Our Story

The Radam Story – How we Came to this Point

Radam LLC is a motor technology company that is on-path to produce the most efficient and least wasteful electric motors and generators ever created. Radam is the successful leader in the history of attempts to exploit a superior motor material with the explicit goal of creating the best electric motors ever made.

Presently amorphous iron is made by Hitachi Metals and AT&M in volumes of 100,000 tons per year. The overwhelming use of the material is in transformers. Why transformers? Because transformers are easier to make than motors, and until Radam’s progress, no party had determined a low cost means to make amorphous iron motors.

Early Motor Efforts

However, as early as 1979, patents were being issued and papers were being published attempting to exploit the material for use in motors. It’s worth reviewing why the early attempts failed, in the form of 3 Critical Roadblocks:

The Three Critical Amorphous Iron Motor Roadblocks

1. Related Electronics: To fully exploit the amorphous iron to its best advantage high frequency motor electronics must be available. This had yet to be developed.
2. Design Understanding: Most attempts to exploit amorphous iron in motors merely tried to replace conventional iron with amorphous iron. This is not the best means to employ novel materials – these approaches would not succeed.
3. Manufacturing Process: No party had ever proposed a clear feasible path to create the necessary manufacturing process needed to transform the amorphous iron ribbon into low cost motor components.

What has changed in the past 25 years to clear these Roadblocks?

Roadblock 1

The lack of Related Electronics is by far the easiest Roadblock to address. Over the past 25 years the power electronics industry has made forward progress that is on par with the rest of the computer and electronics industry. State of the art today was wild hope just 10 years ago. Today it is relatively easy and cost-effective to purchase commercial motor drive systems that operate up to 1000 Hz, with no need for expensive sensors, ranging in power levels from 1 to 1000 kW.  This progress has been driven independent of the path of amorphous iron motors but is entirely necessary for successful exploitation of Radam’s motors. Thus, the 1^st Critical Roadblock has been effectively  cleared.

Roadblock 2

In the year 2000, Andrew Hirzel began basic design work on amorphous iron motors at Light Engineering Inc. These early attempts were based on axial motor technology. Axial motors are distinguished from radial motors since the former is akin to a flat plate rotating adjacent to a fixed disk, as opposed to the latter being characterized as a common

can rotating within a fixed cylinder. Most of the worldwide amorphous iron motor projects were done using axial approaches since the industry had given up on the radial approach long ago. Light Engineering selected the axial type motors as the only type that seemed likely to achieve cost efficacy. The axial solution is also pursued by organizations in Australia and Japan.

Although these approaches can achieve high power density, the many negatives of the axial motor approach are independent of the amorphous iron; poor acceptance by the technical community, expensive bearing systems, and the inevitable dual-winding solutions all limited the axial air gap motor viability. There is only one other radial air gap approach to amorphous iron motors known to Radam, and it suffers from inherent power density problems due to its topology. The oft-touted promise of high efficiency amorphous iron motors and generators has never reached its full potential.

However, during his time at LE Inc. Hirzel was awarded 11 US patents around amorphous iron motor technology. During the same time Hirzel published 5 peer-reviewed papers concerning these motors. Clearly great strides were being made to address the 2^nd Roadblock, that of Design Understanding.

To effectively use amorphous iron to its best advantage one must review the savings potential. The adjacent figure demonstrates that increasing frequency from 60 Hz to 400 Hz can increase potential savings from $2 to $35. There is little doubt that optimization of amorphous iron involves higher than today’s conventional 60 Hz frequency. Based on Hirzel’s immersion in amorphous motor design over the past 12 years, and his success at the patent office and in academia’s publications, he is amongst the world’s leaders in amorphous iron motor design. Specifically, Hirzel learned that taking an incrementally evolving approach to the fundamental design theory would never make the leap into the high potential of high efficiency amorphous iron motors. Optimal and successful amorphous iron motor design is inseparable from high frequency motor design. The 2^nd piece of the puzzle was nearly solved. Hirzel left the world of axial motors in early 2010.

In these years a valuable textbook was published, Brushless Permanent Magnet Motor Design (Hanselman 2006). This text has relevance not because it addresses amorphous iron but because it provides a wealth of practical independently-derived data to show that motors can be designed to exploit high frequency to great advantage. A detailed Radam analysis highlights the textbook’s data and puts the problem of the 2^nd Critical Roadblock to one side.

Roadblock 3

In mid-2010 Hirzel and Mark McPherson began work on a new motor technology, based on amorphous iron, and attempting to create solutions with a radial motor topology. McPherson has a long history manufacturing components for small radial air gap motors. Radial motors are the basis of 99% of motors in the world today and have much higher commercial promise than any other types. The goal from the very beginning was to seek a solution that overcomes the 3^rd Roadblock, a good Manufacturing Process.

A number of approaches were investigated which resulted in Radam's patent application. To verify the most promising directions several motors were built and tested similar to that shown in the picture below. The best of these motors were built in limited volume to study basic manufacturing choices, tolerances and parameters. These Radam motors were put to lifetime test and currently have over 10,000 hours and counting. In Early 2012 Scott Page joined Radam. Page is the author of 2 US patents related to amorphous iron processing technology and also has extensive experience in high-volume manufacturing. Based on the actual Radam test data and Page’s manufacturing experience Radam is confident that the 3^rd and final Critical Hurdle, that is a valid Manufacturing Process, has been solved.

In April 2012 Hitachi Motors announced a commercial motor that uses amorphous iron. The benefits are, as expected, high efficiency. The approach is based on Hitachi papers published in 2009. This approach relies on an axial technology and in no way overlaps with Radam’s solution. It does show that the future for amorphous iron motors is real.

Radam now has everything needed to fulfill the promise of high efficiency electric motors and generators:

1. Commercially available power electronics.
2. A deep and thorough understanding of the amorphous motor design process.
3. Patents applied for a low cost means to manufacture amorphous iron motors.
4. And most critically, at no point since the dawn of the industrial revolution has there been a greater demand for energy efficient solutions than there is today. Thus, last but not least:
5. A marketplace primed and ready for Radam’s technology.