Having recently (18mths ago) been made redundant and apparently over the age of usefullness ,and after coming across your site whilst surfing ( i am told this is the correct term), I was struck with a desire to dabble in the black art of making electricity with windpower-cannot be that difficult!
After reading the board it was decided that i would attempt to make the lenz-2 chosen purely because the other half said it looked good , so be it.
Perhaps i should explain that i have a small workshop with lathe ,a couple of benchtop mills a pillar drill , welder and the rest of a lifetime of tools used primarily for making nothing useful,except getting out of the way and a quiet life.
My hobbies include reading ,mostly your site but anything technical,and Boating ( i have a 30ft Broom of 1974 vintage which i have restored to its former glory). Hence in profile jack of alltrades master of non.
Anyway back to the point I drew up a list of parts i thought i may need and set about scrounging anything that was remotely useful or thought to be.
After a while i had enough to start in ernestso off we go.
First of all i managed to obtain 2- 10 inch valve plate covers of 1/4 steel which were for the magnets and coils,2- trailor hubs and shafts ,enamelled wire and bought 12 magnets (getting expensive this game)
When i placed all 12 magnets (lots of fun this), it was time for the coils decided on 12 with 100 turns on each to be wired in series SFSFSF etc (nothing to this lark).
Fixed the plates to the hubs after much agrivation with centre hole, now for the blades.
while waiting for a gift from above i noticed a blue water barrel (45 gallon)and thought it had potential.Cut of top and bottom after marking outside into six divisions and hacked away. Must admit looked cool.I then attached half of 2 inch waterpipe(plastic) to a selected edge on each , and proceeded to make the arms out of 1 inch box section steel.
Taped on the coils to the plates connected up and found that i had some extending aluminium poles(3inch Dia) used for scaffolding to use as a mast.
So i was ready to light the sky , quiet day , up she went , went round and looked bloody good ,should measure output.NOTHING absolutely NOTHING ,can't be anything i have done can it? Still it Turns in the slightest breeze and looks cool.
Took it down and after much heartache and confusion realised that you cannot just series coils and expect them to give an output , more to it than that.
which goes to prove that although thing look easy there is usually more to it than that.
By the way i have remade the above item which performs well and will post soon. hope you enjoy.
coldte
