Alternators.

So as I said, on my blog before this, new week means new things to learn and today I learnt about Alternators.

During practical work, the lecturer gave me, well everyone really, an idea of what an alternator is and what its for. So first of all I'm gonna start off with my understanding of what an alternator is, if there is anything that is missing, or anything that I happen to misunderstand, please correct me and comment below :D.

So what I understood from the lecture was that an alternator does is that it is a component that charges the battery. But how does it work?? Well, we pretty much took everything off and our lecturer explained everything to us.

It starts of from the Roto, as he first explained. What the roto does is that it creates the magnetic field in the alternator, though i don't really understand the term of magnetic field but from the top of my head, it helps produce electricity I guess.. anyways, so the roto creates a magnetic field so that it can create electricity and when theres electricity, there is current, and with current it needs a place to flow onto. Which is why the slip rings are there for. The wires in the alternator are there for the current to flow in and the kind current thats flowing through the wires is AC current though the battery needs DC current coming in which is why the diodes are there for. What the diodes do is they change the AC current into DC currents, but how does this current flow onto the battery? Well, thats the regulators job. What the regulator does is that it controls the voltage from the alternator and also gives out the voltage to the battery using the brush in the alternator. It has a system of where it gives out the voltage when the battery is lacking for some pressure and when the battery doesn't need the pressure, it stops giving out the voltage. Yes, the alternator does have a fan because a very common reason is that it will overheat if you don't keep it cool. If the fan is broken then the diode will get too hot and break off from the alternator.

So that's what I've learnt through my lecturer, I did some more research on google about alternators because I wasn't quite sure of what I understood about them and here's what I found out.

I found out that the alternator isn't the one that gives power to the battery, well it does help, but most of the power comes from the gas tank. The alternator is the one that pretty much connects the gas tank to the battery.

What turns on the Alternator? Well what turns it on is the power you get from the crank shaft and the one that transmits the power it is the fan belt. So the function of the alternator is that it converts the power from the gas tank into electricity.

I also found out that the name, "alternator" was made because of how it produces (AC) alternating current. Like I said earlier, the battery can't use alternating current, so the diodes eat the output of the alternating currents and changes it to direct current (DC).

Further research shows that there are two common elements in an Alternator. The stationary stator and the rotating rotor.

The stator has 3 sets of wires that are wraped/wound around the iron frame. One of each from the 3 sets of wires in the stator have seven coils in them and with those have different loops. Each coil and loops are connected so that you can increase the total voltage output that you get from the crank shaft. There should only be 2 leads in the stator.

The rotor is made out of a shaft, a coil of wire, 2 interweaving irons and 2 slip rings to connect the coil of wire to the car battery. It's the one that pretty much rotates around in the alternator.

Now how does it change from AC to DC?
Well first of all, the battery can't take AC because AC keeps switching from positive to negative. Thats where the Diodes come into use. There are 6 diodes in an alternator and two from the 6 diodes are used with each phase and from the two, one should be taking positive and the other, negative. So what happens then is that from the 1st 180 degree rotation from the rotor, comes the positive electron which then goes onto one of the 7 stator coils in the alternator. Then the 2nd rotation from the rotor comes a negative electron which goes onto another stator coil. So with that system going, the alternate current is now changing to direct current. This term is called RECTIFICATION.

With all that said, the last component remaining is the voltage regulator. It is put there for it to figure out how much energy that is needed to be taken out from the diodes. In the regulator, there is a sensor which is usually connected to the positive post of the battery. If it finds out that the battery needs more voltage, it'll send a signal back to the rotor to produce more energy thus having more energy in the stator coils.

To conclude this blog, I guess, I did have an idea of how an alternator works from the notes I had put down on my notebook though it wasn't clear. Through my research, it has shown me how the Alternator works and now I pretty much have an understanding of how it works.

Thank you for reading this blog, sorry for the bordem :D.

Resources:
http://www.misterfixit.com/alterntr.htm
http://ezinearticles.com/?How-do-Alternators-Work&id=581496

Parallel Circuits and Compound (Series and Parallel Circuits)

New week means new things to learn.
Last week, we pretty much covered a whole lot of things about circuits and through what I have learnt, theres about 3 circuits we've learnt so far which are the series circuit, parallel circuit and components which is using series and parallel circuit together.

I won't ramble on about explain understood with series circuit apart from that, say if another 2 light bulbs was added to the circuit the first light bulb would take most of the 12 available voltage coming from the battery, for example the first light bulb takes 4 voltages thus having 8 available voltage remaining, and the second light bulb would take some of that 8 voltage. The third light bulb would pretty much take the remaining available voltage. The decrease of the amps makes it clear to me that the more resistance there is in a circuit, the less current flows through the circuit.

While at the parallel circuit, when we measured everything, amps, voltages and resistance also power, I have understood that through voltage in the circuit stays the same, unlike series circuit the volts change and you get different readings and it goes for amps too. Seeing as there is no resistance in the current, the results you get out of it. So pretty much the rule in a parallel circuit is that the current stays the same.

