Stepper Motor LED Windmill

[ghurd]

The recent round of stepper talk had me thinking while watching drywall compound dry.

That led to this.

Straight forward demonstration of getting power out of a stepper.

This is a common style of 5 wire stepper motor.

Got a little out of hand. I used a ruler for straight lines, spray paint, even some creativity... I don't usually.  Figured I might post it with hope someone will learn something if they see how easy it really is to do.

The 10mm, jelly bean size, diffused, LED combinations of red, yellow and green are wired so they light sort of progressively. The combinations require some to need more voltage before they light up. That was part of the experiment.

This one lights a pair of red LEDs at 40RPM, a red and a yellow at 60RPM, all are light at 75~90RPM.

The AC nature and low RPM requirements make the LEDs flash.

The paint is bright red and bright yellow. Looks good with the green PVC blades.

The photos would look better if I waited for the clouds to clear, probably July?

The blades could be a little longer to overcome the cogging sooner, and the tips could be a little wider, but they were here.  Epoxyed the pulley to the hub, screws through the drilled rim. Balanced the blades with a belt sander. I love hot glue.

Decided what direction I would see it from. The good side faces my house. The neighbor is out of luck.  Did I mention I love hot glue?

This motor has high coil resistance. 100 ohms per coil, or 100 ohms from any lead to the common, 200 ohms from any lead to any other.  I used 100 ohm resistors, if in doubt use around 500 ohms.

Battery charging can be done with 4 diodes where the resistors are shown, paralleled to the battery positive, the common wire to the battery negative.

Even number wire count tends to give better battery charging results. Never can tell.

This took 8 or 10 hours, including testing, digging through parts, finding lost tools, clean up... everything, including the spray paint drying.  Again used pieces removed from the kitchen remodel, trim, paneling, telephone wire, etc.

"K" because I'm sending it to my niece Katie for some inspiration.

I feel a lot can be learned playing with this kind of project.

G-

[gotwind]

Very interesting ghurd - I'm learning all the time.

I'm selling my stepper on eBay - it only generated 3.8 watts max.

My dynohubs do better > 7 watts - wow!!!!

http://www.gotwind.org/modified_windgen.htm

Any ideas on a simple rectifying and regulating circuit to say 7.2 volts to run maybe 6 super bright white L.E.D's.

I think max forward voltage is 3.6v @ 25Ma per led

Regards

Ben

Gotwind

[dinges]

Nice one, Ghurd.

My problem still is though to build it in such a way that it will survive for eternity; or at least the first 10 years outdoors

Don't want to know how that wood will look after the rainy season...

But your point how easy it can be to quickly build something that works is clear.

What age is your niece? It's always much easier to impress the natives than the experts on this board

Peter.

(stuffing cotton in his ears, thinking happy thoughts, and DEFINITELY NOT thinking about gas-caps)

[oztules]

I am guessing what is holding the new kitchen together....:-)

Ghurd, what are you using to get your elec diagram to such a small size (12K)

Peter wants some diags posted and I can't get them small enough to upload without a very very long wait/failure.     Protel saves in silly size files, and no-one can read them anyway.

The 10 hour challenge has been broken, and its better than mine...(wistfully looking at where the yet to be built windmill should be poking up on the horizon)

..............oztules

[ghurd]

The bridge you show is easiest, and the LM317 is good.

But don't expect 3.6Vf at 20ma. Expect less Vf. Probably more around 3.3Vf for 20ma.

I am against running 5mm LEDs over 18ma.

A LM317 can be wired as a constant current supply.

http://adamone.rchomepage.com/guide3.htm

I like using simple resistors, they kind of regulate the circuit as the battery (or voltage) gets low.  My bet on the bike hub is 390 ohms for 2 series white LEDs. 6LEDs takes 3, 390 ohm resistors.  Really depends on the voltage at maximum speed. May need to go higher, like ~650 ohm area. The unit could power quite a few LEDs.

[ghurd]

Peter!

The old VCR windmill held up VERY well, except the tail is showing some age (seperating very cheap plywood paneling).  I expected the tail boom and blades to warp, the saw dust & glue frame to fall apart, the semi exposed motor and bearing to rust, ice to do what ice does... Really none of that showed much. The boom warped for a few days, then straightened out. Duct tape loops dried out, blades fell off (finally!), so I could put some other blades on it.

Maybe a water slinger (rubber fender washer?) on the shaft, then the bottom of a 1/2 liter soda bottle covering the motor, then a second slinger on the outside?  Should keep the water out of the bearings.  Don't know what salt air would do.

She is 9(?). Just won 2nd place in a large science fair with a couple thousand participants.  A wire wrapped on a nail and a battery, BBs for testing strength by lifting force, iron filings extracted from breakfast cereal, paper to show the field lines, then make a few changes to see the whats and whys.

Now she is facinated with lighting LEDs.

And she is becoming harder to impress.

I expect her mother will be happy when the tail falls into pieces.

G-

(It MUST be 3 clicks. No more. No less.)

[ghurd]

The amazing thing is the kitchen held together long enough to tear it down. Must have been a homeowner DIY job.  Now its got plenty of hot glue and should last a long time.

