Bug

Bug

Friday, October 1, 2010

Heat

I have decided to water cool my stators in the motors; they are not designed for continuous use in the honda cars so they may get too hot in my EV.
I'm going to use a double wrap of 1/4" copper tubing with an ethylene glycol and water mix pumped with a home computer water cooling pump; the pump will flow around 1 gallon per minute at its maximum output.
There are two places I can add the copper, I can try and cool the copper coils themselves which is where the heat is generated or the outside of the stator assembly itself. I considered trying to cool the coils but I'm afraid whatever solution I come up with is going to risk damaging the coils, even if I get everything mounted ok its possible the tubes may rub and vibrate and wear through the insulation and create a short over time.
I'm going to wrap the outside of the stator assembly instead, I was going to purchase thermal insulation gasket material but its too expensive in the quantities I need for my EV ($300) so instead I'll either silicon them in place or epoxy.
To increase the thermal conductivity of the silicon/epoxy it would be nice to load it with particles that are highly thermally conductive, powdered copper or aluminum would be best but might be tricky to find or be too expensive. I'm considering using talcum powder instead which is magnesium silicate. I found a lot of data on talcum powder and I never knew it was actually a carcinogen, if I use this I'll be taking care to avoid handling it or breathing it in.

Edit: I found iron filings are cheaply available and only cost around $5 a pound, they are also non toxic and should be easier to mix with epoxy or silicone. I bought 3lbs online and they should arrive next week.

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