Next is compoound. It's pretty much a circuit that has parallel and series circuit combined together.
So combining with the results we had got from our practical, I managed to find out how the circuit works. In the term, power or watts... in-order for the compound circuit to work, it would need to take more watts than what a series or parallel usually uses. Though, in the lighting in the compound circuit seems to different.
When we looked at the circuit it seems that the series light bulb had affected on how the brightness was on the parallel circuit, like the series light bulb is brighter than the parallel circuits. The reason of this is because the series light bulb has more resistance thus conducting a brighter light than the parallel circuit. The parallel's bulb brightness is dimmer because the parallel circuit has low resistance which then allows for the current to flow through with only little resistance. But what happens to the amperege in the compound circuit?
Well, both light bulb one and two, the parallel circuit, shows that the amp stays the same because they don't change only cause is that the voltage among them is shared evenly, althought in the series circuit, the third light bulb represents as a resistance thus giving less current flow in the circuit.
In the voltage, what happens is that in the parallel circuit, both light bulbs 1 & 2 took a certain amount of volts from the conductor thus having the same result when you meausure them again. It's the same because in a parallel circuit, they all use the same amount of voltage, so pretty much the voltage that is given is being shared equally. If you then measure the series light bulb, you will see that there are more voltage that is being used there because it has higher resistance meaning that its pretty much taking all the remaining voltage that left after the volts had passed through the parallel circuit.

So yeah, this is pretty much my understand of each circuits. I hope you enjoyed reading, and please help me if there is in need of correcting. Thank you :)

Volts, Amps, Power and Resistance

Ok, so Uni has started, and pretty much, my group's starting with electrical circuits. Which is good actually because I happen to have a lot of interest with this subject ever since I started learning it last year through Team CAME. Awsome stuff really, because when I was at Team CAME, I can honestly say that I wasn't listening half of what was being said from the lecturer though I was more interested in the practical work, and now we're just revising the basics, such as series circuits and parallel circuits.

So just today, this morning, we completed the series circuit, which I'm happy about because I finally understood everything that works in a series circuit like.. what happens, why the voltage is there, amps, watts, resistance, everything!! Well, maybe I don't understand fully, but I understand enough just for me to understand whats going on in the circuit. It's all interesting stuff really.

So heres what I learnt so far,
Voltage (V) is pretty much a unit that gives electrical pressure to move the electrons in the circuit thus creating current in it.
Now the Ampere(amps) (I) is what we use in electrical to measure the current that is flowing within the circuit. The larger amount and the flow of electrons, the larger the current will be.
Ohms (insert horse shoe picture here) is pretty much the unit of resistance to the flow of the electrons. It is there to either reduce or limit the current flow and voltage in the circuit.
Wattage (watts) (W) is the practical unit of power. It's the one that pretty much produces the output.

Another interesting thing that I learnt and understood fully during the lessons is the OHMS law and Power Law. It's fun to solve the equations once you get the system of each law. All you got to do is find two of each unit from the Law for example, Volts and Amps, and you should be able to solve the last remaining unit which is the resistance. Volts, Amps and Resistance is what you call the Ohms Law. The sequence is also the same for the Power Law. If you look at the two formula's on the top of this post, it is shown how it works and what it looks like.

So on day 1, we were made to do some practical working in the morning which we will have everyday starting from 8:30 till 12.
So anyways, working on a series circuit with only one light bulb as a resistance, we were made to do a voltage drop measurement. Now the term "voltage drop", is used to measure the amount of voltage that is being used on each component in the circuit, and the only components that should be using the voltage are the resistor aka bulb number 1. So as we measured it, it shows that the bulb takes most of the voltage seeing as it is the only resistance in the circuit. Now today, we were made to measure the voltage drops with 2 bulbs and later on, with 3 bulbs. Through those practical work hours, I have come to a conclusion and an understanding of the term "voltage drop" because it has showed that the more resistance/bulbs there is on the circuit, then the voltage that is given from the conductor will be divided evenly in order for the bulbs to work. If one voltage drop from one bulb is different from the other, then there is another component in the circuit that is consuming the voltage. If so, then you must go back and measure all the components until you find where the rest of the voltage is being used. For example, if the switch was using 2 volts, which it shouldn't, then that means you would need to get a new switch.

Also from the past few days, we we're also taught how to measure the amps. I have learnt that the measurement of amps from each component should remain constant or the same because it is the current of the circuit. If one of the readings isn't the same as the other, then there is a problem in the circuit. Of course we were also told to measure the amps with the 2 and 3 light bulbs and the message that i got out of it is that, the more resistance there is, you get less current going through the circuit.

What I also learnt from the circuit is the "available voltage". I don't know how to explain this, but from what I understood is that, say for example, the amount of voltage you get given from a conductor is 12 V and if you were to have 3 light bulbs, the 12 volts will reduce as it passes by through each bulb. So from the conductor, the available voltage is 12 V. It soon then gets to bulb number 1 and it takes a certain amount of voltage. You then measure the wire after bulb number 1 and you get 8 volts. The process repeats, and when the 8 volts reach bulb number 2, the volts reduces, and pretty much the remaining voltage that is left, is given to bulb number 3. So there should be no available voltage at all coming from the wire after bulb number 3.

This is what I have learnt so far. This is my understanding of the series circuits. I will soon upload photos from my practical work. I'd probably do them tomorrow. It is now 11:58 pm. I have to get some sleep for Uni. Thank You for reading. And i Hope you enjoy it. :)