I am software challenged.  

I used paint, black & white, copy pasted the same LED, and resistor, over and over. I think copy/paste-ing saves size on the original.

Then I save it to my photos.

Then I open it in Photoshop CS, crop it, 'save for web', and chose a small but readable size, remane it, and save it to my photos again.  This is the one I upload.

There must be other than Photoshop CS that works about the same.

Seems like even 4kb was readable, but that would have been a little marginal, even for that circuit.

Not sure how well this will work, but you could email them to my yahoo account, "ghurd1...", and I could take a shot at it, then send them back. Not sure if I can open a 'Protel' file. What is the file extension?

The 10 hour mark? ROFL. Most of mine are up in 2 hours!  Nope, you won't photos of those.

G-

[Norm]

  Very good Ghurd...I hooked up a couple of

those rubber tire stepper motors ...they light

up a red led at 60 rpm and 2 white leds at about

90...120 I'm not quite sure...so I'm figuring on

designing a set of blades that will spin those

stepper motors just fast enough to charge 1 or

possibly 2 of those ni-cads from those battery

packs per each windmill even if it takes all day

....I figure that with 5 of those and 7 of my

old solar light cells that used to charge 2AA

rechargeables each I should be able to charge

enough on a 5mph windy, sunny day to run one of my

14.4 cordless drills or my yet to be built

cordless 22inch hi-efficiency (uses 3bladed

replacable utility knife blades)ultra lite lawn

mower !

     I use a wire-wrap tool to fasten those

wires to the ends of the diodes ...leave a little

sticking past the wire wrap then loop it over the

wire wrap with needle nose to form an eye like a

sewing needle...a drop of solder on each

connection and its done the other ends connect

all together with the common wire with a wire

nut then I'll hot glue the whole works to that board.

     Think those stepper motors can do the job?

              ( :>) Norm.

[oztules]

Thanks Ghurd,

I'll load up a windows partition again, and try that (I use linux on this machine...but I don't have a basic drawing prog in this version. Open office is a little heavy on the file size.)....plus I can't get the hang of it...does too much, and so does gimp.

I'll give paint a whurl..... now i think of it I might still have a dos copy of neopaint....maybe run that from a floppy.

Ghurds 2 hour windmill recipe...... Hot glue, more hot glue, and for afters .....some hot glue... what are the blades made of?.......I know ..I know......hot glue...

keep well..............oztules

[commanda]

Synaptic search "draw" threw up these, amongst the noise.

Haven't tried any of them myself. I use Protel Trax on Dos, then a windows version of Protel to print to pdf.

GNU Paint - a small, easy to use paint program for GNOME

This is gpaint (GNU Paint), a small-scale painting program for GNOME,

the GNU Desktop Environment. gpaint does not attempt to compete with

GIMP, it is just a simple drawing package based on xpaint, along the

lines of 'Paintbrush' from a popular non-free operating system.

Currently gpaint has the following features:

  * Drawing tools such as ovals, freehand, polygon and text, with

    fill or shadow for polygons and closed freehand shapes.

  * Cut and paste by selecting irregular regions or polygons.

  * Preliminary print support using gnome-print.

  * Modern, ease-to-use user interface with tool and color palettes.

  * Multiple-image editing in a single instance of the program.

  * All the image processing features present in xpaint.

Draw circuit schematics or almost anything

xcircuit is a generic drawing program tailored for making circuit

diagrams.

The graphical interface attempts to maintain consistency between

X11 window rendering and the pure PostScript output.

xcircuit is mouse, menu and keyboard driven. The emphasis is on

single character macros.

Amanda

[oztules]

A lot of good information as always thanks Commanda.

I too use autotrax...seems better to use than protel for windows. The other reason I liked using autotrax is the print out has the holes at any size you want to act as drill start holes for manual drilling.  

The 99SE was fancy as you please, but no provision for making "in the sink" boards, because I could find no way to print the board layers with holes, and without these my tiny drill would walk around the land, unless I was very careful with each and every hole...(and I'm not as a rule), so I continue to use autotrax.

I have pulled up Gimp, but it came up with 4 screens of differing things.... I looked and ran away. Too much I cried.... If I had some use for it I would learn it, but I haven't, and it looks seriously good/cunning/but not for me. Open Office is on this linux as well, but same deal...overbearing for a simple sketch.

I will load up gnome (KDE user here....don't beat me..) (Mandrake10.1.....don't beat me again..I recall you are an Ubantu user......From this I assume you are very conversant with the linux system....us Mandrakers are bottom feeders, but stll deserve to live).

The other good thing with autotrax is that you don't need a partition for windoze, can run it on a boot disk or with a small fat32 on the HD. Virus free for four or five years now... and lovin it

I can recall some years back where I had the two (KDE and Gnome) running together, and there was some problem which I can't recall between then, but I think it was minor, that's why I have not currently got both incorporated into this installation. That will change in a minute or two.

Thanks again, I will give it a try.

