NOTE TO INTERESTED PARTIES:

Hi to everyone visiting this page to see my wind turbine diary...  A few things i should make clearer - my website has gone under a lot of changes since the last update on this diary, last year.  I leave the wind turbine diary bit of it here in it's original form for people who are interested in the process and to help people who may be planning to build a turbine of their own or who would just like to find out more about homebuild machines.  If you haven't come here from Hugh Piggott's great www.scoraigwind.co.uk then I suggest you have a look there for loads of excellent information from a man who knows his stuff...

Other stuff.  My website is at www.robertwebster.org ...  It contains photos, poems, electronic and organic music, and a link to my Antarctic Diary which details my ongoing life as a meteorological assistant at Rothera Research Station on the Antarctic Peninsula.  It is my job here that has taken me away from the UK for probably about 3 years, and put my turbine project on indefinite hold.  I hope you find something of interest here.  Cheers!  rob

Rob's Wind Turbine Diary

Hello.  This is a diary of my attempt to build an 8-foot diameter wind turbine...

Click on the numbers below to skip to that page...

Early January

I have been doing preparation work mostly, which has been taking a while because all the suppliers are on holiday.  I am in dire need of wood, fibreglass supplies, steel, electrical components and other stuff.  I should say that I am following plans for an axial flux wind turbine contained in a book by Hugh Piggott of Scoraig in the West of Scotland.  His website is here.

But Dave Stewart has very kindly let me use his basement workshop and his multitude of tools for the duration of the project:

Why am I doing this??  Because I want to know how these things work, and I want to be able to get good at making them and then designing them.  Because I like the idea of pollution free energy.  Because I want to know how to weld, carve wood, deal with electricity, use polyester resin, how alternators and inverters work, and so on...  And to help me get a job.

At Christmas:

So far I have made a little machine to help with winding the 10 coils of enamelled copper wire which will go into the alternator:

And the other main job I've done is to make moulds in which to cast the alternator parts using polyester resin and fibreglass cloth.  The alternator will consist of a stationary "stator" part, with the coils in it, sandwiched between two steel disks with Neodymium magnets embedded in resin on them.  These "magnet rotors" will be attached directly to the three-blade rotor assembly and will rotate as the wind blows.  This alternator will produce 5-phase AC.  The following picture shows the mould for the stator:

3rd January

As soon as everyone gets back to work and I get some supplies, I'll be getting a lot done hopefully.  Please check back and see how I'm getting on if you're interested...

14th January

Now that everyone is back to work after the new year, I have managed to get the three pieces of good quality wood for the blades.  These will be carved using a spokeshave and planes at a later date.  I also got the wire for the alternator coils so have started to wind the 10 coils for the stator:

The picture shows the roll of enamelled wire at the left, feeding up to the coil winder at the right.  The wire is tensioned with the left hand and wound with the right, making 70 turns of the machine.  The result (and this is my first ever wound coil!) looks like this:

Which is more or less what it's supposed to look like!  Here the coil winder has been taken apart to get the coil off after taping with electrical tape.  Only 9 more to go...

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