Friday, May 02, 2025

What make a Radam amorphous iron motor so impressive?

ADVANTAGE 1
Amorphous iron core losses are lower than conventional iron laminations, hence Radam motors are more efficient.

ADVANTAGE 2
Since amorphous iron core losses are lower, for any motor operating environment, then resistive losses can be designed to be higher resulting in greater power for Radam motors within the same package size.

ADVANTAGE 3
Since core losses remain lower as operating frequency increases, Radam motors can be designed at high and very high speeds. Radam motors are always more efficient than conventional iron motors at these speeds.

ADVANTAGE 4
At conventional speeds, Radam motors can also be designed for high frequency, which always results in smaller and therefore less expensive Radam motors.

Advantages

The Radam technology centers on converting the amorphous iron ribbon to radial motor components. Radam has applied for utility patents on their novel motor construction as well as on the process to convert amorphous iron ribbon into motor stators with minimal processing and minimal waste.

The Material Background
Radam technology rests on the use and very broad understanding of amorphous iron. Amorphous iron iradam tab technology sub tab advantages pic1radam tab technology sub tab advantages pic1s a metal material with very similar alloy content to conventional motor iron laminations. What makes amorphous iron unique, and superior for motor applications, is that it has no intrinsic crystalline structure and, as its name states, is truly amorphous. Conventional iron laminations contain ordered, structured crystals at the atomic level; amorphous has no such order. Conventional iron laminations are generally as thick as a credit card; amorphous iron is made as a ribbon no thicker than the finest of human hair, i.e. 22 microns. A loose ribbon is shown in the photograph to the left. The advantage of the amorphous iron is that it exhibits extremely low heating losses experienced by all motors when the motors’ magnetic field is switched from forward to reverse. In conventional laradam tab technology sub tab advantages chart1radam tab technology sub tab advantages chart1minations the crystalline structure inhibits flux reversal, causing excessive waste heat. Amorphous iron offers the tantalizing promise of high efficiency motors, generators and transformers.

Only the latter, amorphous iron transformers, have seen commercial success since amorphous iron was developed in the 1970’s and commercialized by Allied Signal under the trade-name Metglas©. Amorphous iron transformers are currently manufactured and are much more efficient than conventional iron transformers. This efficiency is due to the low losses of amorphous iron, as compared to conventional iron, in the figure to the right.

In the past 30 years, many companies have tried and failed to cost-effectively process the ribbon into electric motors. Radam is the first to easily make radial air-gap motors from amorphous iron ribbon. The first Radam motor attempts are a complete success and now have over 10000 tested hours.

Basics of Radam’s Product Technologyradam tab technology sub tab advantages pic2radam tab technology sub tab advantages pic2

  1. Utility Patents (applied for) that describe a motor made from independent amorphous iron motor components. These independent components are subsequently fit together to form the motor stator. This technique is well known in the industry for use with other materials and other lamination configurations and in general is known as a segmented stator.
  2. Additionally Radam describes a novel means to support the segmented components, an important part of the long term reliability and durability of the technology.
  3. Because the stator is segmented, the copper winding density in the stator slots can be very high, making for more efficient motors.
  4. The Radam motors waste less heat and simply run cooler than other technologies.