...............oztules

[commanda]

The Protel for windows I use is EDA/Client 3.4.2; and dates from about 1995/96 I believe. It does have the option to print holes. I print with a laser printer to the blue transfer film from Jaycar, then feed it through a laminator to transfer it to the copper. Works well enough most of the time, with only minor hand touch-up required before etching.

I too used Mandrake once upon a time, and Red-Hat before that; but now appreciate just how powerful Debian's apt-get system really is.

You can also run Autotrax under dosemu on Linux. Or make a bootable dos usb disk.

Amanda

[oztules]

dosemu?  ...what be this?  I had tried autotrax under wine, but to no good effect...(some time ago I admit)..

It's not only debian based i hope. I will look for rpm or source and libs..(dosemu)

 I think to get the best out of aptget requires a net connection that works a lot lot lot better than this little black duck has....at the moment...satellite if I can convince the boss is on the distant horizon.

Thank you for your time in this Commanda  Its's appreciated

.................oztules

[wooferhound]

If you save a line drawing into a .GIF file

the file sizes can be Very Small, even for large drawings.

[ghurd]

Hi Norm,

I used the same motor you have, red is common.

As fast as I could get the motor hand turning

with the rubber tire on, got 15VAC.

Not many ma at that voltage, but it may

charge the whole pack at once?

How about 8 cells at once?

Not sure how well this will work.





G-

[ghurd]

That didn't work out so well!

It looks fine in 'my uploads'.

Fill in the blanks...

Hows that look to you guys?

G-

[Norm]

  Looks like a couple spots missing....something

to work on until my attention wanders....uh oh!

think it's already going...better get started on

those plastic blades  

      ( :>) Norm.

[Bruce S]

oztyles;

    Which linux do you use? try using Krite<-Sp? it pretty much comes standard on most tux prgrams I've loaded/tried/use.

Should be able to pull in most all standard extension as well.

I only use OOoog when trying to convert from one type to the next.

BTW: Hot glue does not work on broken CDs :--))

Bruce S

[ghurd]

I even reloaded it larger, didn't help.

Actually got worse.

[oztules]

Hi Bruce S

Mandrake 10.1 is the os at the moment. I have Kwright but not Kright. It doesn't support graphics that i can tell.

I ended up using oo and ksnapshot. and it did the job. thanks.

I hadn't considered hot glue for that...... you've saved me the effort

..................oztules

[oztules]

Yes Wooferhound, but getting the line drawing for us artistically challenged peasants seems to be the barrier for me.  Drawing is not something I excell at.....amongst an awful lot of other things now I think about it....

............oztules

[dinges]

I think I understand her mother

It's one of the reasons living back home at the parents is less than ideal for me. Somehow they don't share my hobby...

Ah well. At least I've got full access to the metal and woodworking shop. And 3phase electricity. Nothing's perfect, I suppose.

Peter.

[commanda]

Right click & view image. Works for me.

Amanda

[ghurd]

Is the concept sound?

Five wire motors do some strange things.

G-

[hiker]

heres another minnie mill...

its been running on the side of my shop for a couple of years now..

its just a little two coil motor--with two hd mags stuck on the rotor..

kinda cool to watch it at night -the l.e.d.s blink on and off depending what coil is

powered up..the l.e.d.s are mounted on those two arms sticking out..i just used one big resitor and one small flashlight bulb--the load goes throu the light bulb to cut down on the output power--as of yet ive never had to change out any l.e.d.s..........

no need for a rectifier -runs off of straight AC...

[gotwind]

Thanks Ghurd.

I like the simplicity of resistors - tried it and it works nicely. 390 ohm resistors.

I had a thought, i could use two 7.2v zenner diodes back to back to also regulate the voltage - would it then be DC - half wave?

What are the efficiency of zenners, or am i going in the wrong direction?

Ultimatly i want to provide a built board to visitors to my gotwind website.

To include:

A bridge rectifier and Six 1000mcd 10mm white LED's on a piece of veroboard.

Any help much appreciated, a circuit diagram would be superb.

A small Paypal donation for you if you want

I can be emailed directly at:

enquiries@gotwind.org

[gotwind]

Photo here

[Norm]

  What is that prop made from....Like a big

round stick with slanted flats carved on it?

             ( :>) Norm

[gotwind]

And another picture, caught at dusk.

Dynohub powering two 10 mm white LEDS @20Ma each, via a 1A bridge rectifier and 390 ohm reistor.

Focused by an old torch reflector and magnified by a +6 dioptre opthaelmic front lens.

I make glasses for a living and have access to high powered magnifying lenses free.

Not huge power, but it makes me happy!!!

[ghurd]

I sent an email.

You can't afford me, I'm a dozen-aire you know!  

G-

[ghurd]

A 2x4 if I recall?

[gotwind]

Ghurd has done some excellent work for me and gotwind.org on L.E.D configuration.

Probably easy for an electronics wizard like him but invaluable to a newbie like myslf.

Thanks again from the other side of the world. UK

Still amazes me, the internet. This would have taken weeks by snail mail (postal service)

Ben

Gotwind

[willib]

a little bit off topic , but what kind of car is that?