Go to Otherpower.com Home Page Go to Forcefield Shopping Cart Go to Wondermagnet.com Home Page
Front Page - [Homebrewed Electricity-- (wind) (solar) (hydro) (steam) (controls) (storage) (mechanical)] - Classifieds - Site News
Everything - Newbies - [Remote Living-- (housing) (heat) (light) (water)] - Rants & Opinion - Diaries - Our Products
My last coil question.


By TheCasualTraveler, Section Newbies
Posted on Tue Apr 8th, 2008 at 02:02:24 AM MST
What do you mean, are my fingers crossed?

     In an earlier post asking about how large a magnet rotor can be used on a small 6' machine, Flux wrote,

     "Dual rotors about 10" diameter with 8 magnets per rotor of the 2 x 1 x 1/2 or metric 46 x 30 x 10mm will meet this requirement very adequately with a stator about 1/2" thick."

     Now, after reading through posts about coil/ magnet relationship I saw several times where someone wrote that one leg of a coil should be moving over one magnet just as the opposite leg of the coil is moving off the magnet before. There is no way this will happen with the above design. Flux can't be wrong so...
     If the disc is 10" and uses 2" long magnets, then the disc circumfrence at the bottom of the magnets (8" diameter) is about 25". Dividing 25" by 8 magnets gives me a little over 2" between magnets. So if the coil is 1" wide in the center open part and each leg is 1/2" wide then the outside width of the coil is 2" and it will never straddle 2 magnets at one time.

     All this is given a stator with 6 coils/ 3 phase.

What is it I still don't understand? Is it ok if the coils don't straddle 2 magnets at once? Should I make the legs of the coils wider, say 1" ? I thought a rule of thumb was for one leg of a coil to be 1/2 the width of the magnet max. but maybe not.

     I swear this is my last dumb coil question. No really, it is. No really I mean it.

My last coil question. | 18 comments (18 topical, 0 editorial)

Re: My last coil question. (3.00 / 0) (#1)
by Chagrin on Mon Apr 7th, 2008 at 08:37:59 PM MST
(User Info)

There shouldn't ever be two magnets over one coil. He's saying that immediately after one magnet passes one side of the coil that another magnet should start passing over.

If this is not the case, then the waveform of that phase sits at zero for a period time until the next magnet passes over. It's not a life-terminating issue -- it's just not perfect.  



Re: My last coil question. (3.00 / 0) (#8)
by finnsawyer on Tue Apr 8th, 2008 at 08:00:09 AM MST
(User Info)

"There shouldn't ever be two magnets over one coil."

Not true.  Since the adjacent magnets have opposite poles the motion of the rotor will mean both cause either an increasing or decreasing flux in the coil.  That is, their effects act to add.  That's one of the charms of the design.  

I'm wondering if in fact with the 10 inch rotor and the size magnets given, whether it would be better to go with 12 one inch by two inch magnets long side placed radially with a minimum spacing of about half an inch.  This increases both the potential flux and the number of coils by 50 percent.  It does not increase the amount of copper by 50 per cent, though.  Perhaps Flux would like to compare the effectiveness of the two designs.  I don't think I'd be happy with the wide spacing one would get using 8 of the magnets on the 10 inch rotor, either.  You either make the coils 3+ inches wide to get the most of the magnet - coil interactions or you give up output by going to smaller coils.  Simply put, that amount of copper relative to those size magnets seems excessive with 8 magnets on a 10 inch rotor.  Or am I missing something?
GeoM
[ Parent ]



Re: My last coil question. (3.00 / 0) (#10)
by Flux on Tue Apr 8th, 2008 at 09:47:35 AM MST
(User Info)

I hope this turns up in the right place in reply to Finsawyer.

You could indeed improve the set up I gave him. I just gave him something that would adequately manage a 6 ft prop with a common magnet size that works out nice and cheap.

