“Gear Up” or “Volt Up”

While testing the motor on a bench, I soon realized that the motor outputs an average of about 9 volts. 3 volts shy of the recommended charge voltage. To my mind, there were two solutions I could employ. One mechanical and the other electronic. The two options were bound to work, but one was easy, and the other wasn’t.

Gear Up
The first option, the mechanical one was to employ gears to speed the motor. Reading up the topic showed that gears were not recommended for small turbines. It was crude at best, and when it worked, it was noisy and heavy. These were problems I was willing to live with as long as it worked. In its simplest form, it required two gears. I found a motor cycle clutch gear for a measly N800 ($5). And put them to work.

I assembled the two gears on a sheet of white paper. I pressed this against a platform to create an impression on the paper. I then proceeded to design my assembly around this trace.

A trip to the “Turner” (metal works ) resulted in the complete assembly below. All that is left now is to grease it up and bolt it on the motor.

But that was not to be, as I realized that the gear was much too stiff, and required a significant amount of force to set it rolling. I doubt that the cool breeze of Garki could force that hard. I should have employed ball bearings to ensure that everything was at the right angles, perhaps, I might have been able to pull of the mechanical option.

The Aesthetics

I have been writing about the epileptic power distribution and generation in Nigeria and how I built my home made wind turbine to supply 3500watts (>2 horse power) to my home in Abuja. We have seen how to make the blades, the alternator, the Mounts and bracktes, the hub. Beyond function I guess one sure selling point should be the aesthetics:-

The Tail Fin
Though the tail fin does not have any moving parts, it had a very important function. Besides lending itself to branding the turbine, the fin is solely responsible for turning the blades to face the wind. To make this happen, it needed to cover a significant area to ensure that the turbine turns at the slightest change of wind direction.
Branding
The projects I saw on the internet focused solely on the bare bone turbine. They didn’t care about what it looked like. As an artist, that was not an option - certaininly wasnt going to happen here, it was impossible to make that excuse. So, I had to design and paint my turbine.

There was no rule to follow here, I just bought and cut a sheet of plastic, and cut out “Tantiblow” (Tantiblo is my wife’s nick name) on it. I sprayed it black and it looks pretty neat. Almost like a commercial brand.

The Blades

I had to respray the blades several times during my build - as they often became dirty from handling them inbetween builds. I thought about painting the tips blood red to give a visual cue to prevent my son from walking into it while it was spinning. I thought that might also help the birds that might want to pearch on it.

The Cover

One of the most visible parts would be the cover of the motor. I made it from a short pvc pipe. I cut two circular pieces to cover the front, and the back one had circular vents.

Beveled and sanded down. This should protect the turbine from the elements.

Next time I will write about the power.