Hello friends!
Ten years ago I figured out how to design brushless linear motors. I made custom control boards for them, but ran in to some issues. Eventually the whole project got shelved. I want to revive it and open source my designs using Odrive as a controller.
One trick with these motors was that they used six wire control. So electrically they are three separate coils, not tied together on one end like normal brushless motors. I’m going to muddle my way through a firmware mod for this. It looks like I can basically eliminate one axis, modify the Motor class to accept two timers, then replace the FOC algorithm with my own and I’m like 95% there? And then if I want to measure current in all three coils, I think not all three legs measure current yes?
Any tips would be appreciated. See my old brushless motor designs and the simulation in FEMM below. Thank you!