[pyroracing85]

I was thinking about making a wind mill for fun just to charge a light bulb or something.

Has anybody done something like this or interested in making one with me?

[MrBean]

I made a wind turbine a few years ago. It was pretty scabby, but it made 200 watts on a good day.

You can find some good info here:

http://www.otherpower.com/otherpower_experiments.html

I plan on building another using the CNC. Just need some more time.

Regards Terry.....

[pyroracing85]

I made a wind turbine a few years ago. It was pretty scabby, but it made 200 watts on a good day.

You can find some good info here:

http://www.otherpower.com/otherpower_experiments.html

I plan on building another using the CNC. Just need some more time.

Regards Terry.....

200 watts huh what is that able to power?

[cbass]

200 watts huh what is that able to power?

A toothbrush...

[pyroracing85]

A toothbrush...

damn i was thinking about powering my new cnc mill hahah

[ynneb]

B4 you make one, is it cheaper to just buy one of these or does that deafet the purpose og building it yourself?

http://www.oatleyelectronics.com/alt...ND%20GENERATOR

The prices in this page is Australian dollars 75 cents = 1 Us dollar approx

[MrBean]

200 watts huh what is that able to power?

It doesn't power anything direct. It charges a battery bank at my nan's beach house. There is no mains power there. Also has some PV solar panels. Most stuff then runs from an inverter off the batteries.

Regards Terry.....

[Evodyne]

Guys,
This (wind power) is something I have an interest in. MrBean-I PM'd you earlier this evening about this same topic after seeing your site but before seeing this thread. Did I goof and not get it to you?
Here are my thoughts:
Using the CNC stuff we all know and love to build not just the guts-the alternator, mounts, and such, but to also make the blades. Either as foamies that can be glassed up, solid wood blades, or traditional spar and rib wing construction.
I was wondering if there was enough interest to start a dedicated section in the hobby area.
I've got nearly five acres of open land just south of lake Michigan and it can be quite breezy. And with the out of sight utility costs I'm ready to make my own juice.
One of the projects I have on my mind is a special "blade maker" router/mill thingy. Good for blades in the ten foot or three meter length (20 ft total rotor diameter).
There are even topics that rarely are seen that clever guys who make stuff might tackle-variable pitch hubs, etc.
Do we have enough interest to start a new category?

[MrBean]

I'd be interested in building an "open" design wind turbine. Those wishing to participate could share 3D models, G-codes and ideas. Free to use for anyone that wants to. I originally built a CNC to carve some blades, but CNC is a whole new hobby, not just a means to an end. I've kind of gotten side tracked with the CNC machine. Now I want to build another one.
So far I've not done much work on the CNC'ed turbine. I'm still ironing out problems with the CNC machine. Hopefully I'll be back to the turbine soon.

Regards Terry.....

[carlnpa]

I have some interest in these wind turbines. I'm fooling around with design concepts using the cheap 8' Harbor Freight windmill ($25 on sale) as a mule. These will run a bicycle generator around 30 watts which is about a small light bulb.

[Evodyne]

I purchased plans for Hugh Piggot's turbines and they are for a simple, rugged machine that generates usable power. See hugh's site Scoraig Wind for much more information. Here is another link with lots of theory and notes.
A good part of Piggot's plans are for a homebuilt alternator using very hi-strength magnets. Blades are hand carved.
For even simpler turbines, others use DC motors as generators and simply bolt on a decent blade. Most use hunky motors by Ametek-they are rated anywhere from 36 to 100+ volts and can output 15+ amps. These are readily availale on eBay for well under $100. A few small turbines of this type can easily handle the demands of charging a battery bank for home power use.
I like Terry's idea about an "open source" set of projects. I say set of projects as I don't see a one-size-fits-all solution. Local wind conditions and power needs will likely dictate different solutions. But his point is collaberation and idea sharing and with that we all win.
Again, is this worth a dedicated area of its own? I say yes, but there needs to be enough interest.

Lance

[fyffe555]

I like this one; http://www.ata.org.au/articles/70byosav.htm. And a stepper motor makes a surprisingly good generator as it doesn't have to turn as fast as a dc motor.

[MrBean]

Here's some renderings of a blade and the rotor magnet spacings for a wind turbine that I'd like to build someday soon. The rotor shows single phase magnet and coil spacing, but I plan on changing this to 3 phase. This will be only a small scale turbine to do some experiments with a dual rotor setup and 3 phase output. I've still got a lot of CAD work ahead, but once it's done the model parts can be gcoded and cut out on the CNC.

Regards Terry.....

