Zero Force Motor Replication Project

[Retep]

Final Post for Now

Hey Everybody,

So, this thread now contains all of the information anyone may need to replicate the ZFM that I built in 2002. To recap where the accurate information is, here is a list.

This film is a short demonstration, by John, of the ZFM motor model we are discussing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TICXxP1jI4

There is good information on how to build the magnetic reed commutator in Post #10.

John posted twice before his death on November 5th. Those posts are #25, #27.

In Post #27, John discusses the fact that he never just tells people everything at once. He usually gives some information and lets people think about it for a while and learn the way he learned, by making every mistake possible! Lovingly, I call this the "crumb method" of teaching. John would drop crumbs periodically and if we stayed around long enough, we would be able to figure out what kind of sandwich the crumbs were coming from! I was lucky enough to be around him more so I gathered more crumbs than most. As I said before, John and I were planning to build a bigger model soon, and we were not planning to deviate from the "crumb method" in this thread. His death caused me to reconsider that decision, and now I have given you the complete design.

Everything you need to know about how the 2002 model was built is in my Posts, and they are Post #88, #92, #94, #96, and #99. All of the other speculations, right or wrong, can be disregarded and you will still have enough information to build the machine properly.

I am not going to go into Operational Theory concerning this motor in this thread, so don't ask. No one's speculations so far are even close. I will say this. In this machine, Lenz's Law is FULLY OPERATIONAL, as is Ohm's Law, Kirchhoff's Law, Faraday's Law of Induction, and Newton's Third Law of Motion. Anyone who says different does not know how the machine works!

OK, no more questions. Build it or don't build it. The machine is the teacher!

Best regards,
Peter

[Retep]

Hi Peter

Do you have a ball park idea of the dimensions of the stator, and in particular the air gap dimensions. The air gap will significantly increase the reluctance of the core, preventing it going into magnetic saturation. Also do you have information of the layup of the windings on the stator, I notice bottom right corner the stator appears to have been wound with 4 strands of wire but possibly at different angles on the previous layers.

Kind Regards

Andy

Hey Andy,

The stator dimensions have been stated a number of times in this thread, but I'll repeat them here for you again. The structure the coils are wound on is a piece of Schedule 40, 4 inch inside diameter ABS plastic sewer pipe. It is approximately 0.25" thick. Four strands of #20 gauge wire are wound on this coil form to fill a 90 degree arc to a thickness of about 0.50" on each side. The strands are then connected in series. No special attention was paid to how carefully the various layers of turns were layed down as the purpose of the stator coils is merely to establish an AIR-CORE coil with alternating pole faces at 90 degree intervals. There is no secret winding method involved in the coils. The "air-gap" relating to the reluctance of the rotor core is not significant since the stator does not provide a preferred magnetic return path other than the air at any point during its rotation. The machine is not a "variable reluctance" type of device. The machine represents a totally new and unique motoring principle and is the invention of John Bedini. This electric motor is unlike any other electric motor you have ever seen. That you don't quite understand it is understandable. It took me 10 years to fully grasp what this motor was doing and why, even after I built a working model!

I hope this answers your questions.

Best regards,
Peter

[Yaro1776]

ZFM Proto Testing and Video

Hello all,

Thank you Retep for continuing to take an active interest in this thread. Your participation, information and explanations are certainly appreciated by all.

Going forward with the ZFM Proto - well the Aluminum rotor of this Proto is obviously a dead issue, but it can still provide useful information about the characteristics of the machine itself. In that vein I have continued to test various configurations of the machine - mind you it has no real torque capability. Light finger pressure will slow it down.

Be that as it may, the motor is in a reasonable state of tune in that the rpm's are decent. The firing arc duration for this machine is approx. 60-65 degrees - the firing arc duration for the iron rotor may be very different. For this config the following has been noted:
1) 12 volt - 630 rpm - 1.4A
2) 24 volt -1700 rpm - 2.4A
3) 36 volt -2660 rpm - 3.18A

RPM's were measured with a laser Tach. Amperage with a clamp on meter and TET amp sensor to the computer. Utilizing a DATAQ 145 acquisition device to the computer.

