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Step 6Test the wind turbine
Now you can test the wind turbine. Inside the house you can hold up lightly with both hands in front of a fan and watch it turn. You can see that the fan makes the turbine very easily. The outside video, unfortunately, was taken when wind was variable and blowing only about 3 mph.
The two videos that are attached I jury-rigged a setup so that the turbine could stand up by itself without being held. You can use your imagination as to how mount the turbine a little more permanently.
Experiment with different angles for the paddles to see what is the most efficient. I chose 24 degrees. Would 45 degrees work better? How about 10 degrees? You will notice that the smaller the angle, the better the paddle catches the wind on the left side. However, you notices that it also catches it too well on the right side. If you made the paddles 0 degrees, the turbine would sit idle in a strong breeze.
Where to go from here
The turbine, as is, probably could be used to generate a small amount of electricity in a school setting. The trick will be figuring out how to hook a small motor to it. You could also glue magnets to the bottom of the lower disk and then making coils of wire that remain stationary below the turbine.
What I want to do is make this turbine out of plywood and scale it up by double. I will use some of the material shown in the into to this instructable. Specifically, I will use the DC motor, the vertical allthreads bar that will serve as the axis rod, and the clamp I made to mate the motor and axis rod.
It will be interesting what kind of power I get out of the scaled up version. I would like to see if I could light up a series of LED's when the wind is blowing. That would look great at night. I might also try to use the power to pump water up over a waterwheel.
If you build this cardboard turbine, please post lessons learned and additional suggestions.
The two videos that are attached I jury-rigged a setup so that the turbine could stand up by itself without being held. You can use your imagination as to how mount the turbine a little more permanently.
Experiment with different angles for the paddles to see what is the most efficient. I chose 24 degrees. Would 45 degrees work better? How about 10 degrees? You will notice that the smaller the angle, the better the paddle catches the wind on the left side. However, you notices that it also catches it too well on the right side. If you made the paddles 0 degrees, the turbine would sit idle in a strong breeze.
Where to go from here
The turbine, as is, probably could be used to generate a small amount of electricity in a school setting. The trick will be figuring out how to hook a small motor to it. You could also glue magnets to the bottom of the lower disk and then making coils of wire that remain stationary below the turbine.
What I want to do is make this turbine out of plywood and scale it up by double. I will use some of the material shown in the into to this instructable. Specifically, I will use the DC motor, the vertical allthreads bar that will serve as the axis rod, and the clamp I made to mate the motor and axis rod.
It will be interesting what kind of power I get out of the scaled up version. I would like to see if I could light up a series of LED's when the wind is blowing. That would look great at night. I might also try to use the power to pump water up over a waterwheel.
If you build this cardboard turbine, please post lessons learned and additional suggestions.
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Jul 9, 2010. 10:57 AMmanojkup
says:
How about trying with single round base and 4-8 CDs instead of cardboard for blades!! and it works.. I further modified the model with few more changes and it is sufficient for my project.
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Nov 16, 2011. 7:23 PMm3rk3r
says:
thx for the idea
Reply
Aug 10, 2011. 5:27 AMrpushkar
says:
THE WAY YOU HAVE PLANED IT WAS VERY NICE
Reply
Feb 3, 2011. 4:53 PMtinkerunique
says:
Need more power ? Simple fix = hook several small turbines together with bicycle chain and a small alternator. OR make a larger turbine and hook it up to the alternator/generator with bicycle chain. These are just a couple simple/quick solutions of many more avail..... Also check out the local library.
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4
Mar 10, 2010. 9:04 PMbeehard44
says:
I was browsing on making turbine blades out of cardboard, and the regular turbine blade design wasn't that efficient. Stumbled upon this, hopefully it'll give a lot of torque to power my naughty stepper motor....
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