Fieldlines.com || Make your electricity from scratch!

Front Page - [Homebrewed Electricity-- (wind) (solar) (hydro) (steam) (controls) (storage) (mechanical)] - Classifieds - Site News
Everything - Newbies - [Remote Living-- (housing) (heat) (light) (water)] - Reviews - Diaries - Our Products

Materials for stators
By hvirtane, Section Homebrewed Electricity Posted on Sat Jun 05, 2004 at 04:57:17 PM MST
Are there alternatives for glass fiber?

In developing countries and even here
glass fiber or epoxy is quite costly
to serve as the body of the stator
of a generator.
I wanted to get the costs
as low as possible.
Has anybody used recycled materials such as
paper mass-oil-sand mixture, or some kind
of recycled plastic-sand mixture or
glass-sand mixture?
- Hannu

Materials for stators | 12 comments (12 topical)

Re: Materials for stators (none / 0) (#1)
by bob g on Sat Jun 05, 2004 at 07:58:30 PM MST

Hannu:

we have worked extensively using iron filings as a filler to make cast stators, while they are inferior in magnetic properties to that of conventional laminates, using the iron as a filler has some interesting properties

as a filler you can cut back the amount of resin used to make up the core
i personally believe there are advantages in conduction of heat from the core over using pure resin
it is easily and readily machinable if need be, and can be cast to very close to finished tolerance negating the need for machineing at all in most cases.

the use of other filler materials can certainly be entertained, i have used sawdust and sand, although sawdust is machinable, sand of course is not easily machined.

there are heavy machine tool manufactures that use iron, aluminum, sand, rock, quartz etc to make up very heavy castings that are cast to precision tolerances and are of extremely high quality.

i see no reason that fine sand could not be used as a filler if you dont anticipate haveing to machine it.

plastics on the other hand may react with the resin/catalyst mix and not work well or at all.

good luck

bob g

Re: Materials for stators (none / 0) (#2)
by bob g on Sat Jun 05, 2004 at 08:02:53 PM MST

also do a google search on "polymer cast process" or just for "polymer cast"

bob g

Re: Materials for stators (none / 0) (#3)
by devoncloud on Sat Jun 05, 2004 at 09:20:14 PM MST

If you are adding talcum to your resin, it really is not that expensive. It seems for the money that you would save going a different route, it is a lot more work than it is worth it. Just my opinion anyway.

Re: Materials for stators (none / 0) (#4)
by stop4stuff on Sun Jun 06, 2004 at 12:23:31 AM MST

with some of the stators i made, i only used epoxy to hold the parts of it that the magnets would pass. I then cut a stator shaped hole in a sheet of perspex and superglued the stator into the perspex.
paul

Re: Materials for stators (none / 0) (#5)
by RobD on Sun Jun 06, 2004 at 04:53:04 AM MST

Hannu,
I'm having good success with auto body filler. I use the one with kelvar and short strand fiber glass in it. Runs about $6.00 USD here in the states for a quart. In the gallon size it is even cheaper per volume.
RobD

Re: Materials for stators (none / 0) (#6)
by tecker on Sun Jun 06, 2004 at 08:37:19 AM MST

I've been using fiber glass window screen for the glass mesh and it is strong enough
I think there's some ducking on it When it is new so a rinse with alcohol is a good idea . Use of plywood as with one of the other laminates is working good and speeds out the procces somewhat Ie. Cope out some holes to match your coils and glue into place
coating the entire coil with epoxy and leave the interior of the coil open to cool better laminating the coils in place and cover with the window screen to bond for strengh.

Re: Materials for stators (none / 0) (#7)
by hvirtane on Sun Jun 06, 2004 at 11:07:57 AM MST

Hi,

many nice ideas.

But I meant mainly to make
the whole stator body
of some kind of recycled materials,
not to use resin at all.

For example using 'papier mache' mixed
with sand or something like.

Or using some kind of recycled plastics
to cast the coils inside.

Anyone working with these ideas?

