On 3 May 00, at 8:44, Mark Peterson wrote: > I'm trying to make a speed control for a whole house fan I purchased. The > manufacturer warns in the instructions not to attempt to use a solid state > speed control device with the fan. This brings up a couple questons. > > 1. Firing a triac at various angles to regulate power to a device is > pretty straight forward. Does the method used to do this vary depending > whether you're dealing with a resistive load versus a reactive load like an > induction motor? Just how does motor speed control differ from a basic > lamp dimmer? Mark, AC brushless motors have a non-linear response between supply and speed, it's like a 220V lamp supplied from 180V to 220V, the effect is negligible...a good but expensive choice is to modify supply frequency... Asimple solution is to use a DC brush motor and to modifie with a triac (thyristor and bridge, or transistor ) the efective amplitude of supply, using a PWM algorithm. Vasile ********************************************* Surducan Vasile, engineer mail: vasile@l30.itim-cj.ro URL: http://www.geocities.com/vsurducan *********************************************