more fun projects

[electronbaby]

Im making some 12' diameter blade sets. These were made with laminated cedar.



12' on the left, 10' on the right for yet another machine.



I like to let the props sit outside when I linseed oil them. Here its sitting under my tracker.



Another shot of the 48v twins.



I got this a while ago. Its a winch that I use for pulling up tilt over towers. It started off as a regular 10,000 Lb. winch. I welded up a frame for it and now i slip it in my 2" receiver on the back of my veggie powered Fuso. It makes lifting most tilt overs a snap. I can fit 250' of 5/16" cable on it (although you really shouldn't pull that much in one pull without letting the motor cool down). Its 470:1 reduction I think. It takes two guys to lift it. I welded some handles on the ends.



Here it is in action. I took off the bigger cable and here we're using 1/4" stuff. Plenty to lower an XL.1 and lift an alternator.



Going up?







Couple shots from the back of the machine on top of the tower. You can just about see the Atlantic Ocean in the back ground on the horizon (kinda hard to pick out when I resized the pic). It was a beautiful day to do tower work. Sunny, clear skies, not too hot out, and NO WIND! :-)



I doubled the size of my tracking array. Now its 1040 watts of KC130 Kyocera. About half of these were struck by lightning and were not working when I got them. I simply replaced the bypass diodes and now they work great.



I built up some portable data loggers for logging wind speed and direction and a slew of other stuff. This will be installed at a customers house in 2 days for logging wind speed and turbulence!! Yes, two wind vanes. Ive been using APRS World loggers for a while now and I absolutely love them. Plus Jims a great guy.



I had to figure out a way of supporting another sensor boom off of a short data logging mast. The sensors are made from 1.5" PVC. I ended up using 1.5" EMT for the mast because it was relatively lightweight. So it only made sense to use EMT and PVC fittings to make the adapter.



This is how it turned out. It works great. I epoxied the EMT fitting (that I cut in half) into the ends of the 1.5" cross. If you look carefully at the data logger picture, you can see how this adapter holds the lower sensor arm to the vertical mast.



Ive done many, many PV installs this year, but this was a fun one. Its only a 10K commercial system, but its using the EVP amorphous modules. 42 watts each. There are 240 modules. They are frame-less glass modules, and they are very fragile. It took a while to get all of them on this custom built steel rack. The top I-beam is 18" beam, just to give you an idea of the size. There was a huge crane that came in to lay and assemble all the steel on the roof. Anyway, this is a shot from the back side looking south east.



This is what they look like from underneath. Pretty cool.



Don't try this at home. 10,000 watt arc.

-RoyR

[wpowokal]

Roy I like your attention to detail, I like the way you teathered the blades nice and gentle, I like your attention to saftey.

I am extreemly jellous of that solar insulation.

Allan down under

[DamonHD]

10kW arc!  Woooooooo!  B^>

Rgds

Damon

[tecker]

Full load amps .A little plasma for the Gods.

[wooferhound]

 So . . . What happens if you connect a HotDog up between those wires ?

[richhagen]

Cool Post.  You can actually see the green from the copper in the arc!  It looks like you are having lots of fun.  Rich

[electronbaby]

yeah it was pretty cool... and dangerous. It was a little breezy that day and if it wasn't, I would have been able to pull it further apart. If I remember, I think we wired in strings of eight, so the voltage here would be around 480v dc.

[JW]

I especially like that last picture. Ive tried to make the 'green plasma' on many occasions. Sometimes I will get a nice green luminescence, but its tough to get on a regular basis(using only fuel).

 That green means one of the electrodes are copper right? Its a visable ion plasma.

Im very curious to see what(type of effect) a neo-magnet would have on the plasma.

JW

[FuddyDuddy]

Beautiful work, excellent pics. It's fun to see a real craftsman at work.

Thanks for sharing.

[spinningmagnets]

Its too bad there isn't a counter on how many times a link is saved. You do very professional looking work!

The post is great, lots of well-done pics!

"Avoid clichés like the plague, they're old hat" -Steven Wright

[JW]

I agree with all the poster's. This is an inspiring Story.

 Also I would like to add, this story, is at the same level as DanB's most recent storys/postings...

Electron-

 I know its nightime, so my suggestion is one you'd have to ponder in the morning

However its only fair to suggest, that if you bring a neo-magnet within proximity to the green arc/plasma, its best, that you are holding it(the magnet), with, a thick leather welding glove, the type that I use when handling neo-magnet's, to protect the fingers. There pretty bulky,(the gloves) but are somewhat effective. Besides the magnet could get hot. By the way, I do tig/gtaw bare handed, even welding magnesium, using argon shielding flux/gas. But most often, I weld aluminum. You should see the sun-bleach marks on my tee-shirts.

Nice post.

JW

[oztules]

And yet another top post. It is nice to see the wind gods over there read the same books as the ones over here...raise mill.... no wind.

Gad.

........oztules

[chadking]

Thanks for a great post!  Amazing attention to detail and follow through on getting things done.  

[domwild]

Congratulations for a job well done! Great welding and engineering. So you must be the reason the oil price dropped recently!?

Thanks for sharing that with us.