Recycled Off-Grid Tesla CD Turbine Power-Boost Blender

The movie below shows successful at-home use of this Tesla CD Turbine Blender.

Recirculating Tesla CD Turbine with Air Turbo-Boost

If this video does not play, click here instead

This instructable will show how to make an off-the-grid, Tesla turbine-powered blender made from many recycled parts.

It runs on a self-powered, re-circulating system from the forces of Earth(magnets), Wind(compressed air), Fire(solar) and Water(pressure)!

In tough times or times of disaster, we might need to make McGyver-like contraptions, with the things we have on hand, in order to survive...or to have fun!

Ok, let's say the electric grid power is out...you couldn't pay the bills, or there's some other disaster...but you wanna party anyways.
You need a blender for the party...
You could use a 12 volt battery, with a 120 volt inverter, and simply plug a regular blender into it as an easy solution.

But, hey, why not make a recycled Tesla CD Turbine Blender,
on a self-powered, re-circulating set-up?
With a cool foot-operated, air-powered, Power Boost function for tough blending chores!

From wikipedia , "A Tesla turbine consists of a set of smooth disks, with nozzles applying a moving gas to the edge of the disk".

The Tesla CD Turbine I make is made with recycled CD's, CD spindle case, supermagnets, a nozzle and glue. I have 3 previous instructables that deal with it's basic construction.

This powerful, magnetically-coupled Tesla CD Turbine Blender is different because it works "off the grid", and because it uses recirculated water pressure and air pressure...at the same time!

The way it works is that a solar panel charges a 12 volt battery, which powers a 12-volt air pump and a 12-volt bilge pump. The water pump sits in the recirculating bucket and makes water pressure for the turbine to run.

Compressed air is stored in a tank, which has an air line going the foot-operated valve. An air blast gives additional power and torque to the turbine when required, by way of the foot valve.

Can a Tesla CD Turbine, made of recycled CD's and glue, develop enough power from solar-powered air and water pressure, to perform as a portable blender??

The answer is a resounding "Yes!" (See movies following!)

Any turbine on air pressure can be dangerous. I have added a polycarbonate protective cover over the turbine for personal protection. Something similar is mandatory when using compressed air with the CD Turbine, because of the possibility of CD discs or case exploding at high rpm! (see my warnings in other instructables and movie below of explosion! )

Have fun and blend safely!

I always order from the best selection of neodymium super-magnets from K&J Magnetics here.

The following shows some preliminary testing of the concept of combining air and water pressures in the CD turbine at the same time.

. Tesla CD Turbine Experimental Test Combining Air and Water

If this movie doesn't play, you have a Mac and click here

The following shows the possible result when excessive back-pressure, and an over-exuberent throttle foot, combine with such a funky, recycled, CD cakebox system! (Lesson learned: Don't turn on the air pressure too fast!!)

If movie doesn't play click here to see.

Here is my latest movie of a Science Fair display with the portable re-circulating system:

Step 1 Parts List

Parts Used for This Instructable


1 - Basic Tesla CD Turbine (see my previous instructable, "SinkScience with the Tesla CD Turbine" (About $50.00 to build)

1 - Magnetic Coupler from my previous instructable (Cost... about $20.00)

Order the BEST neodymium super-magnets here:
http://www.kjmagnetics.com/default.asp?PARTNER=mrfixitrick

Additional supplies and parts required for this instructable...

1 - Blender, from thrift shop, $1.00
1 - Protective shield (I used 1/8 inch x 6 inch polycarbonate tubing, 7 inches long)
1 - 12 volt Water Pump, (on hand, but generally about $50.00)
1 - 12 volt Battery, or series of batteries for 12-18 volts output at 5 amps.(on hand, or used $20.00)
1 - Solar Charging Panel, 12 volt (new, $30.00)
1 - Compressed Air Storage Tank ( on hand, or $30.00 new)
1 - 12 volt Air Compressor ( on hand...or $50.00 new)
1 - Garden Hose Foot Control shut-off valve (on sale, $6.99)
2 - short garden hoses (on hand)
2 - air hoses (came with tank)
1 - Y-connector for garden hose ($2.99)
- misc - air fittings: T-fitting, adapter to garden hose
- Pressure gage (optional)
- Tachometer (optional)

