David,
the Ford/Siemens motor is actually quite nice. I have one in my truck.
If you want an inverter for these motors, contact Rinehart Motion
Systems. I've got the 100kw unit in my truck. They actually use the
Ford motor to test the inverters in their shop. It is just a matter of
finding out what the motor parameters are. The only down side to the
motor is that the shaft end has a very specific mount on the casing,
meant to be married to the Ford gearbox. You can build a more standard
adapter plate for it and close out the rest of the space with a plate.
The other mechanical issue is adapting to the shaft splines, but it can
be done by a machine shop.
Paul Wallace
On 4 Nov 2013, at 16:01, EVDL Administrator wrote:
On 4 Nov 2013 at 7:08, Zeke Yewdall wrote:
My question is, what use would a HPEVS motor be without the matching
controller anyway?
You're lucky they'll even sell it to you, warranty or no. Solectria
would
sell motors and inverters only as a set. They said that every inverter
was
"factory tuned" to its motor.
AFAIK, this policy is, if not standard, pretty common with AC drives.
Metric Mind has the same policy for the MES-DEA and Brusa drives they
offer.
On the inverter page, Victor states : "Programmed for and work
together
with AC motors produced by respective manufacturers, therefore sold
only as
matching pairs."
A little historical tidbit here. Back in the early-mid 1990s, Ford
briefly
offered a Ranger pickup custom conversion done by a third party. They
evidently had a stock of Ford-branded, Siemens-made spare motors -
probably
more motors than Rangers. (AFAIK, these are not the same as the motors
used
in the much more widely sold Ranger EV from later in the 1990s.
Someone
please correct me if that's wrong.)
About 20 years on, these spare motors are STILL being offered, usually
at
absurdly high prices - I've seen them as high as $5k, and a couple
grand is
common - by surplus dealers. You can see one listing here :
http://www.commoditiesrecoverycorp.com/electricmotors.htm
For years we had regular posts from newbies on this list, asking where
they
could buy an inverter to drive this motor. The answer was, and is,
"You
can't." No such critter exists today, and probably none was ever
available
to hobbyists.
My guess is that Ford scrapped whatever spare inverters they had for
these
trucks. Or maybe some Ford buyer, unfamiliar with what kind of spares
the
small fleet of vehicles needed, just went overboard with ordering
motors.
(Is anybody here who worked on this project and knows the real story on
where all these orphaned motors came from?)
I vaguely recall hearing that someone was trying to either build an
inverter
for these or adapt an industrial controller to work with them, but I
don't
know how that worked out. As far as I'm concerned, with no tested
inverter
available for them, these are just very pricey doorstops.
Anyway, to get to the point, I would say that HPEV's policy is actually
somewhat more hobbyist-friendly than the one in place with most EV
drive
suppliers.
David Roden - Akron, Ohio, USA
EVDL Administrator
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