Magnet generator from hdd. How to assemble a wind turbine from three hard drives and one pump from a washing machine. How to make a wind turbine from PET bottles with your own hands

We continue to recycle plastic bottles. I propose to consider the manufacture of a vertical rotary windmill from four bottles. The used rotation unit can become a generator of weak currents or an excellent wind speed sensor for a homemade anemometer. Shown are photos and videos of the windmill. The assembly diagram is detailed below.

How to make a wind turbine from PET bottles with your own hands

1. Required tools: thermal gun, scissors, drill, knife and screwdriver. Materials used: four identical PET bottles with lids from 0.2 to 2 liters each, a hard drive motor, a plastic jar for vitamins, an old sink siphon and a wooden pole of the required length.

2. Disassembly of the computer hard drive is considered. To work, you will need an engine and an overhead plate for fixing a disk pancake with fasteners. The fasteners can be for a Phillips screwdriver, but more often for an asterisk.

3. We begin work with the most laborious and critical unit - installation of a rotation unit in the lid of a jar from under vitamins. To do this, a hole in the plastic lid of the can is cut with a knife under the end of the engine, strictly symmetrically with your own hands.

Motor Jar Lid Hole

4. On the overhead strip, mark the mounting holes and drill them.

5. Install the rotation unit into the cover.

Holes are marked Rotation node is fixed

6. We mark the jar into four sectors and glue the four lids symmetrically with a well-heated thermal gun. The glue is applied generously to the lid and the lid is glued in the right place. There should be no labels on the jar, and it is advisable to clean the gluing places with an emery cloth.

7. Screw the PET bottles into the corks and mark the cutouts in the jar with a permanent felt-tip pen. The position of the notches determines the direction of rotation of the windmill. The cutouts should be on the side as shown in the photo, that is, when the wind turbine rotates, it tries to screw the cover.

8. Cut out the bottles in turn and immediately screw them into place. We screw the jar into the lid - the homemade windmill is ready. It is useful to check and, if necessary, balance the wheel with a piece of plasticine.

The covers are glued

9. The issue of installing the wind turbine initially caused difficulty, but was unexpectedly simply resolved. The inch standards of the hard drive and the siphon from the sink turned out to be the same, and the engine was remarkably fixed with a union nut on the siphon, if necessary, you can add a rubber washer. Before installation, the engine was disconnected from the cover, the union nut was inserted and the can cover was fixed back. To assess the generating capacity of the motor, wires are soldered to the motor windings.

10. The end of the pole is firmly inserted into the siphon and the entire structure is set up for testing. The windmill is quite sensitive and, in a calm wind, immediately began to slowly rotate.

The rotation node is fixed

There is a way to get electricity absolutely free. It is enough to make and install a wind generator on your site. Today, such traditional sources of electricity cannot be replaced, however, it will add a few pleasant percentages to the proud independence of the household. The most important thing is that you can “cook up” a full-fledged generator from literally any old rubbish and garbage.

We need

First of all, you need to get a pump from an automatic washing machine. It is used to pump water from the drum into the sewer and stands at the very bottom. You will also need four faulty hard drives, a long pole for installing the structure, numerous bolts, nuts, washers. Finally, wires are needed.

What is a pump for?

The pump will be used as the very generator that will generate electricity. The pump consists of a movable permanent magnet rotor and a movable stator with a U-shaped magnetic circuit, as well as a coil that is attached to this structure. The rotor can be easily pulled out. Thanks to the mentioned permanent magnets, an excellent generator is obtained from such a pump, capable of supplying voltages up to 250 V.

Generator manufacturing process

It is best to fasten the pump with a clamp, which is easiest to make from steel corners. They will most likely need to be trimmed appropriately. In the magnetic circuit of the pump, you can safely make an additional hole for more reliable fixation. That is, in general, all that needs to be done at this stage.

Blade manufacturing process and attachment

Wind turbine blades can be made from PVC pipe. To do this, cut it into three equal parts lengthwise. More "graceful" elements can then be made from such blanks. In the places where the blades are attached, do not forget to make suitable holes for subsequent fastening. It is also necessary to make a tail blade from a similar material, which will guide the generator.

We will fix the blades on two disks from the HDD. The whole difficulty of this stage of work is to make holes in the discs in suitable places, and then screw the blades to them using the prepared bolts and washers.

Swivel knot

A small but very important detail. A hard drive motor can be used to make a pivot angle. It has very good bearings, and therefore this element will perfectly cope with the task at hand. It is on this element that the disc with the generator will be worn.