Comments

[mikesnyd]

I have just watched your video (at the science fair video) with you describing what is happening with a ball bearing on top of plexyglass. You said to make a comment if you wanted too and i think i want too. So i have no knowledge or college degree in this field but here is a guess as to why this is happening.
To pair it with the optical illusion of a car tire. You watch a car tire at slow speeds and it look like it is rolling forward(Clockwise). At high speeds the car tire looks to be rotating backwards(or counter-clockwise). So you have a magnetic feild doing almost the same thing but with a variable. It would be the weight of the bearing. As the tesla coil begins to spin at a slow rate the ball bearing may proceed in the same direction as the coil. At some point the coil will be going faster then the bearing can travel. So thats where the reverse happens. The bearing is the visual illusion of the tire. I mean we cannot process what we are seeing fast enough so it looks like it is going backwards. To the same respect the bearing cant stay with the magnetic field and thus falls behind. I could be totally wrong but it just a complete guess. I am thinking of making two of these coils but a little better built(more metal parts) and putting a fixed stator between them. I dont know what will happen but i think i could get a fair bit of juice out of a 12" dia tesla coil using 2"x2"x1" N42 magnets on my top layer and 6 phase Stator as 70 turns of 14 gauge enameled wire. i wonder what will happen.

[beehard44]

damn. I tried making a turbine and when i tested it over the sink, the hose disconnected from the faucet and water sprayed all over me. And i hit my head on the cabinets above the sink, ouch.

[Blackice504]

Mrfixits you really need to look at water hammer pump it uses no power at all it just uses a little down ward force and then feed that into your Telsla turbine and you can even have a setup where it uses dirty water to run the hammer pump to high pressure clean water.

[mrfixitrick]

Good idea. I've considered that one, but I don't have a good source of what you call "dirty water". I'd have to use faucet water pressure diverted and there would be too much waste water.

[JBz]

Wow! Yikes! Shazam! Pardon me while I experience a brain meltdown. Just a thought about your tinfoil beany. I am trying to find out if the mind control rays are radiating up through the ground, instead of through the ionosphere. Wearing a parabolic reflector on your head would concentrate the rays in your cerebral cortex....just where you don't want them. So the proper safety precaution would be to connect yourself to cable grounding straps, like they used to do with cars. This might require wrist and ankle straps, and probes in body orifices, and might be uncomfortable. Possihly attaching inverted metal colanders to shoe soles might serve the purpose as well-reflect the waves back at the senders, thereby melting their brains. Back to more mundane topics. Magnetic coupling is the forte of a guy from my neck of the woods. Jerry Lamb developed a coupling patent which was bought and marketed by a company named MagnaForce in Seattle. Would their design be of use in your device? In addition, I am curious about developing an Acme high efficiency superconducting/diamagnetism generator to be powered by a rotating clothes line pole. This will require clipping the clothes to the lines to catch the wind, then swiveling to feather on the backstroke to avoid a braking action, which is the downside of vertical wind turbines. The instructables on clothes drying energy efficiency might be useful in developing this concept. Meanwhile, I will continue to boggle at your gadget, and try to understand it as I study the videos. Thanks for the great instructable. The only concepts you haven't tied together for me are hyperdimensionality, the face on Mars, the Nazi Bell and Nazi ufos.

[poulbran]

you sound very smart so whould this work thanks ,Brandon

[mrfixitrick]

Hi JBz,

Thanks for the great comments!

Tesla thought the earth put out rays, so he would be impressed with your inverted colander shield. Doubly so since the advent of HAARP !

Thanks for the magnetic coupler lead; it's a good one to look at.

I love your clothes line generator idea.. using drying clothes to make power, instead of using power for drying clothes. This is the kind of thinking that tomorrow's engineers will need to indulge in.

