Solenoid Tests

I won’t detail the setup exactly in this post, but I just received my solenoids from Goldmine Electronics and they are awesome. Thanks to Zachary for pointing me in the right direction on that one. I’ve never played around with solenoids, and they are very basic, but what can you expect when you only pay $0.99 for each solenoid. How do solenoids work? Well, when you run current through a wire you get a magnet field. This magnetic field circles around the wire. When you wrap the wire in a coil you get a stronger magnetic field! Wrap it enough times and run enough current through it you can get a large enough field to attract an iron core plunger. When the current turns on the plunger is attracted and retracts. When the current turns off a spring returns the plunger back to its original position. That’s the basics of a solenoid.

Drawbacks:

Solenoids need a large current to run through it in order to create a large enough magnetic field. Since nothing is a 100% efficient you get a lot of HEAT. Heat is the enemy in electronics. If things get too hot things burn up and solenoids are no exception. So you can only run them for about 25% of the time and they have to rest for 75%. That is going to make it difficult for the cutter mechanism. Since I want to be able to keep everything open or cut the water at ANY given time, I will have to think of a clever mechanism that will hold the cutter in its proper place one the solenoid have moved it to its desired position.