It would perfectly well have gone on 8" discs and been a better compromise, but using 8" discs he would run out of space at the centrer of the stator and if he wants to use a standard trailer hub there would be trouble. I used 8" discs but I had to make a special hub.

Going up to 12 magnets makes the thing capable of managing an 8ft prop and it will need to be really tamed down with lots of series line resistance at 6ft. It seems pointless using 8 more magnets. Eight poles of the 2 x 1 x 1/2 will still be ok, I just happened to use the metric magnets as they are far easier to get here.

Rather than squeeze every bit out of a small design, this was generous enough not to have to worry about making it ideal. It was derived from Hugh's single rotor 8 pole 4 ft machine. I have scaled it up to 5ft with a second disc with no magnets and it would just probably take 6ft with care. Doubling up on the magnets gives it lots in hand for 6ft and there would be no real need to go to great lengths to get a wire size to make the coils touch. Unless it is 12v with normal line resistance it will be well towards stall and may need added resistance. At least the heat is better dissipated in the line rather than a higher resistance stator.

Flux

[ Parent ]



Re: My last coil question. (3.00 / 0) (#17)
by finnsawyer on Wed Apr 9th, 2008 at 08:30:59 AM MST
(User Info)

Well, we all know it's a series of trade offs.  Ultimately, I have no quarrel with what works.  Thanks for the response.
GeoM
[ Parent ]


Re: My last coil question. (3.00 / 0) (#11)
by TheCasualTraveler (a.miklos@yahoo.com) on Tue Apr 8th, 2008 at 02:50:18 PM MST
(User Info) http://thecasualtraveler.com/wind.htm

     Thanks for that suggestion Finn, I like it. Pretty up to snuff with not thinking just inside the box. By the way, I am using 8 magnets per disc but it will be 16 magnets total for dual rotor. Does that change anything?

     This brings up memories of other posts where it was disputed if the power came from the coil legs or from the coil as a whole. This design will cut the "legs" by half. I can easily do a test with a single rotor without gluing the magnets. First with magnets the traditional way, then sideways. The test coil will be the same size either way so I just rotate it 90 degrees also. I may not put that argument to bed but I can post real comparisons.
Andy
[ Parent ]



Re: My last coil question. (3.00 / 0) (#12)
by TheCasualTraveler (a.miklos@yahoo.com) on Tue Apr 8th, 2008 at 04:02:13 PM MST
(User Info) http://thecasualtraveler.com/wind.htm

It's already been done, the test I mentioned above. I found this post in Finn's postings,

http://www.fieldlines.com/story/2007/10/8/161429/170

Looks like DanB did the exact same test. Well, it wouldn't hurt my education to do it also. A little more shop time instead of book time...
Andy
[ Parent ]



Re: My last coil question. (3.00 / 0) (#18)
by Buzz Hacksaw (buzz_hacksaw@rogers.com) on Fri Apr 18th, 2008 at 07:34:19 PM MST
(User Info)

I tried a rotated coil design. This with a third coil on the inside. The idea was to affect the legs only. Have a Look! This was my first experiment with generator building. Goofy looking I know but read the results. I was happy. I will try a 36 mag.18 coil 16" rotar w/traditional coil design next. just to see the diff.
http://www.fieldlines.com/story/2008/4/5/172/57655
Cheers
Buzz

[ Parent ]


Re: My last coil question. (3.00 / 0) (#2)
by wiredup on Mon Apr 7th, 2008 at 10:48:34 PM MST
(User Info)

10 in. dia. 2 in. mags one on each side only leaves 6 in.



Re: My last coil question. (3.00 / 0) (#3)
by ZooT on Mon Apr 7th, 2008 at 11:25:07 PM MST
(User Info)

That still leaves a circumference of 18.84 inches........

[ Parent ]


Re: My last coil question. (3.00 / 0) (#4)
by Flux on Tue Apr 8th, 2008 at 02:18:57 AM MST
(User Info)

If this was a dumb question then I could ignore it and get on with something else. Unfortunately it is far from dumb.