As for the hyperdimensionality, Mars, and Nazi ufo's...they all have one thing in common...Nikola Tesla!
Here is a link to get you thinking... http://www.lifetechnology.org/hyperdimensional.htm
(the device shown might be bogus, but the Teslascope idea is sound.)

Tesla was known to have said he was communicating with other planets. In 1896, Tesla told interviewers "The possibility of beckoning Martians was the extreme application of my principle of propagation of electric waves" (see wiki under "Teslascope")

As far as UFO's...again Tesla is at the root of it. The main reason for him developing the Tesla Turbine was for an electric flying machine..."It was in seeking the means of making the perfect flying machine that I developed this engine.” -Tesla

“All I have to say on that point is that my airship will have neither gas bag, wings nor
propellers...You might see it on the ground and you would never guess that it was a flying machine. Yet it will be able to move at will through the air in any direction with perfect safety, higher speeds than have yet been reached, regardless of weather and oblivious of “holes in the air” or downward currents. It will ascend in such currents if desired. It can remain absolutely stationary in the air, even in a wind, for great length of time. Its lifting power will not depend upon any such delicate devices as the bird has to employ, but upon positive mechanical action.” Nikola Tesla 1911

Note the TeslaFlyingMachine yahoo group (http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/teslasflyingmachine/) regularly discusses the idea that Tesla technology powers so-called flying saucers. They say the facts point to "UFOs are real, Man-made electropropulsive crafts based on Tesla Technology."

So there you go...that should connect all the dots for you by now!! hehe

Cheers, Rick

Oh, and as far as the hyperdimensionality, check out this Spirit Radio video from EJ Gold. I'll be building one during an on-line Easter workshop. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGj8FEWLeKM

[JBz]

Hey Rick, Thanks for the information. I'm doing some 'energy hack' research right now for a local nursing home. This place has loads of wasted heat from clothes dryers, walk in fridge and freezer, and almost no hot water in parts of the building. I keep wondering about cogeneration, energy conservation and energy scavenging. How would a guy who comes up with a Tesla Turbine from scavenged parts make a school or other large institution more energy efficient? Meanwhile, I'll check out the Tesla group. When you get your flyer going, do a flyby over the Olympic Peninsula. I think I'll stay away from 'Spirit Radios' until someone can check out who's sending the messages. John

[mrfixitrick]

What schools and other institutions need is a new invention I call the "Vortex Plasma Generator". Essentially, it is a vortex disintegrator combined with a plasma furnace which runs a Tesla Turbine alternator. The input is virtually any material...institutional garbage, including paper and plastic or toxic materials. The Vortex Disintegrator separates any material down to a fine powder or molecular level. Then the Plasma Furnace burns the substances electrically with no oxygen, and produces two products...burnable gasses and a solid glass-like material that is inert. The gasses can be used to run a Tesla Turbine generator to power the building. (note: a Tesla turbine is the only kind of turbine able to run on 100% biomass combustion, with little or no particulate or other emissions...virtually smokeless) Heat given off by the process runs hot water systems (building heat, hot water, clothes dryers, etc.) The solid substance resulting from the plasma furnace can be used as an excellent building material to sell or build with. (Hey, a self-expanding school!) Folks associated with the institution could bring in their garbage to do their part to help to run the institution!

[JBz]

Plans! Ineed Plans! Or even an instructable! To start the ball rolling, I need a quick fix energy scavenging hack. If it's quick, inexpensive, safe, makes the administrator look good at corporate, yeehaa! I'm looking for a 'rock soup' method to introduce corporate types to the concept. This is based on the bum who talks his way to a farmhouse kitchen by asking to make 'rock soup'. He puts some water in a kettle to heat, and puts a big rock in, then asks for some veggies to flavor the rock, then some meat to flavor the veggies, etc. When the soup is done he throws the rock out. So to get my nose in the door, I need something simple and speedy. Today the scavenger hack, tomorrow the vortex disintegrator!

