Generator

I saw a water pump driving a generator about 15 years ago. I only drove past it a few times and noticed it. It seems like a generator was used as opposed to an alternator, and it would probably work better with a generator as they charge at a slower rpm. He was using a radiator fan blade for power. Note, this may have been a truck fan blade and water pump. The fan was the symetrical type, 6 blades I think. You can rewind generators and alternators for a slower speed. The LeJay Manual covers all of this. Take the windings out and rewind with twice the number of turns (smaller diameter wire) . You will cut the amperage out in half too. You can replace the field coil with a permanent magnet too. If you want to do this but don't have the skill you could find a motor repairman that could do that.

You know, a lot of fan blades look like they would be off balance if used for power. He merely carved out a wind propeller from a 2 by 4 board. The problem he had was the blade was a little off balance and made a whop whop sound much like a helicopter. He had it mounted on the roof of the house on a wood tower. He had to shut it off manually by turning it out of the wind and tying the prop with a rope. It worked really well for a while. Then the wind got really hard one day when it was running and the off balance problem greatly increased, snapping the cam shaft off. That was the end of that. I forgot to say above that he bolted the prop to the cam gear to provide the geared up power to the generator. I also saw many homemade windmills around those days, as everyone around there was in the same boat with power.

Offered by Darrell.

I have been collecting from ham swap meets, spools of copper wire and those strong new type permanent magnets for just such an experiment. I think that most people will simply use the more practical approach, adjusting pulley sizes to optimize speed and power. So ideas on how to do this are appreciated.

Offered by Mike.