Steorn Orbo Motor Replica

Reader [Hjhndr] ran across an interesting set of tests and wanted to know if they’re brilliant or just a load of bull. We’re not making the call on that, but the tests on a Steorn Orb motor replica are worth looking at.Keep in mind, people used to think the earth was flat and scientists of the time would have sworn up and down that’s the way things were.

The Steorn Orbo is a motor that generates more power than is put into it. At least according to Steorn Limited that’s what it does. An independent panel of scientists said otherwise a few years back but that didn’t stop the company from showing off the concept a few more times, most recently a showing in Dublin ended this month.

So anyway, [Jean-Louis Naudin] took what he saw from those demonstrations and built a replica. He’s made several papers about the principle as well as his testing available online. There’s a lot of math, a little bit of smoke and mirrors, and several videos. Take a look and let us know what you think in the comments.

175 thoughts on “Steorn Orbo Motor Replica

  1. Well OK, maybe I didn’t.

    But given that people actually fall for this “Free Energy” garbage, I figured I’d see if I could take some people for a ride.

    Now, about that time machine…

  2. Here is a secret: dont bash pseudo since project or focus on over-unity aspect in them. Instead you should try to notice rare electronics “tricks” in them, since many times such projects exploit on-standard and poor documented properties of components (sometimes they directly respond to erroneous measurements)and they might be pretty handy to use and benefit yours next project by saving you some parts or at least warn you about hidden traps.

  3. Oh come on now, this is fun stuff. It’s smoke and mirrors, but it’s fun to read and pick apart.

    I think of J. Naudin like David Blain, an entertainer.

    Now, if this principle could only be used as the ignition source of the sausage gun, you wouldn’t be laughing!

  4. Hngh.. I guess i didn’t get it right. I never got it. How the hell can one like Jnaudin afford expensive instruments like scopemeters and on the other hand fail at self explaining effects. The coil, rated at 1.2 ohms will consume round about 25 watts if driven at 6 volts. No words about that. Why? This is not “just to release” the magnets but this is the counter-work to his “free” energy. Same thing on his glorious tesla motors… and so on an on. I just wonder who pays him for deviating real garage scientists from their right way ;)
    the only strange overunity device that refuses explanation i know is Reidar Finsruds machine (google it!)

  5. As you know Steorn offered everyone to come by and inspect the device for himself with any kind of instrument they wish. So if it is bullshit, people will see, if it’s not, it’s good :)

  6. @jamram
    “The coil, rated at 1.2 ohms will consume round about 25 watts if driven at 6 volts. No words about that. Why? This is not “just to release” the magnets but this is the counter-work to his “free” energy”

    [You may notice that the current rises very fast (for the same inductance value) and the top of the curve is FLAT and HORIZONTAL….]
    [It is very interesting to observe that the current is constant during 72% of the pulse while the inductance of the stator coils increases from 246mH to 916mH..]

    cmon I haven sleep for 2 days already and did notice what all fuzz is about

  7. I think this is in no way a valid replication of Orbo. It is very clear that the arrangement that he has set up has a significant amount of EMF in the system. While not quite a normal pulse motor, it certainly is not Orbo.

  8. While I agree that this writeup is purely unscientific. forgetting peer-review, this wasn’t even proof-read! So the knee-jerk reaction to cry “bunk!” seems justified.
    Still, I can’t help but wonder if the scientific community had a similar reaction the first time nuclear fission was presented…
    “Listen chaps, we found this material underground, and if we glob enough of it together, it get’s bloody hot! Hot enough to boil water no doubt! I do say, a locomotive could run for centuries on this wonder material! By jove, it is free energy!”

    It’s not free energy, it’s just the slow extraction of lots and lots of stored energy; energy stored over millions of years. Kind of like – oh wait! – kind of like magnetic energy.

    Free energy is impossible, but really really cheap energy sure ain’t. As long as it lasts my lifetime, it’s perpetual enough for me.

  9. For many years I thought these sort of guys were honestly mistaken, and tried to explain to them where they had gone wrong to save their wasted time for more productive activity.

    After many such encounters I came to the conclusion that the Over-Unity community are either insane, dishonest, or both, and that engaging them only makes matters worse.

    For the “anything is possible crew”, a little mind experiment…

    If you remove the external energy source from a conventional “Under Unity” device it spins down due to mechanical and electrical friction (e.g. eddy currents).

