I’ve heard of using smartdrive rotors for windmill generators before, but I’d honestly be more interested in using them as enormous stepper motors.

Posted at 6:13 pm on Jan 3rd, 2009 by EdZ

Cool idea but the site is full of brutal typos and they’ve got parallel vs series mixed up.

Posted at 8:07 pm on Jan 3rd, 2009 by burt samson

you can usually find this type of drive in a front load washer, I would look for the late 07 to mid 08 maytag built by samsung, they had lots of balance issues and you might be able to find some at the scrapyard. the coils are set up to be a 3 phase dc motor with a variable speed control, the concept is good but since these were built to be easy on the electric bill, you will probably find them to be way underpowered. they probably won’t be able to supply more than 5-6 amps, maybe less.

Posted at 8:42 pm on Jan 3rd, 2009 by aztraph

. . .cont. there is another kind in the top load washer the whirlpool Cabrio, and a smaller version that drives the Dish Drawer. maybe if 4 or 5 of these were linked together and calibrated, you could drive something larger, there is definite possibility.

Posted at 8:46 pm on Jan 3rd, 2009 by aztraph

From what the pics show it’s just a jumbo size brushless motor setup. So you could do it on the small scale by just modding some PC cooling fans.

Posted at 8:51 pm on Jan 3rd, 2009 by VONluckenbach

These motors are made by fisher and pykel, in new zeland, they are pretty common in NZ and australia but I think you will find them hard to find in the rest of the world

Posted at 10:01 pm on Jan 3rd, 2009 by Simon

Oh and this fella made a CNC mill out of 3 them
http://www.instructables.com/id/Make-your-own-cnc-controller/

Posted at 10:05 pm on Jan 3rd, 2009 by Simon

Simon: not surprising since the fisher pykel and the cabrio washers are pretty much the exact same thing. they both even tried to sue LG for patent infringements on the same washer.

Posted at 5:35 am on Jan 4th, 2009 by aztraph

When I worked at Home Depot, the new LG dryers would light up the LCD and let you select a spin cycle / when the drum was spun by hand. This is without the dryer pluged into to wall.

Posted at 9:19 am on Jan 4th, 2009 by Ben Wright

There are plenty of write ups on using the smartdrive motors for generators, lots of DIY’ers in New Zealand use them in small scale hydro or wind generation as it requires only a little electrical knowledge to do.

Posted at 1:34 pm on Jan 4th, 2009 by Tim D

Very good!!
http://blackcatonedolar.wordpress.com/

Posted at 8:04 pm on Jan 4th, 2009 by blackcatonedolar

spam? ^^^ not cool.

Posted at 6:35 am on Jan 5th, 2009 by grizball

People do this type of conversion fairly often. Some people even rewire old garbage disposal motors to do the same thing. The term I hear most often is “garbogen” which seems to be anything that was garbage and was rewound to be a generator. Pretty resourceful stuff!

Posted at 2:02 pm on Jan 6th, 2009 by Tony

This reminds me of “Alternator Secrets,” an old pamphlet that explains how to rewire automotive alternators and induction motors as generators. It’s still good info:
http://islandcastaway.com/stuff/windpower/Alternator%20Secrets.htm

Posted at 4:33 pm on Jan 6th, 2009 by Orv

Search for the term “Fisher and Paykel” over on http://www.otherpower.com — lots of folks Down Under have done similar conversions for wind power.

Posted at 12:11 pm on Jan 8th, 2009 by j9

These motors (whole washing machines) are being bulldozed into land-fill by the thousands throughout Australia. I’ve got a dozen or more which I am using to make some gennies, using a few different ideas in the hope of making something worthwhile. For me it is a fantastic intro to a fascinating field and I encourage more to try it – at the very least I’ll be better off for my efforts in knowledge gained if not from successful power generation.

Posted at 7:09 pm on Jan 27th, 2009 by Eric

check this link guys!
http://www.thebackshed.com/Windmill/default.asp

didnt have time to read all but these motors will give 20 amps at 12 volt on a brigs 4 HP motor!
I got one!! :-)
cheers all
Mike

Posted at 4:17 am on Jun 21st, 2009 by Mike

Good stuff, Will definitely come back again.

Posted at 11:37 pm on Jun 26th, 2009 by home made wind generators