Wind generators have strange requirements from their alternator that are somewhat difficult to accept. Some of the conventional machines as designed for other uses are not ideally suited to this application. In fact I am not aware of any machine design that even remotely suits this application of working at constant speed into an effectively fixed voltage.

Firstly radial machines are more common and easier to visualise and in most common radials the opposite sides of a coil do lie on alternate poles ( the coil span is one pole pitch). Now large commercial alternators have characteristics that are mostly not dominated by the winding resistance ( except that it determines the efficiency). The inductive reactance of the winding mainly determines the current it can produce, so having long end connections to the coils is of small consequence.

Now when we try to build the axial equivalent we start out with coils having radial sides again centred over one pole pitch ( sides of coils over adjacent magnets).

This ideally needs sector shaped magnets and this is the best way to build a conventional slotted cored single phase axial for normal use. Adapting to 3 phase just means 3 identical windings displaced equally.

Now put it on a windmill and get rid of the iron core and slots ( for simplicity of construction and also a side benefit of removing iron loss) and you have a different situation. There is no noticeable leakage reactance within the working range, the output is determined by the difference between the generated voltage( emf) and battery volts divided by the resistance.  For the maximum output you need the highest emf and the lowest resistance.

We are rectifying the output so waveform is not confined to a sine wave as it would be for a grid alternator ( I won't go into that because special steps have to be taken to get a sine wave in an iron cored alternator that will confuse this argument beyond recognition). As long as each magnet links all the turns of each coil the mean emf will be the same, the waveform will change drastically with geometry but let's not worry about that. We then reach the condition where reduction of winding resistance is far more important than worrying about the ideal coil placement for the highest possible square wave voltage which we should get with the iron core and coil sides over adjacent magnets. ( removing the iron changes the whole voltage wave shape).

We finally reach an empirical design where we use all the available magnet flux reasonably effectively with a coil shape that gives us the lowest resistance.

We further simplify the winding to keep a 3 phase scheme without overlapping coils for ease of construction. This requirement alone means that with the 12/9 magnet coil arrangement at best it would only be possible for the outside turns of a coil to be placed over the centres of adjacent magnets. This air gap type alternator always comes out as a distributed winding as it is impossible for all the turns to occupy the ideal position. This is mechanically true of iron cores but the flux snaps from tooth to tooth and links all the turns of a coil at the same time.

That is the theory out of the way, now forget it ans see what works best as an empirical design and we come up with something like this ( may be room for minor tweaking).

Space magnets so that gap is about magnet width, not precise as the gap changes with radius. Either go for centre line spacing or spacing at inner radius if you want a less compact machine with a bit more output. Make coil hole the shape of the magnet and the same size or a bit smaller ( with round magnets you can squeeze the width, with rectangular you can squeeze the bit near the centre egg shaped  if you want to get more wire in )

Wind the outer to use all available space ( coils will touch at one point).

Choose turns for correct cut in. Wind space with the thickest wire that will go in.

Make distance between magnet poles about 80% of two magnet thickness and make stator as thick as you can and still leave safe mechanical clearance.

If you are over enthusiastic with materials and the alternator is too powerful for the blades then add line resistance Reduces stall and keeps heat out of the stator).

I hope this makes sense, it is based more on practical experience than absolute theory.

Flux

[ Parent ]



Re: My last coil question. (3.00 / 0) (#5)
by TheCasualTraveler (a.miklos@yahoo.com) on Tue Apr 8th, 2008 at 06:23:10 AM MST
(User Info) http://thecasualtraveler.com/wind.htm

OK, allowing for my math error on circumference then using a 10" disc with 8 magnets spaced evenly there will be a space between magnets at the inner radius of approx. 1.355 inches.

Now for 6 coils I take the inner radius (measured at the bottom of the magnet) of 18.84 inches, divided by 6 coils is 3.14. Subtract the width of 1 magnet leaves approx. 2 inches that the coil legs will occupy.