[mrfixitrick]

Hehe, the Rock Soup story was good... The final ending is that everyone in town donates something to the soup, and the wandering bum ends up feeding the entire town (half of which were starving), from his efforts. He leaves and goes to the next town, hungry again. Meanwhile, the townspeople are joyous because they have learned what it means to share with others. Practical suggestions? Hang some clothes to dry on the heat exchanger for the walk-in freezer. Insulate pipes that have to go too far to keep the heat in. Use a propane Paloma-type instant hot water heater in the remote areas of the building that get no hot water. And the best suggestion...get a grant for a solar installation on the roof. It seems like a heat-exchanger would be a good idea in that environment. But generally it has to be built-in and and initially expensive, although cheaper to run. Good luck and remember to include the rest of the town in the soup...that will be your key to your success, I believe!

[JBz]

Thanks for your ideas and the thought about the Rock Soup story. Anyway, energy scavenging, or conservation, will be crucial in the days to come. Maybe you can come up with a superconducting generator/supercap magnetic coupling system that will take us to high levels of energy efficiency. I kind of expect that Wally Minto's wheel will be a great place to start with energy scavenging. There is a lot of information and speculation about this, but no one has built a large one that works. Any ideas?

[mrfixitrick]

It's true that energy scavenging will become a popular pastime in the future. I'd love to make a nifty home generator, and I do work on the idea every day, but developing a decent system costs money, which I have zero of. I can only point others to look in certain directions which may have been overlooked. I'm convinced we should all burn our garbage in a smokeless home plasma disintegrater/generator and make money off it that way. Wouldn't it be nice to say, "Sure, neighbour, I'd love to take your garbage!" and be adding to, instead of feeding from, the grid. Wally Minto's wheel will work fine in certain situations where there is an excess of hot water in a cool environment. I don't know of any situations like that. Most folks would use the solar hot water in a heat exchanger and get hot water to be stored in a tank. The Minto system uses an open tank of hot water that must be replenished constantly, in a place where the air is cool. The optics of that alone points to inefficiency. The Minto could be made more efficient with cold water sprayed onto the cylinders when they are near the top of the wheel's travel. I think the important point is to keep that attitude of looking for better ways, and not be satisfied with the status quo!

[blackbeardlion]

who needs a blend-tech blender when you can have a tesla turbine blender! awesome instructable!

[mrfixitrick]

Hehe, that's the Tesla spirit! I wonder if a Tesla Turbine blender can blend a Blend-Tech blender...hmmmm...would be a great movie...

[Jupitane]

Cool! Too bad the video doesn't work......

[mrfixitrick]

The videos work fine for me now. What computer and browser do you use?

[Jupitane]

Just another reason to make it! =)

[lilshawn]

i fail to see how this could be "eco-friendly" as the ammount of power consumed by the air pump and your 12 volt battery (which would have to have been charged for several minutes by a battery charger or car) would use less power than running a regular blender for the 20 seconds it would take to make a smoothie. cool, interesting, ingenious? - YES eco-friendly, energy efficent? - NO

[mrfixitrick]

Since what does eco-friendly have to do with energy efficiency?? They are two different things. If you use power from "the Grid" to make your smoothie, and coal is used to generate that power, then the stinky, smelly exhaust particulates gets in my face and makes me sick. That's not eco-friendly. This turbine system uses NO outside energy, other than the sun..has no stinky exhaust, and won't make me sick. That's eco-friendly. Who cares about efficiency if the electric Grid is out for a month or two??...you will just want to have a nicely-blended smoothie in any way you can!!

[LightAnvil]

Nice 'Ible, and thanks for sharing it! Have you considered this: Using the water main as a source, every time you would run a tap or shower, etc. you would generate electricity which could be stored and used in the home! Costly to setup but who doesn't like free electricity?

[mrfixitrick]

Yes, this is completely possible! Except, when you crunch the numbers, it doesn't make economical sense. You will likely produce about 1 watt of power from a set-up like that. Even if it ran 24 hours a day, every day for a year, it would only produce about 8.6 kilowatt hours of power a year...about a dollar's worth. The turbine unit would cost at least a hundred bucks to buy, so would take a hundred years to pay off from the free energy. And if you had to borrow money to buy it, strangely enough, this free energy device would never pay for itself ! If one lived in a situation where there was a lack of electrical power at a reasonable cost, perhaps the numbers would crunch better...or not matter at all. Or perhaps the costs of the unit could be reduced significantly, like the solar path lights that are now available for $1.99.

