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Wind Turbine Diary
27th April
First of all - There has been an awfully long delay since the last updating of this page, but work has still been continuing, if somewhat sporadically and minimally. This said, I have only managed to carve the second blade, and half of the third one, and drill a few holes into the front magnet plate which need to be "tapped" (have a thread cut in) in order to allow the lowering of the front magnet rotor to it's correct position on the setup. I'll explain this further when i get to it. So, at the moment, no new pictures and not much news. I spoke to a smithy at nearby Kincraig about getting hold of the steel for the main apparatus that holds all the parts together. He can supply all the bits and pieces but is now on holiday for two weeks so patience is required! Tomorrow will hopefully mean the completion of the blade carving, and the restart of regular work on the project...! 28th April
Today, as I had hoped, the blade carving was finished! On the left the back of the third blade is being carved with a draw knife, and on the right i'm posing with the three blades with a smug little smile...! All that is left for the blades is for each to have added a "wedge" of wood near to the root which provides the correct blade angle at this part of the apparatus, since the thickness of the workpiece (37mm) is not enough to tilt the aerofoil enough right at it's base. After that the blades need to be fixed together between two plywood disks and then thoroughly varnished...
3rd May
Today i finally got the "super strong" magnets out of their rather scary box (left) in order to superglue them into place on the back magnet rotor, using the jig pictured on the right. In that picture, 7 magnets are in place. It turned out to be a really physical activity, since the magnets have an insatiable desire for iron and are sometimes hard to divert from their chosen path. In the box that they came in (left) one of the little grey plastic spacers was fired out, and you can see 2 of the magnets stuck together, and i still haven't managed to get them apart. This job was quite painful!
The compass is sitting there in the right picture to get the orientations right, since the polarities have to alternate around the circle, in order to produce AC current. Really the compass is used so it's not necessary to test the magnets against each other, repelling and attracting to find out which pole is which.
On the left is the magnet rotor with all the magnets glued on; on the right is the same disc in the mould which was made much earlier for this purpose, ready to be filled with the same resin mixture as was used for the stator. The mould has also been waxed a few times in preparation for the casting, which i'll hopefully get my dad to help me do later this week. Also today, I cut out the wedges for attaching to the blades to give the right blade angle near the root (left). On right is a wedge in the position that it will will be glued, then smoothed to make the slope a bit more continuous.
Left is one of the wedges glued and clamped into place:
And on the right, a picture just to balance things up, with one of the plywood disks that will clamp the finished blades together ready to be fitted on the front of the alternator assembly...
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