    Clearly in an “Over Unity” device or system the opposite will occur; once initially set in motion the excess “free” energy will cause the device to go faster.

    The real proof of “Over Unity” is that the device should very quickly blow itself, and no doubt the hapless discoverer, to hell in an uninhibited release of energy – a bit like a Black Hole in reverse.

    It is reasonable to think that if such a pinhole could be made in entropy, all the energy of the universe would then flow through it; that it would initiate a new Big Bang before anyone could say “oops”.

    More specifically, Back EMF is an inherent property of inductance, and the claim that a current can be changed in an inductance without producing a back EMF is like claiming that you can have mass without gravitation.

    “The onus of proof is on the proposer of miracles” – extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, not obfuscation and rhetorical baffle-waffle.

    It is not enough to be persecuted, you must also be right. At the bottom line, to explain Over Unity you have to un-explain everything else.

    “What we really need to do is find a way to tap the energy from belief.”

  10. why does everyone dismiss these? you don’t imagine the fields could pull ‘excess’ energy from the environment? or speed each other up and conserve the energy in the spin giving it back? anything?

  11. This just seems like a modern day Alchemy! Alchemists believed that they could create gold, essentially via some process that could be interpreted as “free” gold. With enough energy, research we can create new elements, it’s quite conceivable that with our current knowledge we could, in-fact, create gold, it’s just the cost to create it would be inefficient I would imagine.

    My point is, whether or not this is a pseudo science or not is irrelevant, just as alchemy as a pseudo science is irrelevant, without it we would not have discovered the elements, the periodic table, which gave birth to chemistry and ultimately modern physics! Who knows where this misguided research may lead? A greater understanding of thermodynamics? Who knows?

    Despite being ridiculous, alchemy had its place in scientific history and represents an example of our, still naive understanding of our universe, just as perpetual motion research (and I do think it’s BS!) will ultimately push science forward in ways we (as with the alchemists) can’t currently imagine!

    Just my thoughts :-)

  12. Hackaday, thank you for putting up this article, if only to expose the flamers and haters out there. People, this is site based on experimentation and engineering, where anyone can share an idea and the only criteria is that it’s interesting. Thank you to the people who spent the time to explain why this particular motor is not a PMM, you are the ones who this site needs more of. To you flamers, go bury your nose in another textbook while you wait for death to rescue you from this boring world which you’ve already figured out.

  13. @corey-t: Well, that would hardly be a closed system then, would it?

    @lowlysoundtech: Just because you think physics and textbooks are boring doesn’t make them any less factual.

  14. I hardly think that textbooks are boring, but it’s when someone pulls their nose out and starts thinking radically that invention takes over. Needless to say, to have the knowledge first is instrumental, but my point in that statement was that if you know everything there is to know and are quick to trounce on others ideas, no matter how ludicrous, then the world must be a bland and boring place, since all the mystery is gone.

  15. Pretentious sheep! The biggest difference between you guys and JLN is that he is actually DOING something! It takes no talent, courage, or imagination to say “that’s bullshit!”. Where is YOUR proof? In dusty old volumes of lore that were written before you were born…”Recite from the Book of Physics, Chapter 1: Thou Shalt Have No Other Physics Before Me!”. Do the experiment and explain what you find! The naysayers are the idiots, not the doers.

  16. Quick somebody get the Obama administration wolfy02 has the right idea! Get congress to amend the laws of physics!Princess Pelosi and Comrade Reed will go along with it While we are at it get Gore on board by telling him it will reverse global warming(that stupid fucker will believe anything)How can it get any greener?Free Energy Hope and Change YOU can believe in Obama 2012

  17. Interesting. Where the hell are all of these super-intelligent HAD readers when a legitimate hack comes along? It’s like if you publish something that should be on the site, no one cares. But if you publish something like this all these brains show up and break out their physics degrees and hyperlinks to wiki articles.

  18. @trolls (hackaday competitors) in respect to thermodynamics; read a recent physics book you sound like the catholic church in 1615. You may also want to read up on partial duality.

  19. consider this, a metalic item sticks to a metalic surface, that requires energy right? say it does it for 100’s of years, thats a lot of energy right? now what if i told you it did it with no energy input what so ever? impossible right? thats a magnet.

    now consider that an object continuously moves, perpetual motion, must get energy from some where right? thats an atom.

    whats a magnet? a series of aligned atoms generating a force. an atomic force. a magnet is a clean atomic energy.

    think about it.

