So I'm new here, I am a sophomore in college that is a little obsessed with Electronics (brought here by a professor), and I have been wanting to do a ton of projects but am unable to due to lack of knowledge. I was wondering if someone could give me information (or the location of a place to obtain the information) about inductors. Not just how they alter a signal as it passes through it (as I noticed the other section of this site has) but also about the magnetic field that passes though/parallel to it.

I have been wanting to create some devices that require solenoids and motors, but the ones that I would need would be on a MUCH larger scale than anyone would be willing to make. (IE I can't buy them)

So I don't know anything about how thick wires would need to be, what frequencies would need to be sent through them, how long they can run, or anything like that.

I was also hoping that I would be able to get some information about how magnetic fields interact with each other. I have asked some physics professors here and didn't get anything out of them.

(currently in digital electronics and retaking calculus, though I have high school experience in electronics)

Thank you in advance.

 

Welcome to AAC.

You could start off by reading in our E-books.
Magnetism: http://www.allaboutcircuits.com/vol_1/chpt_14/index.html
Inductors: http://www.allaboutcircuits.com/vol_1/chpt_15/index.html

Navy NEETS publications are a thorough intro as well:
http://www.phy.davidson.edu/instrumentation/NEETS.htm

 

you would also need to describe what your end use might be. You can buy some pretty large motors/solenoids.

 

One thing that I want to make is a large thrust fan... It's for a really weird project. It would need to be able to generate anywhere from 75 to 200 pounds of thrust...

I also want to be able to make my own solenoids for a coil gun project that a friend and I want to make. We want to make it so a solenoid turns off as the projectile gets to the edge of a coil.

Another is to create a levitation inductance melter that can very intensity and frequency.

IE: starter projects so I can work on whatever I want later on and know what I'm doing.

 

Your first paragraph; there are commercially available motors in a very wide range of power inputs and outputs. Trying to "roll your own" would be far more expensive and time-consuming than picking up something that was available off-the-shelf. I suggest that you investigate surplus/salvage type companies; you might wind up with a real deal on a motor.

Your 2nd paragraph:
Please review the board policies, posted here:
http://forum.allaboutcircuits.com/announcement.php?f=5&a=3
We can't allow discussions on anything more hazardous than a solenoid-actuated doorbell or automatic golf ball return out of concerns for safety. Sorry, but if you want to pursue such discussion, you'll need to take it elsewhere.

Levitation inductance melter - well, that's an interesting concept, but will take a heck of a lot of energy, most likely at radio frequencies. Not a topic for beginners.

Like everything else, you have to start with the basics.

 

Sounds like you need 100cc's of Maxwell's Equations, STAT.

Edit: For Linear Accelerators (railgun), I'd suggest making a 2 or 3 stage accelerator and just playing with it. Be careful about what you put through it, though. I built a 10 stage railgun in highschool that could put a nail through a brick.

This is also the same concept used (combined with waveforms/waveguilds) in the production of particle accelerators!

 

Sounds like you need 100cc's of Maxwell's Equations, STAT.

This. If you really want to get into inductor work you should have a strong background in vector calculus and take an electromagnetics course. It's a hugely complicated field and at least for me required a lot of practice before I gained any intuition about it at all.

 

I will have to read over the board policies later so that won't happen again, sorry.

The problem with the thrust fan is that I want the motor to be outside of the blades, and I haven't seen one of these fans in existence yet.

And I know the inductance levitator requires a lot of knowledge, and that's why I want to build it.

If the board policies page doesn't supply me with enough info, I may just send messages to mods or the admin asking if a topic is acceptable, some projects that i want to work on I would consider safe, but others wouldn't.