[lilshawn]

okay now we are getting someplace - please reference the title of this Instructable "Eco-friendly Tesla CD Turbine Turbo-Boost Blender" eco meaning economy and friendly meaning.... friendly. soooooo we are helping the economy? I guess sort of. anyway. now to power the electric pumps, a car battery is used - to have had that battery charged either by 1: a battery charger or 2: took it out of a vehicle that used fossil fuel to charge it. using DIRTY DIRTY grid power and/or DIRTY DIRTY DIRTY fossil fuel. (chances are the automotive store does not charge their batteries with solar panels) yes I know the power put there by the big corporations who pride themselves on destroying the planet is long gone, and has now been replaced with super friendly solar energy, but by simply making the system more efficient, you could almost run the system entirely on solar. I have a real problem with cd's as they take an enormous amount of energy to produce them in the first place. Recycling GOOD (otherwise would have been thrown out to a landfill) you can argue for a million years about good energy clean energy eco friendly whatever but the way I see it, it would take years to "pay off" the energy it takes to produce 1 solar panel. I'm still perfectly content living on the grid and help the environment by conserving power and walking instead of driving. I buy rechargable batteries, I choose to fix or repair items instead of throwing them out. besides - what's wrong with nuclear power anyways... uranium produces heat - heat produces steam - steam drive generators - generators produce electricity - ALSO little did you know about 20% of the electricity you use in your house is supplied by nuclear. steam coming out of a cooling tower - that seems pretty green to me. sans the waste. how about hydroelectricity - water flows through turbines that drive generators. sounds green to me (7% of your electricity is hydroelectricity.) don't even start about fish and environ-mental impact. the USA uses mostly coal (49%) power producing practices - I live in Canada, I guess since we all burn whale blubber to keep warm, I'm not familiar with the whole corporate machine. we only use 33% of our power through renewable resources and only 12% on coal but produce 44% of our total output by renewable means. and we still have enough leftover to sell to the USA during those cold winters and hot summers. truth be told every little bit helps, but also too little too late. guess that's why we pay 5.25 a gallon for gas. you have a lovely nick-nack to show off to your friends during parties to make enviromargaritas. now if we can only build a perpetual motion machine.....

[mrfixitrick]

Lilshawn, you said,
"eco meaning economy and friendly meaning.... friendly. soooooo we are helping the economy? I guess sort of. anyway."

"eco" does not equal economy...wherever did you get that fairy tale?? no wonder you are stuck on that term "eco-friendly" !!

According to wikipedia, "eco i- a prefix mostly relating to ecological or environmental terms."
Nothing at all to do with economy or efficiency.

I live in Canada, too. Mega-corp Hydro power is cheap. More rivers are being dammed for hydro. The salmon are dying. Is it worth it ?
I don't think so.

We need to wean ourselves off the Grid...if it goes down bigtime, we will be forced at an inconvenient time to think in other categories and rely on ourselves. Daddy Harper government and Mega-corp just won't be able to cope with a really big outage. We'll be on our own.

I'd like to be somewhat prepared. A home-based real (not CD) Tesla Turbine might be one way to weather an energy storm.

[Plasmana]

Wow! Really cool instructable!

[mrfixitrick]

Hey Plasmana! Love your instructables, too. I hope to incorporate a high-voltage water sparker/exploder into the Tesla CD Turbine design!

[Plasmana]

Thank you! Yeah, I want to do more experiments, but I have no money after building the plasma speaker project...

[AnarchistAsian]

oooohh, nice, you've got my vote! i've got an entry too!

[mrfixitrick]

Thanks...and a good instructable you have there, too!

[AnarchistAsian]

Thanks to you! i like this simple start, but i think it would be just amazing if you could make one as good as those compressed air power tools you see at hardware stores.

[mrfixitrick]

To me, this Tesla CD Turbine has been much more amazing and versatile than the compressed air tools found at the store!

