Brian's Morning Newsletter March 19th 2009
Good Morning
I'm getting a nice late start this morning, didn't wake until 6:30 AM. Yesterday, we worked on the wind turbine tail piece. I spied our neighbor heading up the hill driving an ATV and scrambled to catch him. I wanted to talk to him using a couple of pieces of his scrap pipe, however by the time I made it over to the fence he was already up into the forest. It was a sunny, warm morning and decided wait in the meadow for him to return. The pipe we need is for the tail section of the wind turbine. According to the book a 1 1/4 inch ID (inside diameter) pipe fits easily around a 1 inch ID pipe.
I could hear the neighbor's ATV putting along on the hill and I had the Home Brew Wind Power book along with me to show Ignacio what we were building. It being so nice outside I found a big tree along the fence to lean against and sat down. Our old dog Cujo showed up a few minutes later nudging me off my resting place with a puppy-like playfulness. I gave old Cuggie a big hug since I was already on the ground and we both lie in the deep grass for ten or fifteen minutes.Yes it was as blissful as it sounds.
When the neighbor finally putt-putted down the hill we got together in an over the fence country style chat that ended several minutes later with Ignacio telling me, "Sure, let's go take a look at the iron pile together." We found four sections of pipe, one is 2 inch diameter and eight feet in length, which will be used for either the tower top section, or a floor stand for the next phase of the turbine assembly, installing the blades. We also picked out the inch and a quarter diameter pipe for the tail bearing and a eight foot length of one inch pipe for the tail frame.
After we chatted about spring planting for another half hour, Ignacio said he had to get back to work fixing the fence where the elk have been tearing it up on a regular basis. I hopped the fence with my prizes on my shoulder. By the time I got back to the shop the rest of the Tusas-folk were up and gathered in the yard by the shop. I tried to give a pep talk about getting serious about working together and mostly earlier in the morning, but it came out as a rant. Maybe it wasn't as bad as I thought, I am not disgruntled, but I have trouble getting the crew motivated in the morning and I was wanting to work in the shop and Jackson had his loafer/workers waiting for I don't know what, I couldn't work like that.
Finally, we got moving, and we stayed with it until 5:00 PM, right, a whole half day, wow! Nevertheless, by the time we called it a day, we cutout, sanded and oiled two, eleven inch diameter, half inch thick plywood disks for supporting the blades, cut and welded the steel pipe for the tail section. Yeah man, I don't know about Kevin, but I am sore and tired this morning. I guess carrying that iron pipe across the field must be why my legs ache, don't know, but my back is talking to me too this morning. Now that the sun crested the ridge I'll go out to the shop and take pictures of our work.
Blades laid out on work bench with the red painted iron disk on top of the plywood 11 inch disk on top of the blades.
Tail piece cut and welded, this was a fairly complicated part to cut out and build. Notice the half cutout pipe next to the orange welding stick clamp. This is the 1.25 inch pipe which fits over the 1 inch tail bearing pipe. The notch allows the tail to furl or fold in one direction
Wind turbine with tail piece in place in unfurled position. In the above image the tail is perpendicular to the blades. In this turbine tail position the blades will face the wind. The tail will normally want to stay in this position because of gravity, however should the wind increase to 30 miles per hour the tail will begin to fold or furl causing the blades to move at an angle to the wind. As wind speed increases so does the furling action, until the blades only have the sides exposed to the wind.
In the above image I'm holding the tail up which is the furled position, again gravity plays a big part in keeping the tail and the turbine facing the wind in most wind speed conditions
Above is an image of the front of the wind turbine with the tail in the natural unfurled position.
Finally this morning, we thank Mackenzie Thatcher for the spool of copper wire he sent to us. I couldn't believe when I saw the shipping manifest, shipping weight: 53 pounds of 14AWG! It's exactly the wire gauge we used in our first 24 volt alternator. This will build a lot of wind turbines Mack, thanks again, and do let me know if there is anything I can do for you.
See more about out 10 foot Axial Flux Wind turbine at http://outfitnm.com/alt-energy/wind-power
Yours truly,
Brian Rodgers
