Yay Savonius and 5-7mph turbulent winds

[Norm]

  This is for the ones that might get discouraged

by hearing some that keep saying there isn't

enough power in a 5mph wind to even bother with

links like this may help....

http://www.motherearthnews.com/library/1974_March_April/The_Savonius_Super_Rotor

  ...Okay today I start with an experimental

model...starting with the first rotor of 3 stacks

but using a 6ft x 8ft green tarp...which should

make each rotor about 6x6.

....as soon as the drizzling rain stops so I can get my lawnmowers out of the workshop....

 open as always for suggestions ...friendly advice....questions ....etc.

                  Fun!

              ( :>) Norm            

[Bruce S]

Norm;

   That was avery nice article to reread.

If you don't mind I will follow your diary and I will try going the other route.

Meaning that instead of going into the 6ft x 8ft I'll go down in size. I have some large 3lb coffee cans that I want to rig up to try out one of my newly acquired pm stepper motors.

I'd like to try it with and without the stepper setup and see where I can get the most use.

 I live in the city and a 6x8 unit would get me into a whole bunch of trouble.

Are you going to try the multiple gen setup like they did?

I'll start sending up pics once I get all the items rounded up.

Bruce S

[Norm]

Bruce,

   Yes, that was a heartening article to come

across. Just like the article described the

action of a hawt in gust of wind...that's how

the clunky three-bladed hawt that uses plastic

blades from 5gal. works...plus it's supposed to

be a downwind type and the plastic pipe over the

rounded wood mast always gets wet ...the wood

swells and argh!

   Stepper motors huh? Ghurd has been playing

around with those...what size? any performance

data on them as an alternator?

   On this first one depends on what kind of

torque I can get all kinds of pm motors for me

to try those little motors from those pocket

fans....that treadmill motor thats a dandy

little one to experiment with, about 1 open volt

per 100rpm ...then there is those blower

 motors, without rewinding...3.5 open volts @ 700

rpm.

  BTW ....in the city?? is that St.Louis? or am I

thinking of someone else?

  Are those Folgers red plastic coffee cans?....

if they are...wise choice....if they're not ..

I urge you to switch....LOL!

  (last count I had 10 of them) (2lbs. 7oz) back

in about 1960 they were 3 lbs. and cost about

$1.50 a can.

         Nice to hear from you.

                 ( :>) Norm.

[georgeodjungle]

yep the good old days.

GREAT timing.by the way.

any body use a washer tranny unsted of cogs or belts for the savonius?

i'm trying but dosn't want to start up in low speed ie. < 8 mph.

googled with no luck.

[Norm]

   George got a little more detail than that?

Like how big is it? Made out of two barrels or

3 or what ?? Mine will be sails actually with

ribs to keep them in the S shape being liteweight

they should turn easily.

   I've never used a washer tranny but if you

cleaned all the heavy grease and replaced with a

real light oil it might work....whats the ratio?

   got pictures?

              I was seriously considering a

riding lawnmower transaxle if I ever made a really big one

(mainly cause I've got a couple laying around.)

 about it for now catch ya later!

                    ( :>) Norm.

[ghurd]

stepper motors?  AUUGGGHHH !!!

Yup. I'm having no luck for 12V.

My best bet would be a 24V with 10 ohm coils, or at least the lower the better.

I have probably 50, maybe 70 different kinds.

The guys getting 1/2 an amp are not to informative on model numbers they have.

But be warned, many do NOT have magnets so they won't work, even though they sound like the best bet.  ie: 24V, 6A and NO magnets... about like a mini 3 phase star connected induction motor.

Others just won't make the volts.  ie: 24V, 4A... but it only makes 4V open!  And 4A shorted!

Another makes good volts and amps, but only 1 phase can be connected or something goes goofy inside and the volts and amps drop. (yes, it was connected right)

But for a 12V stepper, it makes over 100V, and 12V at a very low RPM (too low RPM for me).  A flick of the finger gets it into the 60V range.  So small blades stall.