I've had hours of amazement playing with the rotating magnetic field, been able to adapt over many kitchen appliances, and used it as a teaching device. I've laughed, played, and had fun with it ...and even got scared!

I've attached a skilsaw blade initially to the turbine in this wild, not-to-be-tried-at-home movie .

And my PumpkinCutter machine seen here, with modifications, could be just as powerful as a skilsaw.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=aoRh8T_VX-Y

thanks for comments!

[AnarchistAsian]

oooohhhh!!!!

nice, i think eventually i'll make a small one, with disks cut out of acrylic sheets.

but first i have a bunch of coil guns, and pneumatic guns i need ^{ok, want} to make...

[itsme16688]

how is this eco-friendly??? did you not hear that the world is running out of water? ... where do you think the water comes from??? just magically appears in your plumbing?

[mrfixitrick]

I don't understand your negative comment. We normally use grid electricity from polluting sources. This system uses no power from those stinky, or salmon-killing, systems. The water in this system is re-circulated, by solar and battery energy. You fill it up the water once and that's it. Do you mean you cannot sacrifice a couple of gallons of water for an off-the-grid system???? Very, very hard to believe. Does it never rain where you are? The world is certainly not running out of water. Potable water, maybe. But running out of water, no. It rains for 6 months of the year where I live, starting now. I could get enough water to run this system just by draining my boots for a few days!! haha

[cowscankill]

Hello! I'm at school right now, and I am using this as my science project. If you ever have any modifications, you know, simple things, then I would like it if you PM me. I know your more finished ones look very different compared the ones in the instructions. P.S. I am going to use water pressure from a faucet so I can use it in class. I still do not know what is wrong with my magnetic coupler. It stops the turibine everytime the magnets line up...

[mrfixitrick]

The toughest part is hot-gluing the nozzle to the case at the right angle. I'm still working on the best method, but I find the green plastic Holland Greenhouse Plastic Power Nozzle works pretty good.

Here's a tip about...the tip of the nozzle.
If the tip of the nozzle gets too big, it will reduce the rpms, and use too much fluid. You can reduce it by gluing in a short tube into the tip of the nozzle. Or you can suspend a piece of wire into the nozzle tip flow, such that it takes up space at the tip. I had good success with that recently.

Also, biggest tip of the day...try not to restrict the output hole. Don't use a hose on the outlet if you don't have to...drain directly into a bucket or sink. Any pressure surge with a partially blocked outlet spells disaster...I blew up my Sinkscience turbine a couple of days ago that way!! Water all over the living room...(movie to come, haha)

The magnetic coupler must be in repel mode, not attract. In other words, the magnets in the turbine are, say, all north up. The magnets in the coupler should be all north down in that case.

I had the same problem when I made my first turbine...the magnetic coupler wouldn't go around. So I said the heck with it, flipped over the coupler, and voila! it worked great!

That resulted in the following dangerous movie as the saw blade took off like crazy with the magnetic coupler in "repel mode" (I really didn't think it would work

!)

[cowscankill]

WoW! Thanks for the tips! So I can get good rpm by restricting the nozzle in my science class, use no outlet hose, just straight in the sink. I never knew the magnets had to REPEL LOL. I always thought they attracted. How does it stay on when repelling? Science.. It's great. That reminds me... I have an essay to right....

[cowscankill]

Dern, it didn't work with repeling fields either. It didn't spin at all.

[mrfixitrick]

Ok, lets review. I think you used 4 magnets on the top disc, right? What size were they? Are they neodymium? Are you sure they all are the same pole up? Same questions for the magnetic coupler. Let me know. I sometimes use an old spindle/post on top of the turbine as a guide for the magnetic coupling, to keep it centered on the top.

[cowscankill]

WoW! Thanks for the tips! So I can get good rpm by restricting the nozzle in my science class, use no outlet hose, just straight in the sink. I never knew the magnets had to REPEL LOL. I always thought they attracted. How does it stay on when repelling? Science.. It's great. That reminds me... I have an essay to right....