Husnen Rupani:
Hi, I’m Hus. I’m the CEO of Infinispark. I have more than 12 years of experience in the electrotechnology training industry, so I understand the concerns of compliance, learner attrition, and the increasing demands on trainer’s time. Welcome to Electromag Pracbox video. In this video, I will show you how the Electromag pracbox can simplify maintaining compliance, how it can substantially increase your learner engagement, how it can provide massive time savings for the trainers.

Towards the end of the video, I will show you the operation of a motor and a generator in the Electromag pracbox, so please stay tuned for that. The Electromag pracbox is designed for G101, that is now replaced by L0019 and L0021, which are the core units of Certificate III of Electrotechnology. All the components in this equipment are chosen from the range statement or range of conditions of the relevant units of competency. Let’s take an example of L0021. The Electromag pracbox covers 100% of the practical activities required in the performance criteria and performance evidence of this unit, so you can be confident that any practical activity or assessment conducted with this equipment will lead you towards compliance.

Overall, it covers 93% of this unit and has a knowledge gap of 7%. It’s quite a well-known opinion in the electrical training that electromagnetism is perhaps the most boring subject, mainly because it’s not considered realistic. This becomes quite apparent to the learners, and they also lose interest. Contrary to this opinion, I believe that electromagnetism is one of the crucial and engaging subjects, and the only thing lacking is the right equipment. Most of the components in the Electromag pracbox are realistic, current, and directly applicable in the industry. Let me go over them with you.

Let’s start from this side. This side, we have an open relay, that’s a 12 volts open relay, SPDT contact configuration, and the contact is 40 amps. This one here is a 24-volt DC contactor that has three poles and one normally open, 9-amp contact rating. And this one here is a 24-volt DPDT relay, 12 amp contact rating, and this one here is a 12-volt interface relay that has only one contact that is normally open. So SPST, SPDT, 3P, and 1NO, and SPDT.

All different types of contact configurations. Here, we’ve got three push buttons. All of them have one normally open and one normally closed contact. On this side, we’ve got a cylindrical reed switch, and this is a glass reed switch. Both of them have 1 amp contact rating or switching rating. These two are coils from a contactor, and between them there is a core, just so you can create an electromagnet quite easily with that.

And we’ll also give you the other side of this core so you can test the magnetic field with the core in the middle, on the side, and on the side. All right? So it gives you a lot more versatility. Number of turns of these coils, this one’s around 600 turns, and this one’s 930 turns. So this one’s got a lot higher turns, and resistance wise as well, they’re different. On this side, we’ve got an SPDT toggle switch, hall effect sensor, that’s NPN, inductive sensor, that’s PNP.

We’ve got an inductor here, that’s a common mode choke, so we’ve got inductor on this side and this side as well, 100 millihenry. And this one here is a 50-ohm, 50-watt pot. So very high power rating. So you’ll be able to use it in series with the motors, we’ll be able to use it in series with the lamps, and so on, so it’s very versatile here. These two are 24-volt LEDs, so draw very less current.

These two are batten holders, and with these batten holders, will give you 24-volt lamps that are 25 watts, again, to have an incandescent load. So you can compare the loading effect on the generator, on the incandescent, or with the incandescent lamps, or with LEDs, and you can see the difference of the current draw. On this side here, we’ve got two motors that are coupled together with a timing belt. So if you power one side as a motor, then other side automatically becomes a generator. So that’s a very good demonstration and assessment tool.

Right in the middle, we’ve got two power supply controllers that gives you an option of having a dual power supply, where you can use one side of the power supply as a control circuit and other side of the power supply as a power circuit for relays and contactors. When the learners realize that they will be transferring their theory into realistic prac, their interest increases dramatically. Instead of being disengaged, they will fall in love with electromagnetism. We also offer 30 practical exercises, including marking guides as an add-on to enhance your students’ learning experience. From my experience, electromagnetism has always had maybe one or two pracs, and they take longer to set up than actually conduct.

The Electromag pracbox substantially reduces the setup time because almost everything you need is already there. For example, we have included four different types of relays and contactors with different contact configurations. These components need two power supplies to explain things clearly, and some loads. Instead of managing these individually, they’re all in one pracbox. To demonstrate the time savings, let’s see the Electromag pracbox in action.

