A lot of you may have heard of this before, but I never thought it was actually a serious product....serious enough for Honeywell to be involved and get sued over.

http://main2.infogate.com/content/content.php?feed=prnews&catkey=ind_aut&uniqueID=997914965674939&bid=1

www.turbodyne.com

sounds like an interesting product.

Here it is:

http://www.turbodyne.com/products/1500.html

Just because it's not serious doesn't mean your not going to sue over it - hell, it sounds almost like turbodyne is pissed off that their technology didn't work.

It looks like a good product. Obviously it's not going to give you 600HP, but it looks like a good way to help spool up those VF22s that people are dropping in.

It'd be a not-exactly-twin turbo setup.

yeah i spent several minutes looking through their website. I'd be interested in a 'kit' if it was ever actually manufactured, but as far as I can tell, they are still just a startup with no actual product to sell.

oh well.

Honeywell makes the "Turbo" fan sitting in my living room... could this be what the suit is about? ;)

-tim

"... The controller provides 3-phase current to a Permanent Magnet Brushless DC motor. ..."

The last time I checked, you can not have 3-phase DC power :)

Am I missing something here, or are they?

--GDD

3 phase Permanent Magnet motors are called "brushless DC" even though they technically use AC currents to drive them. Basically they use a "Chopped DC" signal. That is a signal whose period varies based on the RPM of the motor (speed control) and whose amplitude varies by discrete DC levels. The voltage waveform looks kinda like a sine wave made of 4 or 5 steps.


It's generated by controlling a set of 6 transistors (2 per phase).

Even plain old brush DC motors use an "AC" signal to vary speeds. It's called pulse width modulation. It's more efficient than simply varying the DC voltage with a transistor or variable resistor.

edit: my diagram didn't come out looking right

Wha? Was that hyeroglyphics???? Lol anyways, does this thing work or not? Come on techies.

Garret

Well, if they can really find an electric motor that can rev to 160,000 RPM, or a normal 16,000 RPM motor that can handle the torque of a 10:1 gear ratio, that doesn't cause your alternator to melt, then yes, it could work.

Even if it only produces low boost, it should work well in conjunction with a large turbo. Since Honeywell is involved, we are not just dealing with a low budget startup with PowerPoint science.

The product looks like a nice idea, but the idea isn't something compleatly new.

The 3-phase motor was designed ages ago, the converter to dc to 3-phase "dc" has been around for a long time also. Then you just add that to a turbo compressor wheel and you have the idea.

If their lawsuit is about the idea (since it doesn't sound like it was ever put to an actuall design), then I think its a crock.

Philip

From the press release, it is an anti-trust lawsuit. They are suing Honeywell because they signed a joint development contract, then tried to stall development in an effort to keep the product from ever coming to market. Presumably, they hope to prove that their product would compete with Honeywell's controlling market share in the turbo-charger market.

Jordan

Thanks for the information, MHJ!
--GDD

" Turbodyne Technologies, Inc. (OTC: TRBD) announced that it has today filed a private antitrust action against Honeywell International, Inc., seeking damages of up to $9 billion."

It sounds like a deal went sour and turbodyne is trying to get some money out of it. 9 billion dollars, I doubt turbodyne even spent 200 million dollars on this "technology."

In an anti-trust suit, they can sue for damages based on what they believe their company would be worth if the defending party had not interfered.

Jordan