So, the coils will have a outer width (with no reshaping and a little bulge from normal winding) of about 3" and a cross section of one leg of one coil will be about 1" x 1/2".

This will use all available space, (coils just touching) and allow for heavy gauge wire.

And if I understand right I am not to worry too much about the relationship of how the wires cross the magnets (since it is air core) and instead focus on getting the proper # of turns to fill up the space provided for a coil, which means using the heaviest gauge wire that will create a coil with the proper number of turns and maximum dimensions.

I thought that the coils would be too fat in the legs this way but looking back through projects and other stators I see that having coil legs as wide as the magnet is not unusual. I hope I have this right now.

Flux, thank you.

Andy
[ Parent ]



Re: My last coil question. (3.00 / 0) (#7)
by Capt Slog (Capt.Slog(at this)gmail.com) on Tue Apr 8th, 2008 at 06:52:50 AM MST
(User Info)

The above answer from Flux needs sticking down somewhere so that it can be refered to properly.  I can't say that I understand all of it at first read but it answers a several grey areas that had been bugging me, and if I could have read it a year ago my design process would have been just that; a design rather than a best guess.

Thanks for not ignoring it.

.
"Slowly changing the world, one watt at a time!"
[ Parent ]



Re: My last coil question. (3.00 / 0) (#9)
by craigkirby on Tue Apr 8th, 2008 at 08:50:19 AM MST
(User Info)

Flux you're a legend

thanks

-craig

[ Parent ]



Re: My last coil question. (3.00 / 0) (#6)
by tecker on Tue Apr 8th, 2008 at 06:44:26 AM MST
(User Info)

 I think your stuck on the start and finish of the coil. The start is a no brainer it's the hole in the coil this is the chargin edge of one magnet, the outside edge of the entire winding is the charding edge of the ajacent magnet . As flux was talking about there' some fudge in there( IE the width of your hole and the width of the legs can be decrease or increased to give the power factors you need) .



Re: My last coil question. (3.00 / 0) (#13)
by blueyonder (windwoodgood at yahoo dot co dot uk) on Tue Apr 8th, 2008 at 05:11:32 PM MST
(User Info)

  hi trav you allways get a good response to your questions .
  and i always read with interest.
  i am also building a six foot   16 mag 2x1. 6 coil .
  but my rotors will be 9"   yours will be 10".
  i am not using a standard hub . so are you using a standard trailer hub .
   i think thay are 4" across centers (i think)  . i am already running it as a single rotor mill so have made it 9".  and when i make the new matching rotor it will also be 9".  otherwise i could have gone to 10" as you have . and used a 4" cen hub.
  why i did this is a long story.
   but i will also build a 12" twin rotor 5 phase . from hughs plans.
   so this post is great reading for me aswell.
   i have got sum testing done with the one i have now. but now i also need a new stator for this new one.
   what i would like to ask is .testing a coil with one 8 mag rotor.
  and testing the same coil with two rotors . will the results just be twice
 what i get from one rotor. ac of course .
  i have been testing  two coils at the same time.
 its interesting .  and good learning .  two coils one phase.
  just playing around really.
   i allready got all the info i need as regards wire and turns from Flux.
   i wonder will you get yours in the air before me. the 9" rotors seam perfect
 for me .    but using a standard hub makes life so easy.
   coil legs can be bigger than 1/2"  3/4" is more like it.(i think)
    its great learning here dont you think.

   
its a ill wind that dos no good



Re: My last coil question. (3.00 / 0) (#14)
by TheCasualTraveler (a.miklos@yahoo.com) on Tue Apr 8th, 2008 at 06:44:28 PM MST
(User Info) http://thecasualtraveler.com/wind.htm

Hello Blue,

     I am not using a trailer hub. I have my own design, cobbled from other designs I have seen on this site. You can see what I'm doing in my user info or on my webpage.

     I'll leave to others your question about output by going dual rotor.