- Hannu

Re: Materials for stators (none / 0) (#8)
by devoncloud on Sun Jun 06, 2004 at 01:09:27 PM MST

No, not strong enough. I am not sure what your main goal is. if it is saving money, then be very careful about what you choose to do in the stator because if you do something that is not strong enough your coils will pull through your matterial after some time and stick to your magnets. Depending on how strong your magnets are, getting your coils off without dammaging them bad enough to have to start over may prove to be impossible. This would mean you would have to by more magnet wire proving to be much more expensive than if you would have usen a proven method.

If your main goal is to use nothing but recyled matterials, then think about a laminated slotted stator using recylced sheet metal as your source of laminates. You can use all recycled matterials in this design, and you would only need a small amount of epoxy or other glue at the top of the slots to keep your coils in place getting rid of the need for resin all together, although some would argue even with this design using a little resin is still a good idea.
Devon

[ Parent ]

Re: Materials for stators (none / 0) (#9)
by hvirtane on Sun Jun 06, 2004 at 01:43:09 PM MST

With a friend of mine here
we have used a laminated stator
made of industrial formica
and we used a kind of plastic bands
to fix the coils and the laminates
through the stator disk.
We also used epoxy glue.
It seems to be working OK.

But now I'm looking for
cheaper solutions.

I've been thinking
about making laminates
of used canned food cans.
I remember that there
was some talk about
that idea earlier here,
but has anybody
already tried it?

- Hannu

[ Parent ]

Re: Materials for stators (none / 0) (#10)
by XJames on Sun Jun 06, 2004 at 06:33:38 PM MST

Magnet wire is copper and is not attracted by magnets.

[ Parent ]

Re: Materials for stators (none / 0) (#11)
by tecker on Mon Jun 07, 2004 at 07:24:22 AM MST

I'll tell you what It sounds like you might consider scrounging up a couple of motors for conversion rather than take on a a project this involved I personally don't
have all the ins and outs to pass on but there is a wealth of experience on the pages of this forum .More than you would need to put together a finished prduct. Once your
geared up and start generating your own juice other blocks will begin to fall into place .

Re: Materials for stators (none / 0) (#12)
by hvirtane on Mon Jun 07, 2004 at 10:26:00 AM MST

Hello,

with me friend we already made
three generators
rather similar as 'the volvo
generator' of 'the otherpower'.
But using Mercedes Benz
wheel bearings, because
we happened to have them
cheaper than Volvo wheels.
The power is satisfactory.

We are now using a little different
blades than many others are using.

They are a variation of
the blades I'm calling 'Reinikainen'
blades, because of the name of
the original designer.
They are made of wooden strips.
The original Finnish one is to be seen here:

The idea can be maybe better
understood from this drawing:

We built it with four blades, diameter
3 m. Used 7 boards; 10 cm x 1 cm for each.
Put them on the top of each other
only 2,5 cm on the tips. We smoothed
the corners with a power plane.

My Indian friend has now copied the idea
and he is testing it against airfoil
blades with the same diameter.

From that you maybe get an idea what
I'm looking for. Just the cheapest
and simplest solutions.

I'm now looking for cheaper materials.
We had no technical problems
with the materials,
we used for the generator
and it is working well.
(For the stator industrial
formica and for laminates silicon steel;
magnets are neodymium; we used epoxy glue).

I'm just looking for cheaper materials.
I've no problems to make a working PMG,
but want to make it such a way that it
is possible to make the same
cheaply in India for example.
I'm working with some projects
in developing countries.

- Hannu

[ Parent ]

Materials for stators | 12 comments (12 topical)

Menu

� create account
� How to use the board
� FAQs
� search the board
� Google search the board

Login

Make a new account

Username:

Password:

Total Views

��80 Scoop users have viewed this posting.

Related Links

� Also by hvirtane

You must be a registered user to post here. It's easy and free, and the link is on the upper right side of your page.
All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective companies. Postings are owned by the poster, but may be deleted or moved at the ADMIN's sole discretion. The Rest � 2009 Forcefield.
You can Email the board ADMIN here. PLEASE include the username you signed up with!