  20. While the part about free energy is junk, it is a slightly interesting concept for a stepper motor, if you would change the number of coils and magnets. It would probably be horribly inefficient, but it would generator it’s maximum holding torque without any power consumption. For some applications, that could be a very desirable property.

  21. I’ve seen a few similar machines, most of them end up working more like a mechanical transformer, turning a small, forceful movement into a fast, forceless one.

    The impedance mismatch will cause you to apply more force with your hands than you realize.

    Of course, every time someone tries to go for a hand operated “proof of concept” to a fully automated version, it won’t run.

  22. C’mon, even a high school freshman would know that the laws of physics and thermodynamics state that a device like this couldn’t work, especially the rule that NO DEVICE IS 100% EFFICIENT. That said, if it WAS 100% efficient, it won’t produce more energy; it will simply keep running.

    That said, due to friction, uneven shape of the rotor, electrical resistance and so on, the device WILL NOT WORK.

    @stephen

    A magnet cannot simply create an electrical current without mechanical energy, and it’s not going to supply itself with mechanical energy (gravitational energy notwithstanding.)

  23. Blacklight Power is an example of not only “free energy”, but also an example of a discovery that will turn a lot of physics upside down. and it doesn’t look too difficult to reproduce – it would be a good chemistry hack.

  24. we really don’t understand electricity/magnetism very well. we just know how to use it in some basic ways. but if you do the experiments in Howard Johnson’s book on magnets, you will find that odd combinations of assembling magnets can make N attract N, and you can increase magnetism at a distance, while decreasing it in close proximity. there is much we don’t know. Dr. Mills at BLP is proving that Newtonian physics governs at quantum levels, and he is going to have quantum physics tossed out the window. don’t think we know it all – because we don’t. much science is based upon “theory” which is inserted to skip over things never understood or proved as fact.

  25. @chad

    We, you? Or we, humanity? Because “we, humanity” understand it quite well – at least, those of us who make the effort to study it do. The points where we don’t are mostly places where only the people who have made a career of studying it know or care. From your choice of examples, I suspect you meant “we, Chad.”

    Also, it doesn’t sound like you understand quantum mechanics for crap.

  26. @corey-t
    Because it *contradicts* what is already very well established, hence “to explain this you have to un-explain everything else”. Over-Unity wouldn’t *add* to our scientific knowledge (as QM adds to our understanding of kinematics), it would vapourise ALL of it it back to year zero. Put simply, the fact that transformers and motors work in a predictable way IS the proof that OU is wrong.

    @therian
    No. Your response shows you obviously don’t understand what I wrote, nor the sweeping implications of what is being claimed by the Over-Unity crowd.

    In essence; friction/losses act as a limit on machines – negative feedback. Over Unity posits negative friction/losses (explicitly in the case of this machine it is claimed that more speed gives more power) or positive feedback. The first case is stable, the second UNstable – more gives more. Take e.g. a ball bearing and spin it and observe that friction losses eat up the energy you put in. Now consider what would happen if friction acted with the opposite sign, *aiding* rotation rather than opposing.

    @lowlysoundtech
    It’s not a matter of “knowing everything”, but of knowing *something*.

    A plane (for example) has a maximum speed determined by the point where the thrust is balanced by the drag (losses). Now consider the case of a plane where the reverse is true, where effective thrust *rises* faster than the losses. What limits the speed?

    Never mind textbooks, isn’t it obvious that any Over-Unity device that *inverts* the relationship between thrust and drag would be *inherently unstable* and try to run to infinity?

    You’ve got it upside down, ignorance is boring; the more you learn the *more* exciting the world becomes because you get a better understanding of what we don’t (yet) know, e.g. what an electric or magnetic “field” actually IS.

    @f-diddy
    How about a lifetime of EXPERIENCE applying physics, not least to electric machines? It’s not this build or HaD publishing it, it’s the interpretation of the results by the originator Steorn I take issue with. If a firm understanding of electro-magnetics and 40 years of effective industrial and bio-med builds makes me an “idiot” it’s a badge I’ll wear with pride.

    @stephen
    Energy isn’t work. A coathook can hold something up too, but that ain’t free work either.