     I agree, it's a great site and I think I learn something here everyday. I already have one mill in the air so I think it's your turn before I get my second one up! Good luck with it.
Andy
[ Parent ]



Re: My last coil question. (3.00 / 0) (#15)
by Jerry on Tue Apr 8th, 2008 at 09:40:56 PM MST
(User Info) http://www.dplusv.com/Photo-03.html

Hi Andy.

Your first geny is a good looking machine. I can see those blades spinning in the gentelest breeze.

What is the metal blade hub from and what is the root degrees?

You've stated that since wires got pulled out you are now useing 3 fullwave bridges. Are you using one per phase?

It apears your down wires are taped to the mast? How does that work out when the geny changes direction?

I've built my bearing asembly the same way but with metal pipe.

My second 8" dual rotor genny survived an 80 MPH storm last winter and was producing 1600 watts for a couple HRs, 4 ft blades no furling.

                           JK TAS Jerry

Airheads Page


[ Parent ]



Re: My last coil question. (3.00 / 0) (#16)
by TheCasualTraveler (a.miklos@yahoo.com) on Wed Apr 9th, 2008 at 07:28:58 AM MST
(User Info) http://thecasualtraveler.com/wind.htm

HI Jerry,

Thanks for the compliment. Let's see...

Right now the wind is at 5 to 7 mph and it's just bouncing in and out of cut in.

The hub for the blades is the fan off a Chevy S-10 less the original blades. There are 6 arms on the fan hub and they have a twist. I ignored the twist and lined up the curve of the PVC blade so the trailing edge was square with the wind and the curved root was about 90 degrees off from that and into the wind.

Yes, 3 bridge rectifiers, and Jerry rigged is the next step! In an earlier post I mentioned adding a second disc behind the stator that put my machine bad into stall in light winds. So I brought the disc out 1/8 inch and got increased power and no stall. Now several times it has been recommended I try Jerry rigged and I did in fact try it before I added the second steel disc. It worked about the same as hooking it up for 24 volt, (in terms of watts). I lost all power from the 8 to 10 mph range (my usual). However, everyone's friend, Mr Ghurd convinced me if I try jerry rigged again now I may be able to move the disc back in possibly finding that sweet spot.

As for the down wires, they work like most. I go out and take a twist out every few weeks. This is my test machine so nothing is fixed too permanently. It is mounted by my houses first story roof in an area with lots of turbulence. It's easy access as I just step out a window and onto this roof. I am preparing a spot on top of my third story attic where it will be 35 feet high. Thats a project in itself with all kinds of rubber bushings for vibration damping. Once up there I will try to have the down wires inside the pipe.

No doubt I borrowed ideas from your files for the bearing assembly. I've ransacked everyone's files stealing ideas. I think I got most of my PVC ideas from GeeMac.

The output of your mill is impressive. You must have built it like a rock. Where in your files can I see more of that machine? Is it 12, 24 or 48 volt? I'm trying to get results that will compare with a simple battery charger. Like the kind with a switch, 2 amps normal charge or 10 amps boost. The most I've seen from this mill was 10.25 amps in a gust I estimate at 35 mph. I have no idea what #22 gauge wire can take but I assume it couldn't do that continuously.  If I can get 2 to 3 amps most of the time and more on high wind days I think I will have done what I can with our light coastal breeze. Right now it's putting out most of the time in the 1/2 to 2 amp range. I would also like to avoid furling and am considering a 5 blade set in the 4 to 5 foot range. I will also carve wood blades for a 6 foot 3 blade set.

Andy
[ Parent ]



My last coil question. | 18 comments (18 topical, 0 editorial)
Display: Sort:
Menu
· create account
· How to use the board
· FAQs
· search the board
· Google search the board
· Old Otherpower Board

Login
Make a new account
Username:
Password:

Total Views
  147 Scoop users have viewed this posting.

Related Links
· magnet
· Also by TheCasualTraveler

Powered by Scoop
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 © 2003 Forcefield.
You can Email the board ADMIN here. PLEASE include the username you signed up with!