Thread: Ideas for a wind generator

you want to look into fisher and pikel direct drive washing machine motors....

also naff the alterntator off and use the drive motors out of reel to reel tape decks and very high end vcrs and cassette players they only put out an amp or 2 but should work with the kind of setup your looking at..

Ive heard rumour control of using turntable motors and drives as well but not sure how good that would be.

I'll have to take a look at the local tip, but the missus will kill me if I bring home anymore junk, I was trying to justify what I have laying around, so I can say "see dearest how useful that bit of crap was that has been laying there for years", Regards Frank.

There was an article in "Silicon Chip" a couple of years about describing how to make a wind generator using a Fisher & Paykel washing machine motor.

John

Will Google it and see what I can find, do you get ABC 2 John, good fun this Scrapheap Challenge, Regards Frank.

you get me a pick of your junk pile and I'll help ya come out of ways of doing it...

alternators generally work best with water wheels (squirrel cage fans are particulalry good for that) and if youve got an old tape deck or dvd/cd player you can take the drive motor out of that and remount it on a desk fan and in about a 7 knot wind it will start generating, couple them together with a planetry gearset from jaycar then set up a spring balance to and a wind vane to tilt the thing out of the wind as the wind speed picks ups to prevent it from over spinning and your laughing, regulation of the voltage is as simple as a 1a bridge diode and a cheap variable voltage regulator kit. or you could pull the regulator pack off of an alternator

Dave get your eyes off my spare F&P smartdrive motor.

They can produce upto 300W

Thats another project on the to do list.

Many years ago when I use to fly a volkswagen powered Gyrocopter the norm was not to use a altenator as it was too heavy.
As the power requirement was only to run the ignition only a few amps was required.
A Davis Craig themofan motor will put out up to 4amps and is small.
The bearings have no trouble in handling the loads , but the motor must be spun hard......about 6000rpm.
The drive was usually a large O ring or sewing machine O type belt on a home homemade alloy pulley fitted to the end of the thermofan motor.
A 10 dollar bridge rectifier from dicksmiths was used to ac/dc and stop battery fed back.
I think the out put is dc,but the rectifier module was a handy way of bolting up a diode.
If you want to get fancy a rectifier from a Jap motor bike will ac to dc and have built in current control and the motor bike wreckers sell them chip as chips

don't forget two important sources of 12volt generators - early series landies used generators, not alternators (bit of sacrilege to pilfer one for this though) and windscreen wiper motors in reverse... both work well but don't generate huge wattage. I built both in high school using and old windmill to drive... efficient? no... cheap? yes!