OK, so I already know it's somewhat futile, but I'm on low budjet to experiment with.
the plan:
take my old 100A truck alternator and make it usefull again, I don't have big magnets to make a new rotor with so i'll make do with the origional, the average field for this alternator takes quite some power to excite, maybe 40+W... not really sure but I plan on making it a compound alternator by giving it a self exciting field.
The very thinnest HDD neo's I have are about the same size as the poles in the origional alternator, so I will power the field to find out which side of it is North and South then grind down the 'finger' like poles and epoxy the magnets in. replace the rotor back into the alternator and wire the field directly to the output, then the output through a blocking diode to a battery.
some crude calculations.
I made some coils similar to the ones in the alternator and did some testing, calculating, more testing, more calculating. and figured it was somewhat useless =)
the coils I was using were open air while the ones in the alternator are in laminates.
according to the calculations from my wound coil I would get 9v@1.8A approx. from the config in the alternator (16.2W toards the field power) doing the same in the laminated stator will most likely yield more power.
what I'm hoping for:
is that when the alternator is spun the magnets will start to power the field, the field will energize and the magnets will be held quite tightly to the pole as it's magnetism overcomes the magnets, if the magnets somehow repel from the field pole the result will be a lots of busted stuff. or the magnets will fight and yield even lower power.
what?
thats what I thought when I re read this. but hopefully I will have some hard data this weekend providing I don't destroy my alternator with a grinder.
