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Forum Index : Windmills : Wooden Blade Carving
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Bryan1 Guru  Joined: 22/02/2006 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1458 |
Hiya Guys, Well doing a Bruce and becoming a steptoe for a day we headed upto to the salvage yard where I got 3 decent oregon planks for some blades. Well Murphy is always around and it turned out on of the planks had a heap of knots so 3 hours of hand carving have gone to waste but better to be carefull I reckon. The pic's are of the the top side as I want to get all the angles true to Alton's Calc results then I'll carve the rear side once I'm happy all the angles are correct. this is a pic of the good blade straight grain no knots 
this was the first knot I found on the second blade 
this pic is of the knots in the root of the blade 
To be sure to be sure it aint worth risking this second blade so it will become firewood as for the amount of work hand carving turbine blades it aint worth taking the risk. Anyway when I get further on the blades i'll throw more pic's up if you blokes want. Cheers Bryan 
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GWatPE Senior Member  Joined: 01/09/2006 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2127 |
Hi Bryan, The blades appear to be of a high aspect ratio. What sort of final rotor dia are you looking at? I hope all of the angles work out. It looks like yours will spin the opposite way to mine cheers, Gordon. become more energy aware |
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Tinker Guru Joined: 07/11/2007 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1904 |
Bryan, dont dismiss the knotted wood yet, you can use it if you have a circular saw and slice the piece into long staves. Select the staves that are knot free and epoxy laminate them together (alternating the grain run as observed at the ends)to form your blank. Proceed to carve your blades, they will now be a lot stronger than if carved out of a single homogenous piece. I have built centreboards and rudder blades for my boats that way and they have *lots* more load on them than a windmill blade will ever see. Tinker Klaus |
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| brucedownunder2 Guru Joined: 14/09/2005 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1548 |
Hi Brian,, don't throw that knotty one out ,,the two top knots look to be fine,the bottom one ,I've had worse than that. Looks like you are carving these blades to go anti-clockwise,,or am I seeing wrong? Bruce Bushboy |
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| Bryan1 Guru Joined: 22/02/2006 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1458 |
Hiya Guys, Well I might aswell finish that knotty blade off and see how it turns out. Anyway the blades will be 3 metres diameter and yes the blades will be spinning anti clockwise. Basically when I marked them out for clockwise I couldnt get a decent leading edge but the other way worked out good. O'well I dont call myself ruddycrazy in fieldlines for nuffin  and it wont matter which way the blades spin.
Cheers Bryan |
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| Bryan1 Guru Joined: 22/02/2006 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1458 |
Hiya Guy's, Well after I finally got some shed time I got my new mill all finished and up and flying. 
As you can see it's the opposite to Glenn's design as it will go anticlockwise and furl from right to left. Well if you look closely at Tru energy add with the blonde she does show their mills going anticlockwise. So I must be doing it right.
Cheers Bryan  |
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Gizmo Admin Group  Joined: 05/06/2004 Location: AustraliaPosts: 5116 |
Good work Bryan, those blades look real nice. The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, the second best time is right now. JAQ |
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| brucedownunder2 Guru Joined: 14/09/2005 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1548 |
Good on ya Mate,, nice to see you are "up and running" .. When the wind comes in ,,keep an eye on the meters and let us know the wattage ,,,,I suspect 220--300 ,,, well done Bruce Bushboy |
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| Bryan1 Guru Joined: 22/02/2006 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1458 |
Well guys the first performance figures are in It was blowing a gale when I got home from work and my wife well looks like your new genny wont self destruct like the last one's.  Anyway I shorted the mill out and put my cheap $10 dmm on set to 10 amp. I turned the short switch off and soon saw 2,4,7,9,11,14 amps then nothing as the fuse blew. As the batteries were on 26.5 volts I worked out 371 watts.  Now it was cloudy all day here on the farm and my 700ah array was sitting on 24.5 volts last night so today the genny has proven to me it works a treat. I know it's going to blow a gale here tonight so this is the first real test on the genny. But as far as looking at the blades they speed up nicely with no hint of inbalance so hopefully I got this new genny right.
Cheers Bryan |
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Gill Senior Member Joined: 11/11/2006 Location: AustraliaPosts: 669 |
Good one Bryan, You can put the feet up now and watch it spin in the power. 
So what are the general specs of the whole setup? was working fine... til the smoke got out. Cheers Gill _Cairns, FNQ |
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| Bryan1 Guru Joined: 22/02/2006 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1458 |
Well Gill sitting here in the house listening to the quiet whistle of the blades over the wind is very satisifing . Ok my f&p setup is a basic mirror to the one Glenn shows the plans on the main site. The blades are hand carved and are 3 metres diameter, I used 2 6mm 330mm OD disc's to hold the blades and I welded a corolla hub to the inner disk. I made a nut from 32mm hex bar to hold the blades on and loctited it in to make sure sure it holds tight. The f&p is a 80sp which I bench tested on Dennis's jig and it has survived my 2 previous failures. The whole project took close to 2 months to do as I've been busy doing other jobs on the farm. Since that pic was taken I've lowered the guy wires so they are just below the blades and I re-inforced the top 2" water pipe with some 2" angle iron as that is the major weak point on the tower. The big test will be at 5.30am tomorrow when I'll check the battery voltage and I wouldn't be surprised if the dumpload is nice and warm.