So the next step was to reduce the firing arc duration to 50 - 55 degrees and note most of the results:
1) 12 volt - 500 rpm
2) 24 volt - 1300 rpm
3) 36 volt - 2150 rpm

I will rerun this and note the amperages and then edit the above. Please bear in mind that the coil heats up very rapidly at the higher voltages, in this experimenter's opinion the heat is too much for the plastic housing (125-135F) and minimizes the operational time to 5 minutes or so at max volts. Unknown how the demo machine runs with respect to coil temperature.

So here is the video of the above data.

https://youtu.be/wgDLDdxh2L8

The video graphically depicts the impact of input voltage on rpm with the computer display giving at least a visual affirmation of the changes.

It is interesting to note that there was really no amperage spike in the start Amps, most likely due to the fact that the machine had no load on it and it is low torque in this Proto configuration. See the attachment for start-up at 12 volts

ZFMAmp1.pdf

The grid in this pic is 83.3msec horizontal and 0.31A vertical for reference. Need to resolve the resolution on the .PDF's.

Since this Proto is a moot point with respect to the Aluminum rotor, the next step is to obtain the required ferromagnetic material and have the next rotor machined for the next series of tests with the 3/4"D x 3/8"T Neo array. I hope that my machinist has bagged his deer and ready to do some work again. Expect all this to come together sometime in December. However there still is a lot of playtime to be done with the existing configuration.

Best to all,
Yaro

[Retep]

Peter,

Many thanks. My last post was before I read your comment, just saw a lot of comments and figured I'd say something as I started the thread. That was a lot of information to digest, especially re the square magnetic material linking the magnets, don't see that every day. Thanks also for confirming the core was ABS it looked like iron to me at the conference but later guessed that might not work. I'm going to start on another replication soon, won't be the ZFM, but should be a ZFM, if we define it along the lines of John Koorn's comment of a machine running along the lines of flux. Will look at various parameters. If you have a minute and feel like answering, one question I would ask is do you consider the bipolar commutation essential to proper function of the machine or is it mainly just doubling the torque?

Ciao,

Paul

Paul,

The bi-polar switching is required in the design I am talking about because the coils are used to actuate both North and South magnets on the rotor. It is not, however, required in all designs that John demonstrated over the years. Single-sided switching can be used for any coil that actuates only one pole (North or South) of a magnet.

I hope that answers your question.

Also, I have now uploaded the image for the timing of the motor in Post #88, so that should complete all of the details people will need for successful replications.

Peter

[ZPDM]

Peter,

Many thanks. My last post was before I read your comment, just saw a lot of comments and figured I'd say something as I started the thread. That was a lot of information to digest, especially re the square magnetic material linking the magnets, don't see that every day. Thanks also for confirming the core was ABS it looked like iron to me at the conference but later guessed that might not work. I'm going to start on another replication soon, won't be the ZFM, but should be a ZFM, if we define it along the lines of John Koorn's comment of a machine running along the lines of flux. Will look at various parameters. If you have a minute and feel like answering, one question I would ask is do you consider the bipolar commutation essential to proper function of the machine or is it mainly just doubling the torque?

Ciao,

Paul

[Retep]

Just added Side View of Rotor

Hey Everybody,

I just added the side view drawing of the rotor to Post #88. There is good information on this thread for winding the coils and building the magnetic reed commutator, but there is still some speculations as to the exact timing of the machine. I'll put one more diagram up at Post #88 soon that explains the timing, so just look for it there. Then I'll wait for some replications.