General assembly

Now all that remains is to assemble the wind generator, attach the wires to our pole, install the swivel element on it, and also raise and place the "mill" in a suitable place. After the completion of the work, it will be correct to conduct a small test. The wind generator will certainly not give the maximum 250 V, but the result of the work will still be pleasant! A detailed assembly process can be seen in the video below.

Do you want even more interesting and useful tips for your summer cottage for the next season? How about figuring it out and turning it into a farm-useful thing.

While riding a bicycle past summer cottages, I saw a working wind generator:

Large blades slowly but surely rotated, the weather vane oriented the device in the direction of the wind.
I wanted to implement a similar design, albeit not capable of generating power sufficient to provide "serious" consumers, but still working and, for example, charging batteries or supplying LEDs.

Stepper motors

One of the most effective options for a small homemade wind turbine is to use stepper motor(ШД) (eng. stepping (stepper, step) motor) - in such a motor, the rotation of the shaft consists of small steps. The stepper motor windings are in phase. When current is applied to one of the phases, the shaft moves one step.
These engines are low-speed and a generator with such an engine may be gearedlessly connected to a wind turbine, Stirling engine, or other low-speed power source. Using a conventional (collector) DC motor as a generator, a 10-15 times higher speed would be required to achieve the same results.
A feature of the shagik is a fairly high starting torque (even without an electrical load connected to the generator), reaching 40 grams of force per centimeter.
The efficiency of the generator with stepper motor reaches 40%.

To check the functionality of the stepper motor, for example, a red LED can be connected. By rotating the motor shaft, you can observe the glow of the LED. The polarity of the LED connection does not matter, as the motor generates alternating current.

A treasure trove of such powerful enough motors are five-inch floppy drives, as well as old printers and scanners.

Engine 1

For example, I have a stepper motor from an old 5.25 ″ drive, which was still in operation ZX Spectrum- compatible computer "Byte".
Such a drive contains two windings, from the ends and the middle of which conclusions are drawn - total is removed from the engine six wires:

first winding (eng. coil 1) - blue (eng. blue) and yellow (eng. yellow);
second winding (eng. coil 2) - red (eng. red) and white (eng. white);
brown (rus. brown) wires - leads from the midpoints of each winding (eng. center taps).

disassembled stepper motor

On the left you can see the rotor of the motor, on which you can see the "striped" magnetic poles - north and south. To the right is the stator winding, which consists of eight coils.
Half winding resistance is ~ 70 ohms.

I used this motor in the original design of my wind turbine.

Engine 2

Less powerful stepper motor in my possession T1319635 firms Epoch Electronics Corp. from scanner HP Scanjet 2400 It has five conclusions (unipolar motor):

first winding (eng. coil 1) - orange (eng. orange) and black (eng. black);
second winding (eng. coil 2) - brown (eng. brown) and yellow (eng. yellow);
red (eng. red) wire - pins connected together from the midpoint of each winding (eng. center taps).

The resistance of the half winding is 58 ohms, which is indicated on the motor housing.

Engine 3

In the improved version of the wind turbine, I used a stepper motor Robotron SPA 42 / 100-558 produced in the German Democratic Republic and designed for a voltage of 12 V:

Wind turbine

There are two options for the location of the impeller (turbine) axis of the wind generator - horizontal and vertical.

The advantage horizontal(most popular) location the axis, located in the direction of the wind, is a more efficient use of wind energy, the disadvantage is the complexity of the design.

I chose vertical arrangement axes - VAWT (vertical axis wind turbine), which greatly simplifies the design and does not require wind orientation ... This option is more suitable for roof mounting, it is much more effective in conditions of rapid and frequent changes in wind direction.

I used a type of wind turbine called the Savonius wind turbine. Savonius wind turbine). It was invented in 1922 Sigurd Johannes Savonius) from Finland.

Sigurd Johannes Savonius

The operation of the Savonius wind turbine is based on the fact that the resistance (eng. drag) to the incident air flow - the wind of the concave surface of the cylinder (blade) is larger than the convex one.

Aerodynamic drag coefficients ( English drag coefficients) $ C_D $

two-dimensional bodies:
concave half of the cylinder (1) - 2.30
convex half of the cylinder (2) - 1.20
flat square plate - 1.17
three-dimensional bodies:
concave hollow hemisphere (3) - 1.42
convex hollow hemisphere (4) - 0.38
sphere - 0.5
These values are given for Reynolds numbers (eng. Reynolds numbers) in the range $ 10 ^ 4 - 10 ^ 6 $. The Reynolds number characterizes the behavior of a body in a medium.

Resistance force of the body to the air flow $ (F_D) = ((1 \ over 2) (C_D) S \ rho (v ^ 2)) $, where $ \ rho $ is the air density, $ v $ is the air flow velocity, $ S $ - cross-sectional area of the body.

