My swingarm kits always leave an eccentric and spindle assembly left over...so I have like a dozen of them and no one buys them so they collect dust.  Some company up north of us has been building some HUGE Vestas turbines, though...some of the 400ft span ones.  They're massive.  I got the piddling with the idea and started slapping shaZam! together and..



That's an NT650 eccentric clamped to my test platform.  Wish I had room to have kept the brake rotor...I like the idea of the extra mass.  AS it is the carrier/cush can is pretty heavy so I get a little from that.



The blades are actually three 1X2 sticks of box tubing cut 48" long, then notched and twisted 33* at the base and 22".  Gives me a fairly even 60* pitch at the tips.  I used a 4" wide no-tresspassing sign to widen the ends to 7" at the tips.  I then wraped the blades in shrink wrap...which may sound odd but look at it like this:

It's light
It's strong
It's weather proof
It's easily repaired
It conforms and smooths out the blades wonderfully
It's cheap

The blades were measured and welded to a steel sprocket.  I then cut the sprocket up in a patter so that it can only be bolted together one way to keep from accidnetly throwing off my balace.



All in all I have a 100" diameter and .00000173 oz of resistance at the tips.



This is roughly 104rpm with the use of our shop heater lol



semi-finnished...this is before I grafitized the tail.

She needs like a 5mph wind to get started up and will run about 40rpm in a steady 5mph breeze.  She maintains in like 2mph though...only runs about 15rpm but runs.  That'll probably chainge once she's hooked up to a permanent magnet alternator (but I'm considering retrofitting a motorcycle stator).

The pivot it's on is made by machining a piece of steel pipe down to where it would fit a wheel spacer from a ninja 500 and mounting the sprocket carrier on top of said pipe...I cut the pipe long enough that I can use the stock axle to mount the thing and hold it down.  I then welded a carrier for the eccentric, and the tail, to a steel sprocket and bolted it down to the ninja carrir...the thing would spin around like made while I was just trying to graffitize it with spray paint...

I don't know what to run with it, though, lol.  I made it out of boredom with no real intention in mind.  I'm considering mounting it to the roof of my shop and using it as a battery maintainer and to run some LED walk lights outside...and a few other small things (not all simultaneously).  If I could have made the blades better and done something like a 150" diameter I could have made a permenent magnet alt from some crap I have lying around the shop and used it to lower my electric bill lol...I got to figure out how to make good blades to do that, though.

It's fun.

I hate you.

I wish I knew as much about stuff as you do.  I'd be making things ALL DAY LONG and not wanting to he to work.

...it gets me in trouble though.  I LOVE making crap like this but not really using it...so I make all this crap and then it sits around and clutters my shop and yard and house and kalee kicks my ass over it.  IT also interferes with stuff I'm supposed to be paid to work on because I neglect it in favor of doing something that's actually interesting...

This has only taken about 3 hours worth of actual labor, though...and a power producing remake would probably run someone about $250 in all..mostly $100 for the permanent magnet altenator but you could use a regular old GM alt but you'd have to turn it really really fast which would require huge, light weight blades (not hard to make, but finding a place to put them is) and a 10-1 or greater pully step.

What do you do for a living?

-Turd.

He builds stuff like that most of the time.  He watches cows like 60 hour a week though.

Hey, Mak: do you think you could figure out how to make Transformer?  Preferably a Deceptacon?

That's really awesome.  You should use it to power some other totally random art/electronic thingy.  Make some sort of electronic windchime.    Or blinky lights.

Plus one for blinky lights.

That is so cool!

Use it to power a fan to power its self   






And some blinky lights

that is awesome

I would only make a decepticon...they're the cool ones.  I mean how cool is a mak-truck that turns into huminoid looking think with a gun when compared to a big fighter plane looking bastard with big f%$king missles and bombs and guns and shaZam! that turns into a huminoid looking thing with big f%$king missles and bombs and guns and shaZam!?

I've already got it to blink some lights...but that's it as of now.  I need to build a better step to run my alenator...bastards have to spin like 1300rpm to make any juice.  Suckage for wind-power...

Oh c'mon...  Megatron's right-hand-man was a friggen tape player...  A TAPE PLAYER!!!!

And...  Megatron was a gun...  A Gun?  Other people carried him around...  C'mon!  A GUN?!?!  And Shockwave?  Another damn gun!


Dude...  Cobra totally whoops their ass in coolness.  Destro has a friggen metal face!  A METAL FACE!!!!!!  Plus, GI Joe could never kill any of 'em...  (Unless you read the comic).

megatron was a badass gun...and Soundwave wasn't his "right hand man" any more than Blaster was Optimus Prime's lol...and the cassettes were total pimps, both decepticon and autobot.

Dirge and thunder cracker were cool, and ramjet was a total pimp...the arielbots were completely lame.

The stuntacons were lamborghinis and lotuses and the targetmasters looked like fisher price cars.  I mean come on...which is more badass?  This or this?

and so forth...