Best regards,
Peter

[Faraday88]

Hi Patrick,

This is where people should start, so I wouldn't change a thing. This design worked better than any model John ever built of the concept. That is why I gave him this model! John never told me how the motor works. It took me 10 years to understand what it was doing and why. There is just a lot going on in this motor that is extremely counter-intuitive. John and I were about to build a larger model, capable of 30,000 rpm. Obviously, that is not going to happen now, nor is it something that hobbyists should attempt. Besides the iron cube, shaft, and 4 magnets, the rotor was made of 7 pieces of machined acrylic and 12 brass machine screws. It was perfectly balanced and the machine had no vibration even when the rotor was turning at 11,000 rpm. Even this is well beyond most replication level builds. In 2002, building this rotor required precision machining. Today, the plastic pieces of the rotor may be able to be 3D printed, but a design for that is yet to be seen. In the meantime, lower speed replications can start teaching you what the motor does. In the end, the machine is the teacher, not me or John. That's why John always said, "build it and let it run."

Peter

Hi Peter,
Long time no see...!!! welcome back to the forum..
Rgds,
Faraday88.

[Retep]

You're Welcome

Hi Patrick,

This is where people should start, so I wouldn't change a thing. This design worked better than any model John ever built of the concept. That is why I gave him this model! John never told me how the motor works. It took me 10 years to understand what it was doing and why. There is just a lot going on in this motor that is extremely counter-intuitive. John and I were about to build a larger model, capable of 30,000 rpm. Obviously, that is not going to happen now, nor is it something that hobbyists should attempt. Besides the iron cube, shaft, and 4 magnets, the rotor was made of 7 pieces of machined acrylic and 12 brass machine screws. It was perfectly balanced and the machine had no vibration even when the rotor was turning at 11,000 rpm. Even this is well beyond most replication level builds. In 2002, building this rotor required precision machining. Today, the plastic pieces of the rotor may be able to be 3D printed, but a design for that is yet to be seen. In the meantime, lower speed replications can start teaching you what the motor does. In the end, the machine is the teacher, not me or John. That's why John always said, "build it and let it run."

Peter

Hi Peter,
Thank you so much for sharing.
This is more than enough info for anyone to replicate of course anymore would be icing on the cake.

I have one question . Is there anything John or you would change?

Thanks again for everything you've been doing over the years and continue to do.
Sincerely - Patrick A.

[min2oly]

Hi Peter,
Thank you so much for sharing.
This is more than enough info for anyone to replicate of course anymore would be icing on the cake.

I have one question . Is there anything John or you would change?

Thanks again for everything you've been doing over the years and continue to do.
Sincerely - Patrick A.

Hey Everybody,

To help out a little more on the rotor design of the model of John's ZFM that I built in 2002, here are a few images that I hope will help.

This first one is a close up photo of the rotor.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]5598[/ATTACH]


This second one is the same photo with all of the internal structures drawn over the photo, so you can compare the two visually.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]5599[/ATTACH]


I'll post a side view drawing of the rotor structure here sometime soon.

The coils in this motor are wound on a frame made from a section of 4" diameter black ABS sewer pipe. The coils act magnetically as having an AIR CORE. Don't confuse the design of this machine with other demonstrations John made of "single-sided" units.

In the meantime, here is the schematic of the original circuit used when the unit was built in my shop in 2002.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]5602[/ATTACH]

Ron Cole always specified that the voltage at the base of the small PNP should be 1/2 of the supply voltage. Since the magnetic reeds really don't have any voltage drop across them during contact, the two resistors in that pathway should be the same. In versions of the circuit where a Hall Effect device is used, the lower resistor should be adjusted to compensate for the voltage drop on the Hall.

Hope that helps,
Peter

[James McDonald]

Hello to all,

Based on the information that I have and the results of my feeble replication efforts here are a couple of observations:

1) My existing ZFM Proto uses a 2 1/2"D Aluminum rotor with four 3/4"D x 1/4"T Neos spaced 90 degrees apart. The starting torque on this machine is low and may be a function of the inadequate Neo size and the operating clearance gap of approximately 3/8" between the rotor and coils. This will be corrected.