Such a wind turbine rotates in the same direction, regardless of the direction of the wind:

A similar operating principle is used in the cup anemometer (eng. cup anemometer)- a device for measuring wind speed:

Such an anemometer was invented in 1846 by the Irish astronomer John Thomas Romney Robinson ( John Thomas Romney Robinson):

Robinson believed that the cups in his four-cup anemometer moved at a speed equal to one third of the wind speed. In reality, this value ranges from two to a little more than three.

Currently, three-cup anemometers are used to measure wind speed, developed by Canadian meteorologist John Patterson ( John Patterson) in 1926:

Generators on DC brushed motors with vertical microturbine are sold at eBay for about $ 5:

Such a turbine contains four blades located along two perpendicular axes, with an impeller diameter of 100 mm, a blade height of 60 mm, a chord length of 30 mm and a segment height of 11 mm. The impeller is mounted on the shaft of a DC micromotor with the marking JQ24-125H670... The rated supply voltage of such a motor is 3 ... 12 V.
The energy generated by such a generator is sufficient for the glow of a "white" LED.

Rotational speed of the Savonius wind turbine cannot exceed wind speed , but at the same time such a construction is characterized by high torque (eng. torque).

The efficiency of a wind turbine can be estimated by comparing the power generated by the wind turbine with the power contained in the wind blowing through the turbine:
$ P = (1 \ over 2) \ rho S (v ^ 3) $, where $ \ rho $ is the air density (about 1.225 kg / m3 at sea level), $ S $ is the swept area of the turbine (eng. swept area), $ v $ is the wind speed.

My wind turbine

Option 1

Initially, the impeller of my generator used four blades in the form of segments (halves) of cylinders cut from plastic pipes:

Segment sizes -
segment length - 14 cm;
segment height - 2 cm;
the length of the chord of the segment is 4 cm;

I installed the assembled structure on a fairly high (6 m 70 cm) wooden mast from a bar, attached with self-tapping screws to a metal frame:

Option 2

The disadvantage of the generator was the rather high wind speed required to spin the blades. To increase the surface area, I used blades cut from plastic bottles:

Segment sizes -
segment length - 18 cm;
segment height - 5 cm;
segment chord length - 7 cm;
the distance from the beginning of the segment to the center of the axis of rotation is 3 cm.

Option 3

The strength of the blade holders proved to be an issue. At first I used 1mm perforated aluminum strips from a Soviet children's designer. After several days of operation, strong gusts of wind led to the break of the planks (1). After this failure, I decided to cut out the blade holders from foil-coated PCB (2) 1.8 mm thick:

The flexural strength of the PCB perpendicular to the plate is 204 MPa and is comparable to the flexural strength of aluminum - 275 MPa. But the modulus of elasticity of aluminum $ E $ (70,000 MPa) is much higher than that of textolite (10,000 MPa), i.e. texolite is much more elastic than aluminum. This, in my opinion, taking into account the greater thickness of the textolite holders, will provide a much greater reliability of fastening the blades of the wind generator.
The wind generator is mounted on a mast:

The trial operation of the new version of the wind turbine has shown its reliability even under strong gusts of wind.

The disadvantage of the Savonius turbine is low efficiency - only about 15% of wind energy is converted into shaft rotation energy (this is much less than can be achieved with wind turbine Daria(eng. Darrieus wind turbine)), using lift (eng. lift). This type of wind turbine was invented by the French aircraft designer Georges Darier. (Georges Jean Marie Darrieus) - US patent of 1931 No. 1,835,018 .

Georges Darier

The disadvantage of the Darrieus turbine is that it has a very poor self-start (to generate torque from the wind, the turbine must already be spun).

Conversion of electricity generated by a stepper motor

The stepper motor leads can be connected to two bridge rectifiers, assembled from Schottky diodes to reduce the voltage drop across the diodes.
Popular Schottky diodes can be used 1N5817 with a maximum reverse voltage of 20 V, 1N5819- 40 V and a maximum forward average rectified current of 1 A. I connected the outputs of the rectifiers in series in order to increase the output voltage.
It is also possible to use two midpoint rectifiers. Such a rectifier requires half as many diodes, but at the same time the output voltage is reduced by half.
Then the ripple voltage is smoothed using a capacitive filter - a 1000 μF capacitor at 25 V. To protect against an increased generated voltage, a 25 V zener diode is connected in parallel to the capacitor.

diagram of my wind turbine

electronic unit of my wind generator

Wind turbine application

The voltage generated by the wind generator depends on the magnitude and constancy of the wind speed.

With the wind swaying the thin branches of trees, the voltage reaches 2 ... 3 V.

