Mini Wind Turbine || DIY or Buy

a while ago I bought myself this infinite air portable wind turbine not only because its price was reduced but also because charging USB devices to wind power just sounds awesome so long story short I tried it out and it works to some extent but I think the original price tag of around 140 euro is really not worth it that is why I started searching for TIA why wind turbine alternatives on Thingiverse and found the designer 3d printable one who not only created a 50 watt wind turbine but also a smaller 5 watt version at first sight his documentation just blew me away with its very detailed mechanical drawings and apparently even a wind simulation so needless to say I wanted to print one for myself which is why in this episode of DIY oppai I will firstly properly test how the commercial wind turbine performs and afterwards I will 3d print assemble and test the 5 watt wind turbine I found on Thingiverse in order to determine whether it makes sense to DIY such a mini wind turbine or whether we should stick to the commercial solution in stats let's get started this video is sponsored by jl CPC bia who keep reducing PCBs no matter whether there's a holiday or the outbreak of a dangerous virus all the stuff is healthier and the factories work well like always so why not upload yokubou files today to get your own professional PCBs let's start off with the by version which comes in this little carriage back after emptying its I opened up the foot of the turbine attached the three blades to the propeller and then skewed the completed structure on to the generator after then securing its on to the firts and adding the included wire our commercial wind turbine was basically complete so I plugged a USB tester into its USB outlets and hooked that up to a power bank of mine in order to see whether the generator does create sufficient power while spinning the propeller with my hands which was not quite the case that is why it was time for me to go outside and test the wind turbine in a real-life situation on top of my garage roof but as you can see the German weather was currently not in the mood to work in my favor which was a shame but not a problem since I can do a proper indoor tests with more or less controlled conditions with one of those a leaf blower with adjustable wind speeds it claims to be able to create a maximum speeds of 300 kilometers per hour which is more than enough for the mini wind turbine since it claims to output 7.5 to 10 watts at speeds of only 24 km/h so I basically tried out a few different angles and wind speeds and as you can see the wind turbine can truly charge my power bank but not with as much power as I hope for here is a problem though the DIY wind turbine will later use a stepper motor as a generator in combination with only a rectifier circuits to create a DC voltage the commercial wind turbine however must use additional electronics in order to output a constant 5 volts which means there must exist some additional losses and thus we cannot properly compare the two turbines just yet to solve that problem I tried opening up the commercial turbine which was pretty much impossible to do without the help of some power tools but as soon as I was in I immediately noticed the additional electronic circuits and thus removed it from the motor output wires now the shape of the generator seemed rather strange to me but due to its three wire arrangements and the voltages I measured with them while spinning the generator led me to believe that this was some kind of Bill DC motor which is why we need this kind of rectifier in order to turn its three-phase AC voltage into a DC voltage so after adding the rectifier to the generator output wires confirming that we truly guards a DC voltage and turning it all back into a proper wind turbine I used my power meter which I showed you how to create in a previous video in combination with a six ohm resistor to find out how much power the generator you can truly outputs at a power level of three for the leaf blower and at a distance of as close as possible to the blades the wind turbine creators around 300 millivolts of power which will be our reference value were for the DIY wind turbine and with that being done the testing of the commercial solution was completes and thus I downloaded the files for the five watts 3d printable wind turbine which not only came with tons of 3d models but also an instruction manual which was pretty much only technical drawings and a bill of materials lists so according to this list I used the given layer Heights and info densities of each components in order to slice it with the Poussin slicer software afterwards my 3d printer pretty much did all the work but let me tell you that since this boot requires quite a lot of 3d printed parts it will take a while and also you need to add an five knots into the blades of the wind turbine while printing otherwise things will not work out later on but anyway as soon as the printing was done it was time for the assembly year so I started with the structure assembly which required those poets I began with inserting two ball bearings about which you can also find information in the Bill of Materials lists then I added an adapter to the NEMA 11 motor attached it to the main structure added the kiosk to the system and temporarily closed it all up next was the rotor assembly which required the most parts now I do not want to say too much about this part because I honestly feel like I did something wrong with the blade system assembly since in the end it should be able to feature a PvP or passive variable pitch system but it seems like mine did not work that well but nevertheless my Roederer came together as well and worked pretty well in the end next was the tower assembly which apparently uses a standard home drainpipe with an inner diameter of 64 point 5 which is certainly not the standard here in Germany because it does not exists so instead a 3d printed such a pipe and thus cut all the components for the assembly all I had to do was to push the pipe onto the base insert another ball bearing attached that part on top of the pipe and insert the tower shafts and finally it was time to insert the propeller into the motor structure secure the bigger gear to its shaft with grub screws attach the shaft nuts push the tower shaft into the heads close the head up with the nacelle used an m6 threaded rods to stick everything together and ultimately add the fin to the end of its after then adding the last missing blades because I destroyed one during the assembly closing the propeller with its nose and screwing the foot to two pieces of woods for a bit of extra stability yeah my dear why wind turbine was basically completes and by turning the propeller we cannot only see how the gears rotates but also by attaching oscilloscope probes how the stepper motor outputs two voltage waveforms so after adding the rectifier circuit to the motor wires and adding the same power meter with 6 ohm resistor to the system just like before it was time to do the leaf blower testing and as you can see by utilizing the same wind speed at around the same distance we achieve a maximum output power of around 100 milliwatts which is certainly lower than with the commercial turbine the reason is that the stepper motor is much smaller and also uses an additional mechanical gear system which wastes a bit of power while the commercial solution directly let's the motor spin also the DIY version takes a long time to build but then again it implements more useful features than the buy version is easy our customizable cost less and teaches you and also taught me quite a lot about mechanical engineering that is why for me DIY and buyer are both this time the winner since it surely depends on what you're looking for in a wind turbine since each version offers its own advantages but what do you think let me know your thoughts in the comment section below as always thanks for watching don't forget to Like share subscribe and hitting the notification barrel stay creative and I will see you next time

Channel: GreatScott!

Views: 626,254

Rating: 4.867228 out of 5

Keywords: wind, turbine, mini, diy, or, buy, texenergy, infinite, air, generator, motor, tutorial, guide, how, make, beginner, beginners, project, explain, compare, comparison, power, energy, output, speed, usb, tester, powerbank, charge, rectifier, ac, dc, 5W, 50W, thingiverse, 3d, print, meter, logger, load, measure, test, performance, 3dprintable1, prusa, stepper, gear, build, built, pvp, passive, variable, pitch, assembly, electronic, electronics, greatscott, greascott!, leaf, blower

Id: 938dTRrwrYc

Length: 10min 33sec (633 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 01 2020