A simple wind generator can be made from several faulty hard drives and a water pump from a washing machine. Alternative energy is closer than it seems; there is now more than enough junk to make such necessary gizmos. This design, of course, will not power your entire house with electricity, but it is quite suitable for charging all kinds of USB gadgets.
Will need
- Pump from an automatic washing machine. It stands at the very bottom and serves to pump water from the drum into the sewer.
- Four hard drives, from different manufacturers.
- A pole is a long pipe for installing a windmill 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 rotor with permanent magnets and a movable stator with a U-shaped magnetic core and a coil on it.
The rotor is quite 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 windmill will not give such speed and the output voltage will be several times less.
Wind generator manufacturing
It was decided to secure 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 more reliable fixation.
Assembled unit.
Wind turbine blades
The blades are made from PVC pipe.
We cut the pipe into three even parts lengthwise.
And then we cut out our own blade from each half.
We make holes in the places where the blades are attached to the generator.
Blade attachment
To fasten the wind generator blades, two disks from the HDD were used.
The hole in which fit perfectly to the diameter of the impeller.
Let's mark it.
Let's drill.
The discs are attached to the rotor with bolts, washers and nuts.
Screw on the blades.
Swivel unit
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 motor from the hard drive will be used, since it has very good bearings.
In the future, a disk will be placed on it on which the generator will be mounted.
We drilled a hole for the mount and sawed off the unnecessary part.
General assembly
We attach corners to the HDD engine that will be used as a turntable in three places.
We cut out the tail blade from cardboard or plastic so that the wind itself directs the fan.
Now let's start assembling everything.
We take a pole and fix the power wire.
Take the swivel unit.
Basically it's holding up fine.
We fasten nuts and bolts to the semicircular disk.
We put everything on the spindle and fix it with a cover plate.
Next, we attach the unit with the generator.
Tighten the nuts well.
Screw on the tail blade.
We connect the wires.
We insert the rotor with blades into the stator.
Tests
With a slight wind, the windmill produces about 10 V. This is not much, but it is quite suitable for charging USB gadgets. I think it won’t be difficult to assemble a converter for this.