Let me show you a demo of electromagnetism. So we’ll use these two coils, which are contactor coils that are taken from the real contactor. So these aren’t toys either, they are realistic components. This side of the coil has 596 turns, and this side of the coil has 930 turns. So by theory, more number of turns will be stronger magnet if the current was the same.

So we’ve set up these two power supplies so that the voltage across this will allow about 0.4 or half an amp of current, and same thing on this side with this power supply. So let’s connect that circuit. So we’ll start with our coil with less number of turns, and let’s turn that on to see how much current we’ve got. So we’ve got about 0.45 amps. Turn that off.

Let’s connect our coil with more number of turns, and turn that on and see how much current we’ve got. So that one is around 0.46. So we know that the currents through both of them will be similar, but being more number of turns on this side, you should have a stronger magnet on this side. To compare the strength, we’ll use this core, and we’ll use this core on this side to try the strength of this magnetic field first. All right, so let’s turn that on, and you can see how the magnetic field activated, and it pulled the core in.

Let’s do that again. Okay? So there, we can see that there was some sort of magnetic field that pulled this core in. One more time. Okay. Now, let’s move this core on the other side.

So according to our theory, this side should be stronger. So let’s see if that happens. As you can see, that was a lot stronger than before. So that proves that if the current is the same, then the coil with more number of turns will be a stronger electromagnet. In this demo, we’ll try and find the pull-in voltage for this open relay.

So this relay here has a lever on the top, and that spring loaded on this side, so it keeps it pulled on one side. Right in the middle you have an electromagnet. So when that is energized, that will pull this lever down against the spring tension. So let’s try and find the pull-in voltage for this relay. Now, this relay is rated at 12 volts, but we’ll start from zero volts, and then slowly go up.

Okay, let’s turn the supply on. Right now, it’s zero volts, so nothing will happen. Let’s increase the voltage one volt at a time. So now, we’re on 1 volt, and we’ve got nothing, 2 volts, nothing, three, four, five, six, seven. So that’s 7 volts, that relay got pulled in.

So the pull-in voltage for this relay is 7 volts or between 6 and 7 volts, even though it’s rated at 12. What that means is it will energize between that voltage, but for it to operate stably, you would have to supply it with 12 volts. Now, let’s see what happens if we drop this voltage. So I’m going to start decreasing this voltage from seven to six. Nothing.

It’s still connected. Five, still connected, four, three, two, and now it disengaged. So what that means is the drop-out voltage of this relay is somewhere between 2 and 3 volts. So pull-in voltage is between six and seven, and drop-out voltage is two and three. In this demo, I will show you these two motors, where these two motors are coupled together.

So when I make one of them as a motor, when I supply one of them with voltage, that will become a motor, and the other side will become a generator, because of this coupling with the timing belt. So let’s power up one side of this to work as a motor. My supply is set to 24 volts, but it’s turned off, so let’s turn that on and see if our motor works. So we can hear that the motor is working. Let’s now connect the generator side.

So we’ve connected the generator to this batten holder, and we’re going to put this lamp, 24-volt lamp to it, and let’s see what happens. So now, the motor is being powered by the supply, which is then turning this motor into a generator, which is powering this lamp. Let’s add another load to it, another lamp to it, and see what happens. Connecting the generator to the second lamp. Okay, let’s turn that on.

As you can see, it was a lot slower to start up. Both of them are lighting, but they’re dimmer than what it’s supposed to be. So if I remove one of the loads, that lamp goes brighter, and if I remove that load as well, you can hear that the motor is running a lot better now. So if I add the load again, it goes a little bit dull, but it’s powering this lamp, and if I add another load, it goes even duller. So what’s happening there is the terminal voltage of the generator is dropping, and that’s the concept that you’re trying to explain to the students with this.

Eliya Mackle:
Was way better, yeah, to go theory, learn the words first, and then go and play with your hands a bit, and figure it all out. Yeah.

Husnen Rupani:
Very good, very good. We offer ongoing phone and email support so you will always feel supported. Our aim at Infinispark is to work with you to maintain compliance, increase learner engagement, and give the trainers back some time. Please get in touch with us to see how we can work together. Thanks for watching.