Monday Oct. 2

[DanB]

So far its been a good/busy fall.  Pictured above is my 20' machine about half furled up.  The alternator stalls the blades enough that I rarely ever see it furl more than this, which happens around 3KW.  It was making odd sounds in high winds (sounded like maybe magnets hitting the stator in high winds when it yawed quickly).  So last Monday (a week ago) we lowered it - sure enough the bearing was a bit loose so we tightened it a bit and re-greased everything/re-oiled all the wooden parts.  The bearing was just loose enough that magnets could barely touch the stator.  It's much quieter now and it's been good.  The bearing was a touch on the loose side when we put it up origionally, and hopefully the additional loosening is a break in sort of issue.  I hope it doesn't wear that quickly all the time.

I went to a crazy auction on Saturday.  This was a neat little 1KW generator I saw there.  There was way too much fun stuff there...  I had to practice great restraint.  Stuff seemed to go at very low prices.

A whole trailer load of magnetos.

There were 3 vertical steam engines there and two boilers.

They even had some old wind chargers.  They looked to be needing a bit of work...

Just what everybody needs.  This is a 50hp 2 stroke Superior engine.  I believe it sports a 12" bore and a 24" stroke.  Pretty awesome engine.

This is a Witte 5KW generator.  The engine is an 8hp slow running (about 800 rpm) diesel - beautiful.  I sort of kick myself for not bringing this home - I expect somebody got this for next to nothing.  It had very little compression, it obviously needed work.

This is a nicer version of the same thing, a 5KW Witte diesel light plant - this one ran fine.  I bid it up to about $700  - another fellow got it for just over that.  A very good price on an incredible generator in my opinion.

There were a few other neat old engines there...

Yesterday Shawn came up to start his own 17' wind turbine.  We're building it similar to my old one, but slightly larger magnet rotors (18" dia) and a slightly larger stator (of course)  - and a larger bearing/hub assembly.  Pictured above he's cutting out the stator mold.

This is his hub/bearing setup.  It's identical to the one we used on my 20' machine.  We got this from southwestwheel.com - ordered it last Monday, it showed up within 3 days.  Impressive service and good prices.

This is an old wincharger I won at the auction.  I expect its a 32V machine but Im not sure yet.  It does motor nicely on 12V so I expect its workable.  I don't really want it though - I'll probably send it on ebay or something.

Other treasure I won...  this will be a lot of fun.  I've always wanted to mess with this stuff but it tends to be expensive. It's completely rebuilt best I can tell.  It motors slowly off my small air compressor.

It's a 6hp steam engine, built in 1903.  I also have an appropriate boiler lined up I think.  Although I've always wanted to get into this bad habit - the cost has always been prohibitive.  Now I'm in trouble... this engine cost $140 - I couldn't help it.  Perhaps we can get all this together by next summer.

$25 got me the wincharger generator shown a couple pictures above, and a few other parts.  This is an interesting air brake - kind of like variable pitch blades but these are just paddles that flatten out at higher rpm to keep the speed down.

I also got this air brake.  The wind turbine we made last spring with the 11' wincharger 2 blade prop and the airbrake has actually been really well behaved even in very high winds - it's been running down at Scotts since May.  While I prefer the furling tail - the airbrake is a reasonable way to go I think and it's fun, and it looks neat!  (they are a bit noisy)

Other treasure I aquired includes a nice old Farmall H tractor which needs a touch of work but seems to run fine.  It'll be nice for a variety of things - including a good test stand for alternators.

Enough said...  last night was the last 'Monday party' - from now on we close the shop at 5:00 on Mondays and the party moves to Friday.

There's Shawns mold finished.  This stator will be 5/8" thick and 22" in diameter.  The island is 9.25" in diameter.

Shawn winding coils.  We stuck with the same number of turns (68) as we did in my older 17' machine, and we wound with two strands of #15 gage wire.  We made the coils a touch wider though, since the magnet rotors are larger in diameter.

Rich brought fire works...I guess this combination is all the rage now after something everyone (except me) saw on television recently.

You have to quickly drop all the candy in the diet coke and then the whole contents of the bottle come out quickly.  Pretty entertaining.

Maya turned 9 yesterday.

Pictured above is Maya sitting on the Giant Pumpkin she grew at her grandmas house.  This could've gotten much larger had we started it earlier and had the frost come later.  WE got the seeds for this from Zubbly... (thanks Zubbly - next year it'll be bigger!)

Next week well have Shawns stator finished.  We also got all the coils wound to repair my own 17' machine, so we should hopefully have that back up and running soon.

[whatsnext]

Dano, Do you think you'll actually power something with the steam engine or just watch it run. I'm still looking for a cheap hit and miss but it looks like they are all in CO.

