Project Aims

  • <$10,000 conversion
  • Top speed of +100kph
  • Range of +100km
  • Make a bike that is able to be registered
  • Make the bike look like the standard petrol version

Design Specification

  • Regenerative braking
  • 1990 Suzuki Across
  • 216VDC @ 15A (~3.2kw) VRLA battery pack (~90kg) for proof of concept
  • 3.3kw 3 phase induction motor

Thursday, December 4, 2008

Indicators, Grips and the Motor

I have been getting quite motivated lately to get some work done on the bike. I have just received some led blinkers. I have ordered the 0-5v hall effect twist grip throttle that should be arriving tomorrow. I have done some more research on Mosfets and IGBT's for the motor controller. At the moment I am leaning toward a 600V IGBT. I am switching 360V which is a little on the high side for mosfets, and there are some quite quick IGBT's. I am about to start the schematic for the motor controller.
The good news is that I have finally cracked open my 3kw 3 phase induction motor and had a peak at modifying the wiring to half the voltage I need to drive the motor with. I started by cutting the tape holding the wiring together and numbering each slot. The motor is a 4 pole motor with 36 slots. This gives me 12 slots per phase,and each slot is paired to make 6 coils per phase. There are the 6 wires coming into the motor and 9 wires that jump between coils. After writing all this down I then had to work out what it meant and what I have to cut to take the 6 in-series coils in half to get 2 3 in-series coils and run them in parrallel to get half the voltage. I figured out that each phase has 3 slots next to each other and then the next phase has 3, then the next and so on. This give me 4 sets of 3 slots per phase which is where the 4 pole comes from. So I have found the 3 wires I need to cut to halve the voltage. Yay!!!