The best so far is about 65ma at 12V in a GOOD wind.

Another peaks out at maybe 30ma, but it does it in breeze

And I was NOT afraid to spend money to get a good one. I am now!

G-

[georgeodjungle]

it's just an old heating oil barrel. 2'6" X 3' cut in half.

sitting on top of washer.

i think if i use lighter oil might wear out faster.

ratio is about 6 to 1.i've tried a 4.09 to 1 pu truck axle with open diff and if you block one end it turns 8 to 1.also not so good low end.unblocked worked better.

no pics yet.i can't use-em for work, so why bother & 35mm is 2.5 Billion pixels.

would the cheepy walmart one work for posting stuff ? i'd give jack benny a run for his money.

[inode buddha]

The cheap walmart one would prolly work. My cam has a setting 640x480 that is just for web stuff.

The oil barrel thing is fascinating idea -- we got tons of the 250-gallon tanks around here, people actually use them to make fences and walls.

[electrondady1]

hello norm, good luck to you on your project. i am also interested in vawt units.if you recall, last month i posted a little video of my proto type . it was a three bladed device made from two paint buckets.you expressed an interest in it. it was constructed before i discovered this forum and began learning so much.my curent project is a 10"dia. triple rotor two stator, 16 pole three phase geni i constructed last winter. it was originaly designed for direct drive but produced proper voltage only at top speed due to poor construction tech.on my part and the use of scrapyard ceramic mags. i am in the process of rebuilding now. it will be v belt driven at a ratio of four to 1.  if i can get enough tourque from the windmill it should see 600 rpm.i intend to stack three bladed windmill "units" untill it does have enough torque!!

[Bruce S]

Hey Norm;

  I've been following G-'s patience with those stepper motors.

I like to do this stuff with what I can get for free.

The NiCds came from cast-offs from work free!!

The stepper motors are the same.

They are the Maxon DC motor P/N 1450-002. Tried to get info from the manufacture but so far they're ignored my requests for more information. They are pretty old , late 80's stuff, but real solid. The mags are srtong enough to mess up hard drives if I get stupid out of season and leave it too close.

 The things I've tried are

1. ) turning by hand with the stepper attached I can get a continous 12+Vdc on the r/b cables.
   
2. )I take off the stepper part I have to get a drill and turn it up full blast to get the same output.
   
3. )It does take a lot of torque to turn it by hand, but again FREE is good.
   
   

Don't have the plastic ones.

I have some of the 3lb tin ones from food service coffee ( yuck) but free cans.

Also I have roller blade bearings that I am going to try using.

These puppies are very heavy duty, have stood up to lots of loads, dirt , water and such.

Hey no pun intended on the switch huh? ;-))), ? are those new plastic ones strong enough to hold up to a good wind?

Yep, St. Louis it is. I have seen another Bruce on here, but I think he's down under. Bruce you out there?

Nice place, coming along ever soooo slowly on the RE monies but coming along never-the-less.

 If I can get my camera to take a fair picture here in the office, I'll send up a pic of the motor.

My plan is to ( try at least) document as much as possible. The kids I converted to watching this forum are really getting into this stuff.

Wonderus how doing something with your hands and seeing things come together and then TA DA it's working gets those minds out of TV land.

I think I'm going also try , since I have a couple of these available to me, try one itme I saw a while back using PVC pipe large enough the put the motor down in the pipe and run the wires out the side. This should , with a small drip line keep the motor out of weather's harm. These have a real nice toothed pulley on them.

 I can understand that these won't put out a house's worth of charges, but I can see having a couple of them at different heights all going to NiCd battery banks and tied into a little recycled Compaq laptop to gather data on wind speed, at different altitudes gathering with it charging rates.

Plus here using the small things I can get away having them look like lawn ornaments:-)

Have fun

Cheers

Bruce S

[Bruce S]

Hey G-

  I may be wrong about what I'm calling stepper motors.

The units I have are : Maxon DC motors. have probably curved ceramics in then as they are from the late 80s.

