor is a magnet (or magnets) that are at the edge of the case that is always static. The rotor is inside the stator. The rotor is the coils on an axle.
That is how an electric motor works.