2) Hard to locate pure iron stock - I do know that low carbon steels such as a 1018 mild steel (to be researched and verified) do not retain a magnetic field - for example I used two 1/8"T strips of mild steel from Ace hardware as an assembly retainer between the coils with short high strength steel bolts. The high carbon bolts became magnetized, whereas the low carbon strip stock did not. So, mild carbon steel is readily available and only a short 2" length is require for the rotor core. 2 1/2" bar stock can have the flats for the magnets milled onto it, bored to shaft size with a standard key and set screw for retention. The biggest issue is retaining the magnets at high revs - standard design issue to be resolved. The rotor core's material spec can be easily resolved.

3) There is no iron core in the demo's toroidal coils - perhaps one can visualize the entire assembly as a large coil with an mild steel - iron core that acts in a similar manner. Just speculation on my part and I prefer to leave this aspect to the pundits and experts - I prefer to just design it, build it and then test it, and then let the results speak for themselves.

This beats video games hands down!

Later and Happy Turkey,
Yaro

Hi All --

I am adding the circuit schematic as drawn from the ZFM demo pictures from the 2016 Energy Conference. I was told that John Bedini changed the transistor types used and some of the resistor values. Other information is also documented on the schematic as to the Power Audio transistors we used in our ZFM drive circuit.

See the attached zip file of a print .XPS file type that can be viewed with a XPS viewer or can be directly printed on your printer.




-- James

[ZPDM]

Wow thread took off. As regards the core, I'm now saying RS_ was right in the first place!! If you are using a bipolar commutator and spinning at 5000+ RPMs it occurred to me there is no way an iron core coil will switch that fast, I'm not sure I'm an expert in all this but am I wrong? You would need to use an air core for that kind of RPMs. Running slower and not reversing the core it sure seems in my experiments to run better with a core. There has been talk of figure eight windings on the core, I don't see it on the machine at the conference I saw run like stink, so I don't suspect this is a big part of things. I'll order some parts tomorrow or over the week end and start on the Mark III, I suppose I am as curious as anyone as to what it will do. I wish John were here he just hints at so many things I gratefully thank Aaron because this week-end I intend to read all John's posts. Along those same lines anyone else notice the Window Machine and Newman's machine are the exact same except one use a physical commutator, that's how I see it.

[Retep]

Just Dropping In

Hey Everybody,

To help out a little more on the rotor design of the model of John's ZFM that I built in 2002, here are a few images that I hope will help.

This first one is a close up photo of the rotor.




This second one is the same photo with all of the internal structures drawn over the photo, so you can compare the two visually.




Here's the side view drawing of the rotor structure I promised.




The coils in this motor are wound on a frame made from a section of 4" diameter black ABS sewer pipe. The coils act magnetically as having an AIR CORE. Don't confuse the design of this machine with other demonstrations John made of "single-sided" units.

Here is the schematic of the original circuit used when the unit was built in my shop in 2002. Many transistors with similar specifications will work.



Ron Cole always specified that the voltage at the base of the small PNP should be 1/2 of the supply voltage, or just slightly higher. Since the magnetic reeds really don't have any voltage drop across them during contact, the two resistors in that pathway should be the same. 2k or 2.2k both work fine. In versions of the circuit where a Hall Effect device is used, the lower resistor is usually shown as 1k to compensate for the additional voltage drop on the Hall.

Here is how the motor is timed. This image shows the position of the rotor when the coil is turned ON.



The coil turns OFF 45 degrees later when the leading edge of the rotor magnet reaches the end of the coil. This produces a timing sequence of 45* ON and 45* OFF, repeated 4 times per revolution. Under certain circumstances, the timing may be widened to 50* ON TIME, but the 45-45 timing is a good place to start replications and is very close to the timing produced by the magnetic reed commutator of the 2002 model.

