| I have been having so much fun.
Time to take down that awful XL.1 and put up a real machine. SO I took it down with the help of some others, and replaced it with a 48v 12 foot diameter axial flux. I now have some decent low wind performance. :-) Here I am on top of the tower attaching the blades. After those are fastened and tied off, the tail will get greased and placed on.
Yes, these are pretty much exact copies of Dans design, BUT they are scaled to accept a 12 foot diameter prop. They will be 48v machines, and I will be building two almost identical units. One Im keeping, the other might go up for sale if anyone is interested.
Here is an adapter hub I made for the lathe, so that I can turn down my rotors and make everything look pretty. It allows me to bolt on 2 or three rotors at the same time and cut the circumference exact. It lets me get a better grip on things in the chuck because when your turning 14" diameter rotors, they like to move around. This makes things go smoothly.
Here are 4 magnet rotors ready to have the magnets placed down. Two back rotors, and two front rotors with holes, drilled and tapped, for jacking screws. The rotors are 1/2" steel and they have a 1" stainless band around them. It is done the same way Dan does it. The ring is welded together so that it is too tight to fit around the disc. At that point, it is heated with the torch and allowed to drop on and shrink down to a very tight fit. This actually forms my outer dam that I will pour resin into after the magnets are placed down. It looks nice and it hold things together.
This time I did things a little differently. In the past, Ive always used 5/8" rod through the hub. This time since this is only a 12' machine, I felt it was ok to go with 1/2" stainless rod. I had drilled out my template for 5/8" a while ago. I had to make these bushings so that I could hold my template centered and get everything aligned right. I took 5/8" rod and turned it down to 1/2". It works great.
Here I am placing magnets down on one pair of rotors. I am checking the polarity with a magnet gripped tightly in my hand. This works well for making sure everything goes down correctly.
I place the template down so that I can draw an arrow. This arrow points to the location where a small index mark is drilled on the outside face of the rotors. These index marks allow the rotors to be assembled in only one direction so that you can be sure that the magnets will align correctly in the end. After the front rotor magnets are glued down, the template is simply moved to the rear rotor, arrow aligned with index mark, and flipped over. This makes it easy for the magnets to be placed perfectly without making any mistakes.
Both of these machine I just built, had their magnet rotors cast with West Systems epoxy. This one I tried first came out perfectly clear. It looks cool and adheres very well. Its just expensive stuff. I had some trouble in the beginning with getting air bubbles into the rotor while casting and I think this is caused by the fact the epoxy is not very viscous. The second machine, in an effort to fix this, was cast with West Systems, and ATH. This works very well.
Here is one machine almost finished. You can see the clear rotor casting. All hardware on these machines is stainless. Its very shiny.
Here you can see the rotors that were cast with the ATH. They come out perfect. I think I will do it this way from now on. These machines make great paper towel dispensers.
Here is the before shot of the nice looking stator that was ruined. I mentioned this in an earlier post. I tried to cast when the outside temp was pretty hot. I have realized my mistake however and it was my fault that I forgot to linseed oil the mold. I usually linseed oil the mold, the wipe it down and use grease as well. Ive never had a problem until now. Well thats why.
Heres how it looked when I attempted to pry the mold apart with a flat bar HAHA. Waste of copper. It will hang on the shop wall as a reminder. Lesson learned. If your using a plywood mold, linseed oil it before you grease it. It works great.
Here is another stator ready for casting. This one was wound with 110 turns of 15 AWG. Its wired in star. The one after it will be 105 turns of 14AWG wired in star. The 15AWG hits cut in at 140 RPM with N42 mags. The 14AWG hits cut in at 140 RPM with N50 mags. Both machines have a good size air gap with plenty of mechanical clearance.
Aside from taking notes, this makes it much easier to remember what you put into any particular stator. I use the label maker and print it out then stick it in the mold when I cast. I think it looks cool and serves a good purpose.
|
|
|
Total Views
|
|
208 Scoop users have viewed this posting.
|
|
