
One of the few companies I've been at that didn't make me sign a strict NDA and encouraged me to share my most interesting work was Barrett. One of the projects I'm most proud of from working with them was the design and build of a liquid cooled motor. I created models and drawings in Solidworks, paying close attention to the tolerances involved and had parts sent out to a shop to be built. Follow the break for a step-by-step process to build one of my motors.
Building A Liquid Cooled Motor
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Step 34 Apply the Loctite 518 to the front of the stator case and the backplate with the bonded rotor shaft as earlier and seat the parts together. WARNING: The magnets in the rotor are strong and will do their best to mess up any finely laid adhesive. Be extremely careful. Be sure the other end of the shaft protrudes from the rear back plate bearing.
As you can see above, one of my major contributions was the design and prototyping of a liquid cooled version of their motor. This was a really fun piece to design and build as it really let me expand on areas I wasn't yet comfortable with, like liquid cooling and design for manufacturing, as well as explore whole new areas like purpose-selected adhesives and brushless CD motor performance analysis. I came away pleased with my work there, and Barrett seemed pleased as well, since they created more of our setup and my motor since I left. I hear they're planning on making four or five of our setup so they can have cables running all the time.