I have a motor from an old seagate hard drive. Its the larger one that spins the platters and has 6 pins (Brown, Pink, Red, Yellow, Blue, Green).

How would I drive this motor? Anyone have a schematic?
Thanks!
~Mike

__________________
All Electronic components run on smoke. Let the smoke out and it no longer works.
~Tim Baker (Electronics Instructor at John A. Logan College)

 

I would guess it's a DC brushless motor?, some of the wires will be the drive coils, and some the feedback from the hall effect sensors?.

Easiest way to use it is to remove the driver chip from the hard drive as well, and copy that part of the circuit.

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Unfortunately I removed the motor many years ago and have since either thrown away the driver board or its burried in my pile of parts somewhere.

The plug is actually a 7 possition plug and one hole is blank. The Brown wire is separated by the gap.
I can't take the motor apart so I can't trace the windings.
~Mike

__________________
All Electronic components run on smoke. Let the smoke out and it no longer works.
~Tim Baker (Electronics Instructor at John A. Logan College)

 

Afetr messing with the motor a bit, I think its a DC Brushless 3 phase motor. Is there a way I can run this motor without an IC driver?
~Mike

__________________
All Electronic components run on smoke. Let the smoke out and it no longer works.
~Tim Baker (Electronics Instructor at John A. Logan College)

 

3 phase DC motor driver anyone?

__________________
All Electronic components run on smoke. Let the smoke out and it no longer works.
~Tim Baker (Electronics Instructor at John A. Logan College)

 

That's what I suggested it was!.

You don't NEED an IC driver, you could build one out of discrete components - you could even use a PIC to provide the correct switching sequence.

DC brushless motors work in exactly the same way as brushed ones, with the coils energised in the correct sequence to make it rotate, the correct sequence also needs to be syncronised with the rotation of the motor.

With brushes you have simple mechanical switching of the coils, with the syncronisation guaranteed by the action of the brushes on the commutator.

With a brushless motor the postition of the rotor is given by a number of hall effect sensors, so you need to read those, and switch the coils acordingly.

Perhaps for a start you might find out which connections are which, and try reading the hall effect sensors?.

__________________
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ok thanks Nigel.
My original question was to be able to drive it without a driver chip...dunno why I said 'motor driver' in that last post lol
Will there just be one hall effect sensor? There are 3 wires that I assume are for the sensor. Probably Possitive, Negative and Signal?
~Mike

__________________
All Electronic components run on smoke. Let the smoke out and it no longer works.
~Tim Baker (Electronics Instructor at John A. Logan College)

 

There are usually more than one sensor, as you need to know the position of the rotor. You might try looking at old VCR's, almost all of them use similar motors for both the rotary head and capstan motors.

Taking a capstan motor apart will give you a good idea how they work, they pull apart quite easily (just a single circlip) and you can see all the components.

__________________
PIC programmer software, and PIC Tutorials at:
http://www.winpicprog.co.uk