    @Sparky
    Yup, see also the “Adams Motor”, yet another stepper dressed up as Over-Unity.

    @chad
    While it is true that there is a lot we don’t understand about the “why” of electro-magnetic induction it is also true that there is also an awful lot we do understand about the *behaviour* of electrodynamics. Nothing in QM changes what is very well established about F=ma in the macro.

    Despite the Orbo being examined by a scientific jury that was hand picked by the inventor they found nothing to support his claims.

    Before anyone attacks “theory” know that many things in daily use started as a theory (e.g. masers/lasers, nuclear fission, through to the very computer you are using); find out who Alan Turing and William Shockley were.

    BTW; Eratosthenes determined the diameter of the Earth in 230 B.C., others determined the Earth wasn’t flat even earlier; it’s just taking a while for that fact to penetrate Christendom.

    Two things need to be clearly understood here, firstly that Over-Unity claims aren’t new but as old as science itself; and that if found to be true wouldn’t just add to our body of knowledge, they would render it totally null and void. Not only would all of physics and chemistry be wrong, so would the entire body of mathematics – no small claim.

  27. the word “free energy” has misconceptions. in its practical sense, it refers to new ways of tapping/channeling energy, and making use of non-chemical energies. hopefully, in ways that enable the “average joe” to provide his own energy. radio and nuclear energy may have seemed just as crazy to many people 200 years ago, but now we use and accept these things universally. i have several degrees in engineering and science, and have read a lot about QM in my lifetime (no claim of work experience/expertise), and i never had a good feeling about it. mostly blowing up little particles to see what happens, and measuring what can be measured. requires trillions of dollars and little knowledge comes of it. Dr. Mills work is very appealing to me, and from all appearances, he is going down as one of the major figures in the history of science. he found a unique source of energy, tracked it down, perfected it, and his work resulted in new working theories that might well result in the “grand unified theory”.

    so, i really dislike people that just “poo-poo” sincere efforts to study things that expose previously unknown effects. it is easy to do, and just wastes time. better to replicate the effects, and try to understand them yourself, and then present a conclusion. i don’t think it is reasonable to say that Steorn is just a bunch of crackpots. i am sure they have better things to do than risk their business, families, reputations, and many years of their life for a big joke. it seems more reasonable to presume they have found some anomally that needs further study, and something that might provide a new source of energy. i don’t think anyone is worthy to comment much about it now, because nobody has replicated the effects and understood them well enough to present a thoughtful conclusion that enables a further understanding of science.

  28. i have built a Howard Johnson “magnet track” using cheap ceramic magnets (rectagles for the track, circles combined to make a cylinder for the car) from Home Depot, and i can put a “car” at one end, and it will zoom to the other end of the track. i haven’t had time to see if the track can be closed in a circle, or if not, to see if gravity can be used to make the car go forever in a circular track. there is many things people can hack in this area. i highly suggest Howard Johnson’s book on magnets for people interested in them.

    it’s called “Secret World of Magents” and can be found in PDF form on the Internet.

  29. Well @chad-with-several-degrees I also have serious difficulties with QM and think it is at best incomplete, but I will re-re-pose my very simple conceptual OU question; WHAT *LIMITS* THE OPERATION OF AN OVER-UNITY DEVICE, ONE WITH NEGATIVE LOSSES?

    This isn’t “poo-pooing” but a very reasonable basic question any OU investigator should ponder before activating their device. How can you regulate or stop it? Why is it not logical to expect such a device to rapidly/instantly blow itself to hell, and to take sensible safety precautions?

    Fission was persued because theory (e=mc^2) first predicted a known (vast) amount of energy release which was later demonstrated. OU has no theoretical basis and thus no way of predicting how much energy might be released. Doesn’t that strike you as somewhat risky?

    I conjecture that all the energy in the universe would suddenly flow through such a device. What makes this conjecture wrong? Certainly not any known science or mathematics.

    WRT to Dr Mills and BLP; we OBSERVE spectral lines and Nuclear Magnetic Resonances; it is a simple undeniable fact that neon glows red. Our mental models may be incomplete but the Mills model implies that neon discharge, for example, should have spectral lines we simply don’t observe (fractional orbitals below “ground” state). This places a huge obligation on Mills to explain why we don’t observe what we do.