The motor itself has a little gear on it and them this high torque box screws onto it.

Turning the high torque pulley it's really easy by hand but can be done and not too hard to keep the pace up.

Measurement on it with a MMeter show output of 12Vdc+ , burnt up my drill so can't do a good constant test yet. Do know that if I put the meter into current mode and at 10A the pulley gets REAL HARD to turn.

If you're within the US maybe I can send one of these baby units out to you for a full blown informative ( with pic of course) test?

Thoughts??

Bruce S  

[ghurd]

Most 'normal' steppers are about 1.75" round can or square laminates. 4 to 8 wires.

They cog or maybe vibrate is a better word.

The voltage drops fast with a couple ma load.

If the Maxons only have red and black wres, they probably have brushes.  I'm leaning toward thinking they are better.

I'd love to play with one.  But it will have to be a few weeks. Getting ready for a vacation, trying to finish a lot of work before I go, nothing is going right for the last 6 weeks.

me at neodotrrdotcom

G-

[Norm]

It sounds as if you could make 2 more units

and stack them on top of what you have at 120

degrees from each other, would start at lower

wind speeds, also give you more torque and

smoother power, even another unit stacked on

top of your unit at 90 degrees would give you

a lot better performance.

  Is that ratio you have just thru the gears?

  Replacing the grease/oil that you have with

a lighter oil will not cause the gears to wear

out...since it is no longer being used as a

washer...it will be having a much much lighter

load to handle...a quick way to lighten it up

...a little kerosene to thin down the heavy oil

  What could it hurt?...a couple of months from

now ...if it doesn't seem to be working out ..

put some heavy oil back in?

  A digital camera at Walmart ought to probably

work..$17. If you happen to be anything like Jack

Benny , you could wait for them to have a clearance sale on them for $5 (or$2)...seriously!

  E-mail thing at K-Mart..$49...kept lowering

until the last 3 of about 50 for $3!

  Thug (to Jack Benny): Your money or your life !

  Jack Benny: (Hand to chin...thinking...) Hmmm!

        Well catch ya later...soon as it

          cools down...going to start on the

        platform ....

                   ( :>) Norm.

[windstuffnow]

 Thats an interesting article Norm.  It seems their making it sound like quite a powerful machine... a 3 drum with 4 alternators?  Sounds like it would be fun to play with never the less.  

 I'm hoping to return to the "playground" after manufacturing a dozen various size direct drive alternators for some VAWT prototypes.  The one pictured below is a 100 watt unit at 200 rpm and I'm making up a 200 watt at 200 rpm unit for myself.  It's 1.25" thick with a 1/4" thick stator and 8 inches in diameter. Also made a few 50 watt units, they all look the same just different power levels.  





  Lots of Fun!  

[Norm]

 Bruce,

Here's the plastic ones.....

Would make one about 6ft. high and about 1ft.wide. (thats a lot of coffee mostly my wife

and I...about a years worth.)they won't rust ..

edges can be scraped round with a pocket knife.

   Now for St.Louis...I was raised in White City, Illinois ....worked at the Parkmoor at Big Bend and Clayton Rd. when I graduated from High School...joined the Navy for 4 yrs then worked at Granite City Steel for a couple of years then moved up to Conneaut Oh in '56

   Yeah! I know St.Louis !

             Catch Ya later neighbor(almost)

                      ( :>) Norm

[Bruce S]

Howdy neighbor!

 Bad news, the Parkmoor is gone.

Great Idea about the coffee cans, I'll have to give 'em a try.

More St. Louis trivia, While in High School ( Southwest) I worked at the Chase Park Plaza. during the early 70s and got the see "Wrestling at the Chase" for back stage.

Got to meet way cool people like Ted Koppler ( WB11) J. Lewis, Franky, Liza M, all those Martini crowds. Learned alot .

Granite City, what a mess, glad to hear you got away from there.

Army for me 8 regular 6 reserve.

Now for Ohio, how far are you from Piquea<-sp>?.

