Electronic – arduino – Soft-Starter PWM Noise

The ability of a motor-driven assembly to "sing" will depend in substantial measure upon the construction of the drivetrain, the amount of stall torque available, and the thermal characteristics of the motor. In some cases, the amount of heat that can be dissipated in the windings of a motor which is driven with a square wave when one is trying to make it "sing" can exceed that of an immobilized motor which is fed constant DC of the same magnitude, and depending upon gear construction and backlash the voltage required for a 400Hz square wave to destroy a motor may be lower than the voltage required to make a readily-audible 400Hz noise.

I would guess that a typical toothbrush which is run by a DC brush motor will probably use plastic gears in its drivetrain. Plastic gears often have a small amount of elasticity which is good for longevity and smooth operation, but which would likely absorb much of the audio-frequency energy you might try to put through them. You could try driving the toothbrush with an AC waveform and see what happens, but it may be impossible to get good audio coupling.

Putting a large electrolytic capacitor across the motor obviously won't work in reverse, but even if that wasn't a problem it's still not a good idea.

When PWM turns the bridge transistors on they will charge the capacitor as quickly as they can, but when turned off it will discharge more slowly through the motor. This has two undesirable side effects:-

1. It will destroy the accuracy of your PWM. With the capacitor 'filling in the gaps' between PWM pulses the motor will spin faster than expected at lower PWM ratios, but less so when heavily loaded.

2. High current spikes will occur as the capacitor charges, putting stress on the bridge transistors and increasing electrical noise in the circuit. There may also be audible effects.

You can eliminate these problems by inserting an inductor in series with the motor/capacitor. However if your PWM frequency is low enough to be audible then the inductance required will be quite large (since you can't use an electrolytic capacitor the amount of capacitance you can apply to the filter is limited, so the inductance must be larger). Also the inductor must pass the relatively high DC motor current without going into saturation, and its resistance must be low to keep losses down.

If space is not a problem then simply use a choke with appropriate inductance and current rating. Then the only problem will be keeping it quiet!

The LC filter's cutoff frequency should be much lower than the PWM frequency, eg. if the PWM frequency is 1kHz then the filter should cut off at 500Hz or lower. If you used a 10uF capacitor then you would need about 10mH of inductance.