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You sound like you have expertise, so could you have a look at his patents? I couldn't make much of them other than they looked familiar in some aspects and imp

You sound like you have expertise, so could you have a look at his patents? I couldn't make much of them other than they looked familiar in some aspects and impractical/impossible in others: https://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.htm&r=0&f=S&l=50&d=PTXT&RS=IN%2F%22helmreich%22&Refine=Refine+Search&Query=IN%2F%22helmreich%22+AND+IN%2F%22martin%22 https://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=... I assume that this is pretty common in trying to improve linear motors - I am trying to get my hands on a small one to drive an air pump and it's just inscrutable to me.

jcims 5y ago
I just have experience rather than expertise, hoping someone with actual expertise shows up to correct me where I'm wrong. :) I love the idea of low hanging fruit in every dimension of technology, but the reality is that linear pumps have been around for quite some time and aren't dominant in any high (sales) volume application that I'm familiar with. That tells me there are likely some tradeoffs here that are not being explained. Vibration would be one obvious area, but could be handled with a harmonic balancer or an additional pump operating 180 out of phase (unfortunately increasing cost/complexity). The other potential issue is that the motor needs to be built for the application for the most part. With rotary compressors, you can incorporate pulleys to gear the system up or down in accordance with the cheapest motor you can put to use. With this system the motor is the pump, so it's harder to add some kind of lever to gear it up or down. (This is less applicable to small A/C systems which tend to use hermetically sealed compressor systems, but for larger systems this can come into play.)
- ironmagma 5y ago
  The cost is likely to be less important as time goes on and consumers become more aware (and caring) of the external cost to having inefficient machines.
  - jcims 5y ago
    Not to be trite, but cost is always important to the manufacturer. Tesla, for example, has been able to build a vertically integrated company through sheer will of its leadership. However, this is highly unusual and most product companies are going to want to invent as little as possible in order to ship a product. In this case a company wanting to sell an HVAC system based on this tech would have to develop the manufacturing pipeline to build these compressors vs. buying them from Copeland. Now Copeland may choose to build these, but they are going to have to build the motor vs. buying them from one of hundreds of companies that build AC motors to spec. Now one of those companies might decide to build these linear motors, but they are going to have to license the IP to do so, putting them at a distinct cost disadvantage vs. standard rotary motors. They are also going to be a sole supplier for some time, something manufacturers are very wary of unless it's a major differentiator. These are likely to cancel out.
    - gpm 5y ago
      Since you mention them - I wonder if Tesla might actually be an ideal customer. As you say, they are vertically integrated, they are well set up to produce the full stack of the technology. They also need compressors (for air conditioning, and at least in their trucks for other systems), that need to be compact and energy efficient. The technologies at play (pressurized fluids, eletric motors and magnets) are all very familiar to them.
      - toomuchtodo 5y ago
        They have their own patent for their highly efficient octovalve heat pump in the Model Y. https://cleantechnica.com/2020/08/03/teslas-octovalve-enabled-a-staggering-10-increase-in-range-for-the-model-y/ https://cleantechnica.com/2020/08/03/teslas-octovalve-enable... > In the Tesla Model Y, the heat pump was a true engineering marvel. Elon admitted on the podcast that he has a trophy rack of impressive tech his teams have come up with in his bedroom at home. The new printed circuit board (PCB) for the Tesla Octovalve was so impressive to Elon that he added it to his bedroom trophy rack.
- Danieru 5y ago
  > linear pumps have been around for quite some time and aren't dominant in any high Every house in Japan with a small scale septic system has a linear pump for injecting air. This may sound niche but in fact large parts of the tokyo metro area are not on centralized sewer systems. Thus there should be at least 10M+ houses with such motors running continuously in Japan alone. The pumps run 24/7 without maintenance for well over a decade. Which also suggests there are bigger reasons not to use such pumps in AC. As any Japanese manufacturer will know of such pumps.
  - leviathant 5y ago
    >Which also suggests there are bigger reasons not to use such pumps in AC. As any Japanese manufacturer will know of such pumps. Yup! This reminds me of a similar pitch from a few years ago. When a Kickstarter went live for a small, quiet window air unit called Noria, people signed up in droves, thinking a startup in Philadelphia had somehow solved a physics problem that Johnson Controls and the companies it's sucked up over the years somehow whiffed on. This new device would chill the whole room, it would be quiet, compact, and most importantly, it wouldn't be heavy. It would easily slot into your window, and store under your bed in the cooler months when you don't need it. They raised nearly $1.5M USD in 2016, and in the last year finally started to deliver window units that were ... big, heavy, and noisy. The physics of heat exchangers are very well established. It's wise to take any wild claims of higher efficiency with a massive grain of salt - someone missed something in their equations and it's going to come out during manufacturing.