Question about stability on those cans. Any flexing in high winds? I can see the bottom, now middle section as a good cross piece but would be a little worried about the end to end during gusts.

Got a spare stepper motor that would do well with those, will need to take the stepper part off I think.  

Want to give one a try? I could send one up, that way we can do side by side comparisons of two types.

G-s off to vacation for a bit so I'll hold off sending him one til he's ready.

Thinking about trying one of rotornuts' units with one as well.

Gotta find/build a aneometer for speed input to the laptop. A couple of 'em would be better so I could get different speeds in the yard. Seems I am in pretty good spot , almost a funnel between large Pin Oak trees. The wind will blow softly on the tree tops and we'll have some spots in the yard that really gets whipped up.

BTW: Not trying to dump these off on anyone just that these are mass manufactured and the one item I haven't seen anywhere on the boards are tests with exact type motors.

Being the medical electronics field with the FDA ever looming over our heads like a gray cloud has geared me towards repeatability and standards.

  Here, hopefully, is a picture of the stepper motor.

[Bruce S]

Hey electro-

Could you point me to that link of your from earlier?

I follwed rotornuts' VAWT with some serious interest, especially since it looked good.

 Wonder how 5gal square paint buckets would work out?

Bruce S

[Bruce S]

G-

  Thanks for the clarifaction. These have a full six wires on them along with a hall-effect set on the back.

I sent up a picture on a previous reply to Norm , but it's not as good as I wish it was.

I'll hold off til your ready for one, just let me know.

Have a great Vacation!

Bruce S

[electrondady1]

bruce, i don't know how to give you the link. the posting was by  paulc  and titled need a vawt design  also , if your looking for vawt ideas, look  under nvmike   vawt postings welcome  and   would like to share ideas for vawt  

[rotornuts]

The first three links are to the postings related to paulc and the other two are some decent pdf's with respect to savonius rotors. The unit paulc built has three rotors and paul had asked about the center spacing and I replied that I felt that with a three blade design the center space was likely a good thing but in a two blade configuration I still feel that a center space potentially hurts the performance because of the pulsing effect causing separation and considerable pressure drag as a result. The second pdf that was published recently seems to draw a similar conclusion about overlap . You'll find that it seems as though the zero overlap configuration would result in a closed center although they have installed slots at the 75ish% position so there is some through flow occuring.

http://www.fieldlines.com/story/2005/7/12/15144/7616

http://www.fieldlines.com/story/2005/7/11/14355/5859

http://www.fieldlines.com/story/2005/7/5/155012/6454

http://infoserve.library.sandia.gov/sand_doc/1976/760131.pdf

http://www.energy.ca.gov/2005publications/CEC-500-2005-084/CEC-500-2005-084.PDF

Have fun and I'd like to point out that nearly all the non-commercial or non-proprietary testing I've read leads to the conclusion that there is still alot that can be done to improve the design of the savonius and also that the work they have done is only one avenue of research. Basicly the field is still wide open but the dynamics of a Vawt dictate that each design requires individal consideration, so you can't be assured a good result by taking the good bits and pieces from different designs and lumping them together. That's not to say I'd discourage you from trying.

Mike

[Norm]

   Piquea  ?? That's somewhere near Springfield,

Ohio?  I'm about 250 miles from there Conneaut

NE corner of Ohio 2 miles from Lake Erie and about 1/4 mile from Pennsylvania state line.

   No problem with the ends...  just drill a 5/16 hole in the corners. Take a 3/8 wood dowel rod a foot long and run it thru the vertical shaft 1/2 steel conduit 5/16 thread onto the ends of the dowel rod. Metal screws and washers

on the inside edges of the cans to the metal conduit shaft. After you get it all assembled you get in the back of a pick-up and

'road test it'...should be good for at least

70mph.

    Yep Really would like to give one a try...

what's the rough dimensions of it?

    E-mail me and I'll give you my mailing address.

    I'm not that strong in electronics ...ever

use parts from a mouse in electronic circuits?

