20 footer up for 3 wks

[The Professor]

 101F in Omaha this afternoon. Here's some pictures of my latest mill. First off I will admit that this tower and mill is built light and flimsy. It would not do well in a wind storm. The tower is hinge mounted on a pickup box trailer and raised with a cable come along. It has hosted a bunch of smaller mills, this being the largest.

  The blades are lumber yard 2 x 6's, 10'long. About $4 each. They have 3 degrees of pitch at the tip and more at the hub. A GM 130 amp alt. is driven by a 50:14 x 50:14 bicycle chain and sprocket arangement for a total speed up of 12.75:1. The prop hub and intermediate sprocket hub are bicycle crankset assemblies. The axles have the crank arms sawn off and the prop hub is faced true and drilled and tapped 1/2-13.The 36" plywood prop disk is sandwiched between two 1/2"x4" steel disks and fastened to the crankset with a 1/2" bolt.The bike sprocket is fastened in the normal way. The prop rotates so as to tighten the 1/2" drive bolt. The intermediate sprockets, 50T and 14T are spaced and welded together.

   The chain drive is a bit noisy under load. The next version will have a serpentine belt drive. The plywood hub disk will have a wood pulley added to it, 36" dia.

   Later I will have a field energizing switch. Either a wind vane or a centrifigal type. For now it self energizes at about 160 RPM, one wire alternator style. The only load so far has been a car battery. I haven't had an amp meter on it.

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 The next bigger mill will have a variable pitch propellor, some what like an older Jacobs or a Marshall Price mill.

   Hope this helped with your appitite for new mill pictures.

[ghurd]

New is good!

Creepy.  Reminds me of my ruler blades, long and skinny.  

Almost to scale. In an exponential sort of way.

They work great.  

G-

(for those who don't recall "ruler blades"...

http://www.otherpower.com/images/scimages/2050/VCRflying2.jpg )

[TomW]

Prof;

Pretty interesting unit.

I get a kick out of the posts of real machines flying.

Thanks for sharing.

Cheers.

TomW

[SmoggyTurnip]

Great job!  I love seeing unusual stuff in the air.

For some reason I like seeing the geared up wind turbines,  mostly because people say you shouldn't build them.

.

[hiker]

nice rig--i found out if you have a little slack in the chain -it starts up a lot easyer--of course with those big blades you might not  have that problem..

sure, that wont turn into a chopper when the wind kicks up..... ;}

well thats one way to balance the blades--hang im high[low]...................

fun stuffffffffffffffffffff.

[paradigmdesign]

Just wondering if you had a total weight for the genny?  Looks like a feather-weight for that kind of dia.  

I am not experienced in building wood blades, but the dimensions of yours i.e. the thickness, especially at the root is a little concerning to me.  As long as if furls like it is intended, you should be fine.  

Also, what kind of clearence do you have from the tower?

Great to see another up and flying!