Super Soda! has been posting a lot of projects, but this is one of my favorites. We covered otherpower’s wind turbine a while ago, but Damon Vander Lind’s turbine features hand-laid fiberglass blades. The core of each blade is hot wire cut out of pink foam by following a wooden airfoil pattern. The fiberglass is laid all at once with five layers at the base and two at the tip. Each layer is slightly offset to handle torque. The entire assembly is mounted to a permanent magnet generator contained inside an alternator case.
[thanks Ryan Bavetta]
BUt how much power does it produce? What does he power with this DIY Turbine?
Thanks to whoever posted this. I wanted to mention that this was a joint project with Isaac Skibinski, who did a good half of the construction.
Very cool. What about a vertical turbine that works from any wind direction?
Warrick, he uses it to power a large electric fan which creates nice windy weather! ;)
Yay! Now I can quit running on my treadmill to use my computer!
Does anyone know of any scaled down projects such as this? Maybe desk scale, six volt, .5A, that type of thing?
At first I thought it said the core of each blade was made of hot wire, which was somehow cut out of pink foam…. took me a second.