Gallery, Projects and General > The Design Shop

How can you "drive" a wind clock?

<< < (4/9) > >>

awemawson:
Eugene,

Obviously I've not seen those ones myself (as they are in Israel!) so it's not entirely clear if they share a common shaft or are on two co-axial shafts. If the later you could probably separate them and thus have your pair, but I suspect it's the former case and they are integral, in which case you'd need two.

Bear in mind that being ex avionics they will operate on the standard 400 Hz aircraft supply, but that is  pretty easy to generate.

vtsteam:
Wow, a lot of activity while I was sleeping! Thanks for the synchro explanation, John. Very clear, and the alternator vesion seems do-able and fun at the same time. Almost tempted to try it myself even though I don't want a wind clock, just to see if it would work.

Also this morn, I started thinking that if it was a wind clock I really wanted, I'd maybe go back to the shaft and bevel gear idea. Has a lot of appeal, from just a mechanical fun perspective.

Definitely I wouldn't do the R/C servos and pots I suggested earlier. Longevity would be nil with wearing parts like pots in servos, etc. This thing has to handle variable wind direction 24/7 365/yr and, say, 20 years to be worthwhile. Or even 100, if you really want to be proud of it.

I probably wouldn't want to consume power with a wind operable device anyway!

John Hill:
I would like someone to try the alternator idea as I am far from convinced it would work in practice!  Too many poles on the stator and too many on the rotor. 

However the rotor is easy to modify with an angle grinder just cutting the unwanted pole fingers off.  The stator would be harder but not impossible but would require a isolating each pole winding and rewiring them in groups for each third of the total.

(I have almost convinced myself to go down to the car wreckers!)

Shafts and bevel gears are not so bad but it might be easier to have cables and pulleys to do the job!  You would need a two throw crank (90 degree displaced crank pins) at each end at each end.


There is also that knobbly plastic 'chain' they use for controlling window blinds etc.

BTW, if you are going to buy a pair of  magslip/selsyn/synchro at your local surplus store make sure you are getting the right ones!  There are six or eight varieties,  various voltages, various frequencies (50,60 and 400Hz at least).  Some of them dont even rotate full circle and others will not have enough torque to pull the skin off your Milo.

John Hill:
vsteam, if you are going to make the wind clock to be proud of you also need a wind speed indicator and I can think of no better project for the Madmodders among us than a water bucket type of pressure tube anemometer.  Just Google 'Dines pressure tube anemometer'!

The simple ones had a air inlet on the wind vane facing into wind and the air pressure was taken away via a tube to the display which was a glass tube part filled with some liquid.  Increasing wind pushed the liquid up and was read against an adjacent scale.  Madmodders should make the water bucket type where a 'bucket' was suspended by a spring over a container of water, the air pressure tube came through the container to end above the level of the water and inside the bucket, as the wind increased there was higher pressure in the bucket which rose accordingly.  The 'professional' ones made by Munro et al had a chain connected to the bucket which went around a sprocket on one of our selsyns/magslip/synchros and hence could be read remotely.  They also had a paper drum recorder for a permanent record of the wind speed and direction.

hermetic:
KISS! use a long speedometer cable!
Phil.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page