Hope that helps,
Peter

[Yaro1776]

Hello to all,

Based on the information that I have and the results of my feeble replication efforts here are a couple of observations:

1) My existing ZFM Proto uses a 2 1/2"D Aluminum rotor with four 3/4"D x 1/4"T Neos spaced 90 degrees apart. The starting torque on this machine is low and may be a function of the inadequate Neo size and the operating clearance gap of approximately 3/8" between the rotor and coils. This will be corrected.

2) Hard to locate pure iron stock - I do know that low carbon steels such as a 1018 mild steel (to be researched and verified) do not retain a magnetic field - for example I used two 1/8"T strips of mild steel from Ace hardware as an assembly retainer between the coils with short high strength steel bolts. The high carbon bolts became magnetized, whereas the low carbon strip stock did not. So, mild carbon steel is readily available and only a short 2" length is require for the rotor core. 2 1/2" bar stock can have the flats for the magnets milled onto it, bored to shaft size with a standard key and set screw for retention. The biggest issue is retaining the magnets at high revs - standard design issue to be resolved. The rotor core's material spec can be easily resolved.

3) There is no iron core in the demo's toroidal coils - perhaps one can visualize the entire assembly as a large coil with an mild steel - iron core that acts in a similar manner. Just speculation on my part and I prefer to leave this aspect to the pundits and experts - I prefer to just design it, build it and then test it, and then let the results speak for themselves.

This beats video games hands down!

Later and Happy Turkey,
Yaro

[min2oly]

Hi Yaro,
Thanks for continuing with this, John did mention in a previous post that the torroid had an iron core. I can't remember the thread...
Also, if you watch the vid with the blue wheel, it is only when he adds the iron that the phenomena shows itself.
I thought Peter mentioned that he used an iron pipe? Or maybe John mentioned that Peter used an iron pipe???

Hello to All,

Yesterday was a day of progress on several fronts with an unexpected surprise.

The ZFM Proto was massaged with a new front bearing and the entire assembly put back together with patient care paid to the overall alignment of the assembly.

First the motor was wired such that only one reed switch was firing (as suggested by min2oly from experiences of others on the Window Motor thread) and then fired up. The alignment tweaking allowed the motor to rotate on one set of reeds to about 120 rpm with the existing firing angle duration of about 60 degrees. Excellent!

The ZFM was then wired for both reeds and fired up with same 24 volts and timing - holy moly! The ZFM accelerated to over a 1000 rpm (estimated) and hummed along for about 5 minutes. Progress. A video of the new performance will be completed in the next day or so and hopefully the new laser tach will have arrived by then.

Great start to the morning and later in the day an unexpected email was received from Dr. Peter Lindemann informing me that he is working on compiling and writing a report ZFM Theory and Operation that is intended to give the definitive design information to end all the rampant speculation on the ZFM. This is to be published in the near future upon completion - no date on this as yet. Peter, at this time and understandably, is very busy with multiple responsibilities and requested that certain critical ZFM information be posted on this thread.

The first was a bombshell - the ZFM rotor has an iron core and below is the original JB design schematic
[ATTACH=CONFIG]5595[/ATTACH]

Furthermore, the critical Neo magnets are 0.750 inch diameter by 0.375 inches thick.

Back to the drawing board - yes, but the testing on this existing ZFM Proto will continue to establish performance baselines.

So, a big thank you is in order for Dr. Peter and his commitment to honor and preserve John Bedini's work and legacy.

Yaro

[Gary Hammond]

Hi Yaro,

Thanks for the update!

I will be anxiously awaiting Peter's report! I've been wanting to build one of these myself, but haven't gotten to it yet. Maybe I'll wait to see what else Peter has to disclose before I start.

I didn't get a real close look at the ZFM at the conference with everyone else crowding around it after the demonstration. And then I neglected to check it out close up later, when it was on Tom's display table.