I've delved deep into the reason why people prefer to use wedge-shaped coils when building PCB motors. After a lot of Googling, a bit of Python scripting, and a ton of visuals, what emerged was a very compelling argument for the humble wedge coil. Turns out, radial lines are the heroes in the story – the more the merrier – because these are what generate the fields in the correct direction to crank up the torque. Don’t get too attached though; there may be alternative, more efficient coil designs yet to discover, but those are topics for another day!
I've been diving deep into the world of PCB (Printed Circuit Board) coils, inspired by Carl Bugeja's incredible PCB motors! After deciding to set up an automated process for creating the coils rather than manually drawing them (can you imagine?), I found our main constraints became track width and spacing, and the number of layers we could use. During the process of creating spirals for our coils, I encountered some interesting problems - spirals are easy, but what about arbitrarily shaped coils? My attempts ultimately lead me to develop more efficient algorithms and KiCad plugins to generate these special coils....