Why are motors not current limited?

Apr 21, 2018 35 Replies

How hard can it be to put some kind of electronic limiter on a power tool so if you over-stress it, it doesn't consume enough current to melt the coils?

I assume something like this must be done on electric cars, or instead of stalling the engine, you'd wreck the motor.

How hard can it be to put some kind of electronic limiter on a power tool so if you over-stress it, it doesn't consume enough current to melt the coils?



I assume something like this must be done on electric cars, or instead of stalling the engine, you'd wreck the motor.


The motor is efficiently protected by voltage, current and temperature sensors to prevent overloading.  Stop buying junk and start buying Hiltis.

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Not neccessary for drills.

I had a Yellow & black device once Worx or somesuch.

I stalled it "sort of"

One's wrist forms a perfect albeit painful mechanical fuse :-(

I suppose right handed people have a slight advantage, but drilling with the left hand on the grip ansures that the drill isn't pulled away, it's pushed into your hand.

AB

I'm not talking about little cordless drills, I mean mains powered tools of around a kilowatt. Even if they're cheap, surely these sensors are a fraction of the price of the whole tool, and you'd get so many less warranty returns.

Do you think you could handle a corded Hilti?

Show me an example. I don't see why anyone (even a woman) couldn't use any power tool.

If you have the time and around £60-00, you could buy an overload and JB to keep it in. I think a standard 3 phase overload will work without a contactor and there is some adjustment for FLC.

It would want two of the channels wiring in series for single phase though.

Thermal fuses are fast acting and cheap, a none rewireable from ebay cost me around a pound for 20, they are good although you would have to dsimantle the tool to see if it could be placed in proximity to the field coils.

AB

It's not. My Lidl cordless set - drill, jigsaw, circular saw - all have that.

So if you jammed the blade, then switched it on, it would just cut out? I've never seen any tool do that.

I've never tried jamming a blade. The drill has a torque setting. But they will all stop with prolonged use. And have to be let cool down. I'm sure that would annoy some pros, but fine for my DIY.

Not intelligent enough. Motors need inrush current to start, but need to prevent continuously being overloaded physically.

A fuse would not really be the answer.

The tolerance is too wide and you are using the I^2R losses of the fuse itself to supply the heat to melt the link.

Really there is only an electronic approach that would allow good discrimination between excess mechanical load and normal running.

Any other approach would be difficult if not impossible to tune to remove the power before the insulation of the motor broke down.

Of course if you can collect every particle of the smoke produced and put it back into the motor, a fuse would be an excellent form of protection.

AB

P.S. one of my cats looks like she's having an orgasm rolling around in freshly cut concrete dust. That's gonna take her a while to clean out of her fur....

P.S. one of my cats looks like she's having an orgasm rolling around in freshly cut concrete dust. That's gonna take her a while to clean out of her fur....

If it did, I'd switch off and find out why. Not wait for it to burn out.

As the saying goes, you can make things fool proof. Idiot proof, even. But making them c**t proof is impossible.

A motor can suffer quite a bit of damage during the standard human reaction speed.

Plus there's working it slightly harder than it's designed for. Unless you have a very powerful tool that can easily cope with everything, you're bound to push it just a little bit too far sometimes. You bought a tool for job X, then use it for job Y a few months later, when you really needed something stronger. If the thing just cut out or limited it's own power, there'd be no problem.

You can buy professional power tools with that sort of protection, or you can buy much cheaper DIY tools without it. My Metabo SDS drill has it, but it cost well over £300.

Vastly more expensive power controller than the light dimmer used as a speed control in DIY power tools.

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