Week of 4/28 - 5/2

This week, I started by finishing up attaching the brushes to the two prongs that I created. They were a bit tricky to get on, and I had to remove parts of them as they came from an actual DC motor. I ended up with two brushes, one on the bottom left and one on the upper right.

I tested this and it didn't work at all. I thought this was because there wasn't enough magnetic force to allow the motor to spin. I think this is due to the wires being too big for them to wrap around enough times. I wanted to switch out the bigger wire with some smaller wire, so I tried to find some.

I found some smaller wire, but I remembered I had tested this wire before and it didn't work, so I needed to test it again. I removed some of the enamel from two places and tested when the two points were connected. Surprisingly, this time it worked. I think the last time I tested it, it had been either a different wire or, somehow, the wire was messed up.

I put the wire around the base, and I removed the enamel from each side. I had three different electromagnets since my commutator had three different spaces for cables. I didn't attach them yet, though, since I wanted to make sure they worked.

I tested the individual coils, and I also wanted to see if they would move. I tried many different ways, but there was no movement at all, so I think I need more wire on each coil. This was meant to be a small project, and I don't want to spend more time on it, so on Thursday, I kept working on the hovering magnet instead and finished designing the spinner.