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Firstly thanks to the founders and community here at Element 14. This is precisely the resource I needed and hopefully I can get some input on a project that I am working on which is a bit outside of my usual area of expertise.

I would like to build a DC motor testing bench. The motors are used in medical equipment and we pull them out of machines which are being retired, or we repair machines which are in house for resale.

The motors that are most common are DC with a gear reducer at the output shaft and an encoder at the back end of the motor case which is run by the tail shaft. The link below shows one example, there are many other sizes of motors here in house, but well over 50% follow this basic layout.

http://www.dunkermotor.com/default.asp?gid=17&bid=0&cid=0&sid=13&lang=2&id=9&mid=6

A generalized view for these motors:

- Voltages range from 12 volt to 160 volt, and the amperage can be from .25 to 10 amps.

- Most of the stock is permanent magnet but around 25% are brushed.

- There are also quite a few servo motors which we would like to test as well.   

The ideal motor testing system would be small(ish) and relatively affordable so that we could deploy it into the field if necessary. My research has shown some good test benches but I also found I was developing more questions than answers as I got deeper into this. Here are the issues that I am contending with (there may be some dumb questions, but this is a bit new for me).

- Power supplies for testing the wide range of volts/amps seem hard to find. It would be ideal to have one that was flexible enough but I have not seen a good fit for the wide range of motors we have. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

- The encoder testing seems like it could simply be hooked up to something like Arduino, but we are just now getting into open source micro controllers so I might be off in that assessment.

- Getting true performance data is very important. The benches I see use a dyno type arrangement to accomplish this. Are there other methods which I haven't found yet?

- It would be optimal to run everything through a PC and I'm at the very beginning of researching software for this. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Hopefully this is laid out clearly enough to get some useful feedback. There are definately examples of other businesses that solved this problem but that background data is lacking. Thanks in advance to anybody who steps up with suggestions.

Bruce   

Firstly thanks to the founders and community here at Element 14. This is precisely the resource I needed and hopefully I can get some input on a project that I am working on which is a bit outside of my usual area of expertise.

I would like to build a DC motor testing bench. The motors are used in medical equipment and we pull them out of machines which are being retired, or we repair machines which are in house for resale.

The motors that are most common are DC with a gear reducer at the output shaft and an encoder at the back end of the motor case which is run by the tail shaft. The link below shows one example, there are many other sizes of motors here in house, but well over 50% follow this basic layout.

http://www.dunkermotor.com/default.asp?gid=17&bid=0&cid=0&sid=13&lang=2&id=9&mid=6

A generalized view for these motors:

- Voltages range from 12 volt to 160 volt, and the amperage can be from .25 to 10 amps.

- Most of the stock is permanent magnet but around 25% are brushed.

- There are also quite a few servo motors which we would like to test as well.   

The ideal motor testing system would be small(ish) and relatively affordable so that we could deploy it into the field if necessary. My research has shown some good test benches but I also found I was developing more questions than answers as I got deeper into this. Here are the issues that I am contending with (there may be some dumb questions, but this is a bit new for me).

- Power supplies for testing the wide range of volts/amps seem hard to find. It would be ideal to have one that was flexible enough but I have not seen a good fit for the wide range of motors we have. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

- The encoder testing seems like it could simply be hooked up to something like Arduino, but we are just now getting into open source micro controllers so I might be off in that assessment.

- Getting true performance data is very important. The benches I see use a dyno type arrangement to accomplish this. Are there other methods which I haven't found yet?

- It would be optimal to run everything through a PC and I'm at the very beginning of researching software for this. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Hopefully this is laid out clearly enough to get some useful feedback. There are definately examples of other businesses that solved this problem but that background data is lacking. Thanks in advance to anybody who steps up with suggestions.

Bruce