[DanB]

I'd like to run a 4 - 5KW generator with it.  Perhaps we'll build one for it.  Im not too worried about all that though till we get it running.

[Ungrounded Lightning Rod]

You should check with your state about mandatory inspections for boilers and steam engines.

(My brother in Michigan just got his two 1" guage ride-around steam engines checked a few months ago.  They passed and came out rated for a higher pressure than he'd expected given their history.  He had a bunch of stuff to say about keeping the inspectors happy:  Like have everything ready to tear open and positioned for easy access, treat inspector with respect, etc.)

If I were in your place I'd get acquainted with 'em now, before buying the boiler.  They might have some pointers to give you to keep you from making a bad buy.

[DanB]

Yes, good advice.  The fellow I'd be getting my boiler from should have experience with this.

[harrie]

Wow, all that good stuff, I can see why it was hard to not bring alot of it home, Im afraid I would have! great pictures.

[pyrocasto]

Wow I'm jelous most about that steam engine. I'm going to have to get my arse in gear and find one cheap too.

[JW]

http://www.otherpower.com/images/oct0206/Oct0306%20044.jpg

Neat engine DanB,

If you need some '460 grade steam cylinder oil' let me know, I have like, ten gallons of the stuff.

How many psi steam pressure do you need to get that to produce the power of 4kw? Does that thing even have a throttle valve? I guess the govenor takes care of overspeed conditions...

Just as a point of reference, flash-tube/coil boilers are not regulated under most conditions. Granted this thing(engine) used to run from a main steam boiler utility, of the building it was in.

its common knowledge flash coil boiler's are notoriously difficult to regulate under load. Since they have no reserve capacity. Although, they are pretty safe and tend not to overpressure very easily, with anytype of steam volume consumption. This means they(coil boilers) can make more volume of vapor than any air-compressor, but can stall-out easily, since too much water by volume entering the heat-exchanger will cool it, too such an extreeme that not much steam can be produced. The nice part is that, usually, under ideal conditions, the over pressure steam, can be vented, without bad effects to the engine(on the type of engine, you have). If there's not enough steam volume produced, then everything stops or slows down. flash coil boilers can make pressures below 60psi steady, and have tonn's of volume of steam(lbs/per/hour) when at optimum heating and matched load conditions. You'll be lucky to get 6% efficiency with that. Very different from those spark ignition engines(in the other picture in your story) with the big flywheels and compression stroke. But then again, on the power stroke, such engines have a cylinder pressure of 635psi or higher. Diesel is like 1200psi.

Neat stuff, as always Dan.

JW

[richhagen]

That looked like a pretty neat auction.  My eyes would be bigger than my storage options if I were to go to that.  

I don't know much about steam engines.  If they will run on any steam source, it would be kind of neat if you had a boiler you could fuel with wood, which is plentiful and renewable on your property.  It would give even more redundancy to your power sources.  At any rate it should be an interesting project.  

Don't blow up all of your soda stock up there, save a little for the next time I visit! :-)  Rich

[Ungrounded Lightning Rod]

If I had one of those things - with two cylinders so there's isn't a dead spot, making it self-starting on pressure rise, or perhaps rigged with a spring-loaded off-center weight to unbalance the flywheel when stalled and avoid it pausing at the dead spot - I'd try putting in a parabola trough solar collector and running that as a boiler and running a genny off the engine.

I think you'd get rather low pressure steam that way so the efficiency would be low.  But efficiency isn't much of an issue when the fuel is free.  You'd only have to adjust the aim seasonally and you can use a condenser heat-exchanger to recover all the heat that didn't get turned into juice, so you'd get as much heating as if you were just using the same collection area for a solar heating collector for water or house heating, while the juice would be a bonus.

Not to mention the fun factor.  B-)

[DanB]

Yes, that would be fun - but I think feeding an engine this size that way would require a huge collector.  I'm counting on all the solar collecting that dead trees did years ago to run this one someday ;-)

[Benjamin]

Wow, that was an impressive sale!

That steam engine was a great buy!  You are going to need a larger flywheel if you are going to run a generator with it.  Looks like part of a clutch that is on there now?  The only down side to a boiler is having to babysit it whenever it is in operation.  Otherwise it works great as a power plant.  The best part is getting heat AND electricity from your fuel.  Not JUST heat when you use a wood stove.

Is this your wincharger governor....

http://www.pat2pdf.org/patents/pat2215456.pdf

[Phssthpok]

Say Dan.... I have a short (approx 5 seconds) quicktime video of an open valvetrain 5Kw Witte in operation if you'd like to see/hear one running.

Seems the gentleman I bought my wind-genny from is also into slow speed diesels as well as scratch-building those scale model engines.

[jmk]

 I wonder what happens when you drink a glass of coke and eat that stuff? Tell Maya happy birtday.