I've been flatout with everything lately so just getting this genny up and flying is a major goal. The next big project is getting this pic based logger made buts that yet another kettle of mud crabs. Cheers Bryan |
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| Bryan1 Guru Joined: 22/02/2006 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1458 |
Well guy's here's an update, Those figures I took the other night was in a full blown gale and I reckon the blades were doing close to 500 rpm. Now I've put one dmm set on AC volts and I've also hooked up a 200 amp shunt with a 75mV ouptut to another dmm set on 2 volts. for the last 2 days it's been sort of windy here and it seems unless theres a major gale the genny sits on or below cutin. Mind you my banks are 24 volts so as you can imagine on a 12 volt array this genny would be pumping amps in. I'm thinking on B's idea of gearing up 2:1 and if my current blade set doesnt cut the mustard of carving a new set with a 10" root, that should give low speed startup with a 2:1 f&p. More to come as my tinkering goes. (sworry tinker )
Cheers Bryan |
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| Gill Senior Member Joined: 11/11/2006 Location: AustraliaPosts: 669 |
Bryan, Well 500rpm doesn't sound bad but you say you are around cut-in? Sounds like you have an OK mill with a badly chosen stator wiring? When you said you has an 80sp is that 2coils in series, 3 phase star, times 7 in parallel or 7 coils in series, 3 phase star, times 2 in parallel,or are you running a 7 phase setup???? Damn I hate this SP identification system Glenn has promoted, It just doesn't work for me at all. was working fine... til the smoke got out. Cheers Gill _Cairns, FNQ |
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| GWatPE Senior Member Joined: 01/09/2006 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2127 |
Hi Bryan, I am with Gill a bit re load matching. The 500RPM is a little high for 3m blade set. I do believe that any windmill without an electronic load matcher can only perform well at either end of the wind power spectrum. Your mill setup sounds like a good candidate for an electronic boost for low windspeeds. I have to ask how much your mill furled at the top end of the power level. I watched mine the other day and at the wind peaks of 70kph the tail was parallel to the rotor and the power peaked at 422W. The figs you are getting are good news, as I will soon have my F&P mill. I am expecting my 100S wired in delta to perform at least as well. I believe the std 80SP is a 2 parallel arrangement of 3phase star with 7 coils in series in each leg. PS the last couple of days has been good for wind here on the south coast. Gordon. become more energy aware |
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| windman Newbie  Joined: 02/12/2006 Location: Posts: 19 |
nice looking blades well done |
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| Bryan1 Guru Joined: 22/02/2006 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1458 |
Hiya Guy's, My 80sp is wired up as per Glenn's pic's on the main site. I do have 1 80 and 1 spare 100 series f&p here and 1 100 sp I wired up which would need gearing up just to hit the cutin. Now I wonder with the 80 series if I say re-wired it for 3 seperate sp's would that lower the cutin as the 250+rpm figure for a standard 80sp cutin for 24 volts seems too high for normal winds. I wonder if any other members have already tried this??? Cheers Bryan |
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| brucedownunder2 Guru Joined: 14/09/2005 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1548 |
Hi Bryan,, I put up a standard 100 un-modified ,,but just did the delta connections ,yesterday.. Around 15-30Kph winds all night . standard direct drive with my 12 foot ABS plastic blades ..Neo conversion Rotor. She gets up around 40 volts fairly quickly and gently reaches cut-in at around 50+ volts ,,. So don't know how it would go into your 24v bank ... one theory is that the higher volts cut-in lets the mill wind up and have more grunt. Saw around 336 watts peaking then settled around 150 watts . Fairly constant .. have been running around 120 watts of fluro's all night and with the ups going it has been keeping just below the max volts for my 48v bank. Using my neo conversion rotor--- I'd reckon 2 of these would go well and sit around 600--900 watts in a moderate wind.. Into my 48v battery bank.. Bruce Bushboy |
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| Bryan1 Guru Joined: 22/02/2006 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1458 |
Well guys it's back to the drawing board  I lowered the tower to fix the tail and put a 100 series on and the tower buckled and one the blades now has a big crack down it's length. Atleast the other 2 blades survived so I'll only need to make one new blade. But all that work setting up the wind genny beside my shed is now in vain as when I do finally get another tower built I'll put it up the hill where I should of gone in the first place. Also to cap of a prick of a day this morning my stihl 390 farmboss chainsaw seized up
 Goes off to find Murphy so I can wring his neck
P.S. Guys rather than put more pic's in here is the link to my otherpower gallery that shows the pic's |
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| windlight Guru Joined: 03/03/2007 Location: AustraliaPosts: 331 |
Bryan, know that feeling, I asume you are aplying a force(someone pulling on the guy) at mid point of the tower while lowering and raising, at least for the first and last 30%. Now go out and buy some Vic ash or Tasie oak (same timber) and make some real blades, no nots just good straight timber. Allan on the other side "I like this place and willingly could waste my time in it" - (Act II, Scene IV). |
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| brucedownunder2 Guru Joined: 14/09/2005 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1548 |
Bad luck ,,Ol buddie,, guess it's a re-weld and a few other mods ...Never mind ,,,you'll get there. Bruce Bushboy |
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