Fri
Dec
28
2007
Windmill Generator Project
Last Christmas my brother Andy gave me an aluminum cylinder. This Christmas I gave it back to him in the form of a windmill generator.
You can see the aluminum cylinder in this picture. Attached the cylinder is the encoder wheel on one end and the rotor mechanism on the other. The rotor houses 12 rare earth magnets purchased from otherpower.com
The blades were cut out on my CNC machine. This was the first real project where I made several of the exact same thing on my CNC machine. The satisfaction that comes from making 10 identical pieces is hard to describe! The hub was made by first cutting angled pieces on my table saw and then gluing them to a 6” x 1/4” MDF circle. My CNC machine trimmed the edges of the hub to size.
Here is a closeup of the hub which was turned on my dad’s lathe.
The coils were wound on my dad’s lathe (by my dad) using Elmer’s glue as a bonding agent to keep the 28 gauge wire from exploding once it was taken out of the coil winder. These coils were connected in series and represent several thousand turns of wire.
Once the generator develops more than 3 volts, it powers up the PIC18F452 microprocessor and an LCD screen displays:
1. RPM
2. Number of Rotations
3. Blade Tip Speed
4. Time Elapsed
5. Bible Verse
An series of 8 LEDs made up an LED tree which cycled as each finger of the encoder passed by the optical sensor.
