need a wheel

yah, so things have slowed down a little bit... i got my magnets in the mail and had a laugh seeing how strong they are. quite strong for their size and if you get them too close to each other they snap together and are a pain to separate :)

now i need to get my hands on a wheel assembly. a climbing buddy of mine, Erick, is trying to get one from his brother. if that falls through then i'll see what the junk yards have. but i'd rather get one for free so i'm waiting to see what he can come up with.

i also need some wire. i think that's gonna be one of the more expensive parts of this endeavour! we'll see...

magnets

well has been a week since my last post... umm... this sorta sounds like i'm confessing :)

k, well i ordered some magnets... i ordered 30 magnets today of this type....

Rare-Earth Neodymium-Iron-Boron (NdFeB) Disc Magnet Size - Diameter 1.000" (25.40mm) x Thickness 0.063" (1.59mm); Grade N40; Pull Force - 5.39lb/2445g

this should be plenty for my first alternator, with a couple left over for my fridge :) going to head to a junk yard tomorrow at lunch to see what i can get for a front wheel assembly. i'm hoping to pay at most ~$30 for this. now i realize that this isn't likely if i were buying parts that could be used on a working vehicle... but i'm guessing there will be a car there that is too busted up to be worth reusing the parts. this is my hope anyway... the project i link to in a previous post used a volvo assembly, but i don't think i'll need to go this classy *-)

i have also realized that i'm going to need to make this thing a lot sturdier than i was intending. so i'm going to have to learn to weld... not that big a deal, but is another step in the stairway to wind-power generation...

local knowledge

so i've discovered that one of my coworkers has taken the same path i'm embarking on. only he has made conventional wind turbines... ie., three blades rotating around a single axis. he's going to be a good source of information for the coming months.

he also pointed me at a site that i had come across the other day but hadn't delved too deeply in. the site is a great place to find project descriptions and some theory behind the science (k, maybe not a science for everyone) of building wind turbines.

i sorta keep switching gears here, which is par for the course for me, but i'm going to make my alternator concurrent with the structure. going to order a bunch of rare earth magnets tomorrow. will find some wire soon too. am going to need a lot of wire :) then i just need a front wheel assembly with disc brakes and a couple other common items and i'll have the materials i need for my alternator. gotta get moving on this. keep momentum going...