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Wind Turbine Diary
15th January
Today I started on the first blade, since I have a few unanswered questions about the coils which need answering before I waste good wire. The blades are made from 4 foot long pieces of larch, and shaped using a jig-saw, spoke-shave, and planes. First, the outline of the blade was cut using the jig-saw:
The picture on the right shows the blade half-way through carving the wind-facing face, and a spokeshave lying to the side. The wood was then marked out for thickness, before I started to take away the excess wood at the back side. The picture on the right shows mid-way through planing the back.
All this took pretty much 4 hours, so I'm pretty pleased given that I thought the blade making part of this project would be seriously time consuming! I was being extra careful today as well. That's all for now... Back to work tomorrow.
21st and 22nd January Excellent progress over these two days, with the pretty tedious business of winding the coils finished on the 21st. I was hoping to get the stator cast in polyester resin and therefore finish a complete part of the alternator, but the coil wiring took a lot longer than I thought it would. First the 10 coils were laid out in formation and clamped down to wire them together:
Then, on the right, a piece of flex (the red wire) is laid around the outside to which all the "starts" of the coils will be connected. The word "Join" indicates where the wires from the alternator will come out of the stator casting, hopefully carrying lots of current! Also today, I went down to the technology department of the High School to get a shot of the bandsaw, where Dave Stewart cut the basic shape of the remaining two blades and the blade roots to 120 degree angles so that when finished they will fit together like this:
On the right, my dad is pushing protective sleeving over the joins between the coils and the ring. By this time the workshop was in a hell of a mess, and it was pretty late, so I tidied up and went home. Hopefully get casting later this week...
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