With the wind swaying thick branches of trees, the voltage reaches 4 ... 5 V (with strong gusts - up to 7 V).

CONNECTING TO JOULE THIEF

The smoothed voltage from the capacitor of the wind generator can be supplied to - low-voltage DC-DC converter

Resistor value R is selected experimentally (depending on the type of transistor) - it is advisable to use a variable resistor of 4.7 kΩ and gradually reduce its resistance, achieving stable operation of the converter.
I assembled such a converter based on germanium pnp-transistor GT308V ( VT) and a pulse transformer MIT-4V (coil L1- conclusions 2-3, L2- conclusions 5-6):

CHARGE OF IONISTORS (SUPERCONDENSERS)

Supercapacitor (supercapacitor) supercapacitor) is a hybrid of a capacitor and a chemical current source.
Supercapacitor - non-polar an element, but one of the terminals may be marked with an "arrow" - to indicate the polarity of the residual voltage after it has been charged at the factory.
For the initial research, I used a supercapacitor with a capacity of 0.22 F for a voltage of 5.5 V (diameter 11.5 mm, height 3.5 mm):

I connected it through a diode to the output through the germanium diode D310.

To limit the maximum charging voltage of the supercapacitor, you can use a zener diode or a chain of LEDs - I use a chain of two red LEDs:

To prevent the discharge of an already charged supercapacitor through the limiting LEDs HL1 and HL2 I added another diode - VD2.

To be continued

You will definitely like this material, as in it we will consider a way to get a simple generator from an old computer CD / DVD drive.

First of all, we suggest that you familiarize yourself with the author's video

Consider what we need:
- old CD / DVD drive;
- nippers;
- soldering iron;
- any plastic case;
- wires;
- hexagon;
- washer.

According to the author of a home-made generator, the idea is quite effective, since the ratio of the gear speed to the motor, which drives the gear that pulls out the disc tray, is quite large. Thus, it is possible that at low revolutions of the same gear, good revolutions on the electric motor will be obtained, and we will be able to get a generator. We will find out whether our plans will work out or not at the end of the review, and now let's get to work.

First you need to unsolder the board on which the motor is attached.

Next, we cut off a part of the plastic housing of the drive, on which the motor is held, as well as the gear we need. Later on from this gear we will remove the handle so that we can turn it and generate electricity.

We take the first wire and solder it to one of the motor contacts.

We solder the second wire to the second contact.

To test the generator, the author of the idea uses UBS inputs, which are installed in a plastic case. So he glues a piece of the motor and gear drive into this housing using a glue gun.

To make a handle, you need a hexagon and a washer. These parts need to be attached to each other. The author does this by soldering.

We solder the wires to the contacts of the USB connectors.

On the second half of the plastic case, you need to make a hole for the gear protrusion.

Finally, glue the DIY handle to the pinion of the gear. Our generator is ready.

A simple wind turbine can be made from a few faulty hard drives and a washing machine water pump. Alternative energy is closer than it seems, there is more than enough rubbish to make such necessary gizmos. Of course, such a design will not power your entire house with electricity, but it will do just fine for charging all kinds of USB gadgets.

It will take

Pump from an automatic washing machine. It stands at the very bottom and is used for pumping water from the drum into the sewer.
Four hard drives, available from different manufacturers.
Pole - a long pipe for installing the wind turbine at a height.
Bolts, nuts, washers.
Wires.

A few words about the water pump

A water pump will be used as a generator that generates electricity. It consists of a movable permanent magnet rotor and a movable stator with a U-shaped magnetic circuit and a coil on it.

The rotor is easy to pull out.

Thanks to the use of permanent magnets, such a pump works perfectly as a generator capable of delivering up to 250 V. Of course, our wind turbine will not give such a speed and the output voltage will be several times less.

Wind turbine manufacturing

It was decided to fix the pump with construction steel corners, bending and cutting them as needed.

It turned out like this, a kind of clamp.

A hole was made in the magnetic circuit of the pump for a more reliable fixation.

Assembly assembly.

Wind turbine blades

We make the blades from PVC pipes.

We cut the pipe into three even parts lengthwise.

And then we cut out our blade from each half.

We make holes in the places where the blades are attached to the generator.

Attachment of blades

Two HDD disks were used to mount the blades of the wind turbine.

The hole in which fits perfectly to the impeller diameter.

We mark up.

We drill.

The discs are attached to the rotor by bolts, washers and nuts.

We fasten the blades.

Swivel knot

In order for the windmill to rotate in different directions, depending on the wind, it must be installed on a turntable, in the role of which the engine from the hard disk will be used, since there are very good bearings.