My Books
Marvelous Magnetic Machines
Kaden's Motor
My grandson Kaden watched with great interest as I built
the motors that appear in my book, Marvelous Magnetic Machines.
In fact, he told me that he wished he could have one. That wasn't
possible, at least not at the time, because I was still in the process
of preparing illustrations for the book.
However, as his birthday was just around the
corner, I decided to build him his own, one-of-a-kind motor, based on
the projects in my book. This particular
motor does not appear in Marvelous Magnetic Machines, but it does
give you a good idea of the type of machine that can be built using
the ideas described in the book.
Here is a three-quarter view
of the completed motor. The base is scrap metal, a slab of 1/4-inch
aluminum. The walls of the crankcase are aluminum castings that
were salvaged from the head actuators of a couple of scrapped DEC
disk-pack-type hard drives.
The motor is driven by the cylindrical
solenoid at the top of the motor.

Here is a view from the terminal end of the
motor. The binding posts and the bracket they're mounted on were
salvaged from some scrapped instrumentation that I picked up
at a ham fest. Notice the pretty brass feet? Those are valve bodies
from a set of four discarded air valves.
This is a closer look at the crank on Kaden's
motor. The crank was made from a brass gear extracted from a scrapped
fish-finder. The flywheel and the bronze bearings it rides on were
salvaged from a junked VCR.
Motor timing is accomplished with a leaf switch
that is triggerd by the movement of the crank. There is no separate
timing cam. The threaded hex standoffs are simply used as nuts to
secure the leaf switch stack. 
Here is a top view of the completed motor.
Notice the vent hole at the top of the solenoid. The motor speed
was limited until I enlarged the vent hole with a drill bit.
A solenoid plunger can move a surprising amount of air.
Here is a parting shot of the completed motor.
(initial - 10/17/2011)
(last update - 04/22/2021)
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