    Had to help the neighbor with one of his lawnmowers ...didn't get too much done today on

my stuff.

              later,

                     ( :>) Norm.

[electrondady1]

hello,roto/mike , had trouble with that last link, it keeps sending me to some weird zone and freezes up. now if some one would only tell me how to post a link!! i think your right about vawt design .although it's been around for a few thousand years it early in it's evolution.

shawn

[rotornuts]

I really don't like saving such large files to my user files as it consumes otherpowers memory but this is a very interesting paper so try this instead.

http://www.otherpower.com/images/scimages/2637/savinous_update.pdf

I forget who post it the first time but it may have been Ted.

To post links just find the page you want to post or the bookmark if you have it, right click the address and click "copy link location" then paste it into your posting by right clicking again once you get back to the posting window. The same applies if you want to post a link to a user file. Just right click over the file in your file list and copy link location, then paste it into your posting and it will post a link rather than post the file that may not be readable without downloading such as your movie file.

http://www.otherpower.com/images/scimages/2793/little_erma_004.avi

Mike

[shockwind]

Hey Ed, Can you give us some more information about the wire size and magnet size you are using in that 100 wat machine? How did you lay out the coils? 3 Phase or single phase?

Sorry for all the questions, I am building my first small VAWT wind turbine and I have found your site to be very helpful. Thanks.

Steve

[electrondady1]

 thanks mike ,very kind of you .

[windstuffnow]

  Hi Steve,

    It's basically a 12 pole 9 coil layout.  The lower power units used #20 wire, 45 turns per coil.  The higher power units used #18 wire same amount of turns.  These are for some small VAWT's where the rpms aren't a big concern. Cut in is at around 100 rpm for 12 volt charging.  

    I used my wedge shaped magnets on these also.

[41south]

Ed,

Any chance you'll look at offering some kits for these? 100 to 200 watts is exactly what I've been looking for in a VAWT design.  :-)

[ghurd]

How would those do with the 1 x 1/2 x 1/8" neos?

Everything else the same.

Not too exact, just a guess.

Thanks,

G-

[windstuffnow]

  Just guessing, if you used 2 in a row to make them 2 inches long you would end up a little less than 1/2 the power.  The magnets I used have a total of 26.88 sq in of magnetic area and using 24 of those would be around 12 sq inches.  

[windstuffnow]

  Hi Colin,

    I really hadn't considered making them into a kit.  They are fairly expensive for the power they make.  In all reality, its a waste of magnet because they will do far better.  Simply put, they are parts from the 500 watt kit with a thinner spacer and 1/2 the original stator thickness.  I used #20 wire in the 50 watt units and #19 wire in the 100 watt units.  The 200 watt uses #18 wire.  All the same turns and layout.  Each is rated considerably below what it would actually make and the output info was at 250 rpm.  The resistance came in at 1.9 using #20, 1.5 using #19 and 1.1 using #18, all wired in star.  

[Norm]

   Well 3 drum with 4 alternators would never

happen around here ...but maybe on a smaller

scale so as not to scare the residents the whole

thing maybe 4ft. diameter and 6ft high driving

that treadmill motor with the belt drive turning

about 400-500rpm in a 6-7 mph wind...it turned

fairly easy hand cranking it and charged a little

6 volt. sla powerwheels battery.....maybe...maybe!

                        ( :>) Norm.

[stevesteve]

Hey Ed. What did you use as bearings/spindle in those small units?

[windstuffnow]

Hi Steve,

   The magnet rotor assembly bolts to the bottom of the turbine rotor using the 4 bolt pattern.  There is a machined shaft that protrudes from the magnet discs and accepts a 1/2 inch bearing.  If you look close in the picture above you'll see the aluminum disc.  The bearing is set into a machined hole, the aluminum disc is bolted to the frame or base of the turbine.  The top is supported in a similar fashion.  

   The turbines are quite unique in their design and I really hope they do well.  I'm afraid their going to be expensive because of the construction....