Quick little motor conversion I made

[fungus]

Made this little conversion out of a 55w fan I found in a dumpster; the fan was perfectly ok but the glass base cracked/broken...

Took the motor out; it is a bushing motor but I've been told that they're not as bad as people say; it has 6 leads coming out and two 'phases' of four coils.

Hacksawed (tiring...) the rotor into a square shape and put 1 1/2*1/4" neo cylinders on each flat; it cogs a tiny bit but not really noticeable. The original fan blade I put back on as I think it should work fine, now for a question;

I've 'ohmed' all the leads (the resistance function is broken on my meter but still reads proportionally) and taken out 3 leads which must have been for capacitors etc as they are odd resistances;  The other 3 leads left have two 'power' leads and a center tap; this will be the run and start windings with a coupling at the center I guess? The question is; how would this be rectified as the center tap rectification schemes I think wouldnt work as the two 'phases' are out of synch. Could I put a rectifier on each 'phase' and parallel them/series with caps or would it work better taking the leads from each 'phase'?

Hope I'm making sense..

Heres some pictures;













PS; ghurd-I'll be needing another one or two of your controllers soon

[fungus]

More info I forgot;

between the two 'phase wires' I get 15-30v spinning by hand. The fan rotor is transparent, might cause confusion in the photos

I made a mount out of it with a single piece of angle iron and a scrap bit of mdf for the tail, the whole thing pivots on a bicycle bearing which is nailed/cable tied to a bit of wood;

[ghurd]

Looks good to me!

The fan have multiple speeds, yes?  That will make it confusing.

I had one where part of the coils were wired backwards to reduce the flux at the expense of more power used.

My best luck was usually separate phases, paralleled (Jerry Rigged).  Some will cut in sooner / later than others.  With the high resistances, it didn't seem to bother anything.

Looks like it may be possible to find where one coil wire goes to the next coil?  Good luck with that, but it would certainly help get the efficiency higher by reconfiguring the coil arrangement.

Is the fan blade 40cm?  Don't expect it to work very well, either for starting or high RPM. I save everything, but 16" blades go straight into the trash.

Smaller the gap, higher the output.  If there is room, add HD neo pieces as 'pole shoes'.  Helps FAR more than I'd have thought.

Thank you Zubbly.

"Hacksawed (tiring...) the rotor..."?

When I was you age we had to cut rotors down using only wet bird feathers.

G-

[DamonHD]

You might want to paint something on those blades to avoid chopped fingers or sparrows!

Rgds

Damon

[DamonHD]

And the birds weren't even wet when you scythed them out of the sky with your previous transparent mill!  B^>

[hiker]

cool little mill...they are fun.

plan on makin blades for it??might be good for a downwind mill..

yeah those rotors are tuff..my 2hp rotor took the better part of the day..

plus 8 or 9 quality hacksaw blades...never again!!              maybe.  :}

[fungus]

Nailed the piece of wood to a fence and it sits on nicely;





Here there is a little aluminium box that I got from local thrift store-it was for speakers or something, it has some 1mm banana sockets? which are nice, I'll need some plugs now, but for now the wires are shoved in, it came with a potentiometer in it which had a switch on the end, this is used as an on/off switch, I'm not using the two side switches for now. Inside 2 diodes are attached to each of the 3 inputs then to the switch to the two outputs. I've connected a 40 LED light array to it on the normal test pole I use, it lights up pretty much whenever it spins but now theres no wind





soon I'll put a bit of pvc guttering over it to act as a rainshield..

[ghurd]

I have not heard from you about a quantity.

Still not sure if my UK email is 'right'.

G-