[Evodyne]

Terry - Nice job on the modelling/rendering. I thought somewhere I saw you where using Rhino. Am I totally wrong? If it is Rhino, do you use Flamingo for the rendering? What other software do you use?

Given that there are special blade sections specifically designed for wind turbines, I'm looking at writing a "blade generator" that can take the foil type or foil equations, blade length, number of blades, tip speed ratio, and so on and output a .dxf file (or other usable exchange format) that can be imported and the post-processed. By post-processing I'm referring to adding blade tips and the hub portion to arrive at a complete model or design.

With a tool like Rhino (here I go assuming that's what you use) can you pull this off?

On the blade drawings you were kind enough to post was there a specific airfoil cross section (NACA, etc.) or was it more of a modelling exercise?

Ugh. I need to head to the garage for a few hours and box up parts for shipping. I'll be checking back here later once I've finished.

Cheers!

[MrBean]

Yes I used Rhino. I'm using Flamingo renderer (Ray Trace), not photometric.
The blade model is more of an exercise in modelling. But I will cut one out to see how it performs. Just for fun and experiment.

A "blade generator" would be fantastic to take all the guess work out of making blades and with CNC you'll get the blade you designed, not a "That's about right" hand carved set. I think it would work well with Rhino, depending on how you plan to export the data. For 2D DXF, you could output airfoil outlines (n amount of them) along the blade length and loft them together in rhino. Or you could output a few "key" airfoil sections along the blade, along with the front and rear curves and use "Sweep 2 rails". I'm still learning Rhino so forgive me if that doesn't sound right. To build my 3D blades I drew the leading and trailing edge curves. Placed a few airfoil sections (ribs) along those curves and used "Sweep 2 rails.

This page was a big help in modelling the blades.

http://www.geocities.com/SiliconVall.../rhinotut.html

It's not specific to blades, but the same process can be used.

Regards Terry.....

[Evodyne]

Terry,

I took a look at the pages you mentioned. That's awsome. After looking at the ease with which the guy did his wing with so little information I'm thinking that you were right: import just a the cross section or sections at a few stations. It makes what I want to do much easier. I think I'll dig out the programming stuff and fuss around a bit tonight. I feel motivated.

As far as CAD, I've got a good 2D AutoCAD background but nothing as far as 3D. Rhino definately looks like the tool to have. I guess I know what my next "toy" will be!

I saw the fine brackets you made on your site-those came from 2D, right? Have you actually milled anything modelled in 3D yet, i.e. from Rhino?

Oh, and what's going on with your router/mill-you've meantioned some headaches.

[MrBean]

Hi. It's good to hear that you're encouraged by that tutorial page. It's very easy to create a turbine blade using his example.

Yes the brackets were drawn in (2D) Rhino, exported as DXF.

I milled a 3D face as a test cut for 3D routing. There's a picture of it on my site. That's the only 3D I've done so far.

I seem to be having one problem after another lately. Fix one thing and something else goes out the window. I think I've got it nailed now though. Had some backlash on X, which is now fixed. Then I was getting step pulses generated by interference. I was using a long, unshielded ribbon cable to connect the breakout board to the LPT port. Seems that a sheilded LPT cable has sorted that one out. Hopefully I'll make a few test cuts to check there's no more bugs, and then I'll be cutting stuff like a madman.

Regards Terry.....

[Evodyne]

Hmm. Terry, I'm not 100% sure, but the 3D face carving looks suspiciously like the picture of you on your site!

Doing some poking around and found this site. Look in the section "other airfoils" and there is information on some wind turbine profiles.

Perhaps more useful is the UIUC Airfoil Data Site and it's airfoil coordinate database with over 1550 profiles. Lots of good links too. It can be found here.. The database is downloadable as a series (1550+) of .dat ascii text files in "Selig" format-basically a series of X-Y coodinates around the airfoil.

Very few of these are probably good airfoils for a wind turbine-more research to do. But if those that are good can be identified than we have their coordinates and can create profiles in modelling software.

I wish I had more free time. The whole earning a living thing get in the way far too often. Seems Like I just get revved up on the things i want to do and it's time to get some sleep.

For now I've downloaded the zipped version of all the airfoils and am writing a reader/parser to read each of the individual files and gut them-stuffing the contents into a more manageable MySQL database. I'll write a simple front end and when it's not too horrid make it available here.

[dimitar]

You can download a stl file for blade:
http://www.partenovcfd.com/software.html

[High Seas]

DIMITAR - thanks for the stl link. Very helpful.
Just wondering how soon the other links on your site will become active, VPP, Kite, etc?
TIA :cheers: Jim