jcims 5y ago

I just have experience rather than expertise, hoping someone with actual expertise shows up to correct me where I'm wrong. :) I love the idea of low hanging fruit in every dimension of technology, but the reality is that linear pumps have been around for quite some time and aren't dominant in any high (sales) volume application that I'm familiar with. That tells me there are likely some tradeoffs here that are not being explained. Vibration would be one obvious area, but could be handled with a harmonic balancer or an additional pump operating 180 out of phase (unfortunately increasing cost/complexity). The other potential issue is that the motor needs to be built for the application for the most part. With rotary compressors, you can incorporate pulleys to gear the system up or down in accordance with the cheapest motor you can put to use. With this system the motor is the pump, so it's harder to add some kind of lever to gear it up or down. (This is less applicable to small A/C systems which tend to use hermetically sealed compressor systems, but for larger systems this can come into play.)

ironmagma 5y ago
The cost is likely to be less important as time goes on and consumers become more aware (and caring) of the external cost to having inefficient machines.
- jcims 5y ago
  Not to be trite, but cost is always important to the manufacturer. Tesla, for example, has been able to build a vertically integrated company through sheer will of its leadership. However, this is highly unusual and most product companies are going to want to invent as little as possible in order to ship a product. In this case a company wanting to sell an HVAC system based on this tech would have to develop the manufacturing pipeline to build these compressors vs. buying them from Copeland. Now Copeland may choose to build these, but they are going to have to build the motor vs. buying them from one of hundreds of companies that build AC motors to spec. Now one of those companies might decide to build these linear motors, but they are going to have to license the IP to do so, putting them at a distinct cost disadvantage vs. standard rotary motors. They are also going to be a sole supplier for some time, something manufacturers are very wary of unless it's a major differentiator. These are likely to cancel out.
  - gpm 5y ago
    Since you mention them - I wonder if Tesla might actually be an ideal customer. As you say, they are vertically integrated, they are well set up to produce the full stack of the technology. They also need compressors (for air conditioning, and at least in their trucks for other systems), that need to be compact and energy efficient. The technologies at play (pressurized fluids, eletric motors and magnets) are all very familiar to them.
    - toomuchtodo 5y ago
      They have their own patent for their highly efficient octovalve heat pump in the Model Y. https://cleantechnica.com/2020/08/03/teslas-octovalve-enabled-a-staggering-10-increase-in-range-for-the-model-y/ https://cleantechnica.com/2020/08/03/teslas-octovalve-enable... > In the Tesla Model Y, the heat pump was a true engineering marvel. Elon admitted on the podcast that he has a trophy rack of impressive tech his teams have come up with in his bedroom at home. The new printed circuit board (PCB) for the Tesla Octovalve was so impressive to Elon that he added it to his bedroom trophy rack.
Danieru 5y ago
> linear pumps have been around for quite some time and aren't dominant in any high Every house in Japan with a small scale septic system has a linear pump for injecting air. This may sound niche but in fact large parts of the tokyo metro area are not on centralized sewer systems. Thus there should be at least 10M+ houses with such motors running continuously in Japan alone. The pumps run 24/7 without maintenance for well over a decade. Which also suggests there are bigger reasons not to use such pumps in AC. As any Japanese manufacturer will know of such pumps.
- leviathant 5y ago
  >Which also suggests there are bigger reasons not to use such pumps in AC. As any Japanese manufacturer will know of such pumps. Yup! This reminds me of a similar pitch from a few years ago. When a Kickstarter went live for a small, quiet window air unit called Noria, people signed up in droves, thinking a startup in Philadelphia had somehow solved a physics problem that Johnson Controls and the companies it's sucked up over the years somehow whiffed on. This new device would chill the whole room, it would be quiet, compact, and most importantly, it wouldn't be heavy. It would easily slot into your window, and store under your bed in the cooler months when you don't need it. They raised nearly $1.5M USD in 2016, and in the last year finally started to deliver window units that were ... big, heavy, and noisy. The physics of heat exchangers are very well established. It's wise to take any wild claims of higher efficiency with a massive grain of salt - someone missed something in their equations and it's going to come out during manufacturing.