    If Mills is right we can trash the (predictive) Periodic Table and all the theory behind the entire petro-chemical industry; polymers and their predicted properties won’t be the product of chemistry, but pure luck.

    You speak of Mills’ work as a done deal “Dr. Mills at BLP is proving that Newtonian physics governs at quantum levels, and he is going to have quantum physics tossed out the window” but it is a long way short of that, a *conjecture* that contradicts strongly established atomic theory, and hasn’t been replicated – his “hydrinos” still have yet to be observed by others.

    Again we are confronted with the problem that “to explain this, we have to UN-explain everything else”. This isn’t rubbishing but pointing out the obvious gigantic elephant in the room. This has nothing to do with what we don’t yet know, but the total demolition of several hundred years of scientific observation and its mathematical foundations. *IF* Mills is right about partial orbitals we are presented with the gigantic question of why predictive physics and chemistry that gave us plastics, pesticides, and semiconductors, continues to WORK.

    The key words in the Over-Unity world are “venture capital”, and it’s typically measured in mega-dollars.

  30. Most of these devices work as very esoteric boost converters. I’ve seen many demonstrations where one battery is being drained while the other is being charged and the volt meters read high figures because they can’t understand the high frequency waveforms.

    Say you’ve got a digital voltmeter with a sampling frequency of about 500 Hz, and you run your motor at a certain speed where the kickback coincides with the sampling. Whoops!

    And Naudin is a kook.

  31. All you doubters need to have a look around. It’s pretty obvious where the energy comes from with wind, solar, geothermal, tidal and hydro generation. This is potentially no different. It’s just that we don’t completely understand where the energy comes from. There will be a rational explanation. Critical areas of physics are not yet understood let alone fully explained. T h i n k a b o u t i t p e o p l e.

  32. @Andre
    “This is potentially no different.”

    The central problem with Over-Unity is that this is ACTUALLY *U T T E R L Y* different.

    “Look around”??? The history of perpetual motion devices is at least as old as science. Wiki shows one from 1618 BC.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_motion

    But (so far) ALL ‘perpetuum mobile’ devices have come to nothing – zip, zilch, bust, FAIL.

    Meanwhile, in total contrast, science and applied mathematics have given us electricity, the Inteweb, flight, medicine … blah blah blah.

    Science has also provided us with a clear understanding of WHY PM/OU isn’t possible.

    I guess you have to understand thermodynamics before you can understand the utterly profound implications of a perpetual motion device. As Wiki puts it;


    if perpetual motion or “overunity” machines were possible, then most of what we believe to be true about physics, mathematics, or both would have to be false.

    Bluntly, if Over-Unity is possible, then mathematics is wrong. Not “incomplete”, but actually WRONG. That is one hell of a call.

    But wait, the Unraveling of Everything doesn’t stop there. 1 + 1 = 2 is actually derived from a philosopical concept called Formal Logic (of which Boolian Logic is part). This is built on formal definitions of the meanings of AND, OR and NOT.

    If math is wrong then this source “proof” that 1 + 1 = 2, is also wrong. AND, OR, NOT and TRUE do not mean what we understand them to be (and I can’t even express that idea without using them).

    You wanna maka bet on that? (note: if you win we won’t be able to calculate your winnings :))

    The universe isn’t “fair” – you can’t win, and you can’t break even. That just happens, unhappily, to be the basic nature of the world we inhabit. Thermodynamics is re-proven daily in billions of different ways. That’s what OU says is wrong, not “true but incomplete” but WRONG.

    If you think OU is possible, then you simply don’t understand how the universe you live in works. You can be a dewy-eyed optimist, but gravity sucks, and there ain’t no such thing as a free (thermodynamic) lunch.

    Learning stuff is not indoctrination, it’s furnishing your brain; Clear Thinking is knowing how to deal with that furniture.

    I’ll bet I’ve spent more hours thinking about it than you’ve been alive @Andre (while working on electrical machines); and I’m still waiting for one of the OU “thinkers” to explain what limits the output if friction is inverted, aids rather than opposes.

    Explain why a 101% efficient machine won’t instantly blow itself to bits.

    One thing that strikes me about almost all the modern generation of magnetic PM devices is the gross INefficiency of their magnetic circuits. In this build above it’s a wonder that it runs at all since almost all of the magnetic flux in the torriods is contained within each ring, operation depending on leakage flux and some super-dooper magnets on the rotor.

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