Does anyone have experience with switched reluctance motors and their control? This motor technology does not seem to be in wide use, so I can't find any development kits to "cut my teeth" on. Any help on where to start would be greatly appreciated!

Contact George Holling at www.rockymountaintechnologies.com. he has lots of experience with them.

Freescale (formerly Motorola) has a dev kit. Also TI, and Microchip. I don't think many come with the actual motor, that is harder to get your hands on. I know Emerson made an SR machine for a dish or clothes washer at one time. The Dyson hand held vacuum has a high speed machine as well. I have designed high speed SR motors and generators for unique applications, but built custom power electronics and controls for them with an Altera FPGA basis. PM motors can take advantage of integrated power modules where the high and low IGBTs are connected in module. I know of nothing that exists as a module for SR and so you need discrete Mosfet or IGBT packages for the SR.

Thanks for the information gentlemen.

We found a SR motor for a Maytag washing machine on eBay for an intern's senior project. In fact, a couple of them. One was used for demonstration of the controller and the other as a visual aid of the construction features. Semikron does have some modules with the correct topology but pretty limited in selection.

Excellent idea, I never considered checking eBay. Thanks!

Hi Rick. You can get a 22A or 30A SRM Intelligent Power Module (CIPOS) from Infineon joint venture company LS Power Semitech (www.lspst.com) used currently in multiple vacuum cleaner designs. These are Single-In-Line style, 2-Phase configured. Let me know if would like samples for evaluation. Peter Stipan

Rick I worked on SRs for many years at SRDL in the UK (now park of Nidec). FYI Semikron make an asymmetric half bridge power module suitable for any phase SRs. In terms of Motor yes the 3 phase Magtag 12/8 is a good option. The Ametek Infinatek 2 phase is another. Besam used to make a a sliding door motor in the UK. There is also a scandanavian company called emotron who used to do SR if memory serves me correct

Don't contact George Holling at Rocky Mountain. He's a shyster. We speent hundredsd of thousands of dollars with him and never got a working system. Run the opposite direction.

Any connection with Rocky Mountain Institute in Aspen?

George Holling has no connection with Rocky Mountain Institute.