How To Make Electric Motors
An electric motor can be hard to understand without seeing one operate. There is so much technical language involved in an explanation of electric motors that the average person would be confused. For the person looking to find out how an electric motor operates in a simple way there is an easy to make electric motor. This motor shows how DC or direct current motors work.
To make this electric motor a person will need the following:
A battery holder and matching battery
A magnet
1 yard of enamel coated thick wire
1 foot of bare wire, slightly thinner than the other wire
All of these supplies can be easily found at a local electronics store.
The first step is to make the armature. This is done by forming a coil with the enamel coated wire. The easiest way to make this is to wrap the wire around something like a pencil. Once the coil is formed it should be pulled off the pencil, so it keeps the cylindrical shape.
Next, the enamel at the ends of the wire should be removed, so that at each end of the coil is a length of bare wire.
Now, the bare wire should be cut into two pieces and each piece should be bent in the middle to form a "u" shape. These will be the supports that keep the coils attached to the battery holder. Each piece should be attached to the battery holder.
The coil should be now set with each ends bare wires supported by the "u" shaped bare wires. It should be easy to spin.
The battery is placed in the holder with the magnet on top of it. The magnet should be underneath the coil, but no touching the coil.
The motor can now be operated by gently starting the coil spinning. Once started the coil should continue to spin on its own. It will pick up speed as it spins.
This makes a basic DC motor. In an actual motor there would be a starter that would start the motor spinning, but other than that this duplicates the function of a real motor. The armature is represented by the coil of wire. The battery provides the electrical current that is conducted by the wire and powers this motor. Magnets are the source that allows the motor to keep spinning. This simple project provides even a novice with a better understanding of how a DC motor works.