Ceiling fan alternator update

[Gotwind Ben]

I recieved the ceiling fan today,
Wow you get a lot for your money from China - £15 ($23 approx) delivered.

You get all the pressed steel plate on the right of the image below, 3 pendent light fittings and bulbs and a hopefully a promising 240v motor, that will become a low rpm alternator when I fit magnets and beat the cogging somehow, (skewing the magnets)

I just need to get into the damn thing, I've been tapping the casing with a rubber mallet for ages to try and release the bearing housings - I'll get there, it's just a bit fustrating.
The thing looks promising, good bearings..

We've got two in our kitchen that we never use so I will be following you on this one if it works! :mrgreen:

[Gotwind Ben]

I will gladly share any results.
I can't get into the thing though, I've tried most things to release the bearing housings, split it apart.
I might need to get the heat gun out, try and expand the casing, or make some kind of puller.
Frustrating :evil:

Are those 4 screws supposed to release it?
Could you put longer ones in to press it apart? :?

[Gotwind Ben]

Got the thing apart, with the use of a hair dryer to expand the steel casing a bit, oh and a big hammer :D



Total coil resistance of the outer coils is 450 ohms
Total coil resistance of the inner coils is 300 ohms

I used 14 3/4" round Neo magnets (that's all I had to hand) in a N-S-N-S configuration, the air gap is massive 1/4"
Even so,
I got plenty of volts, 100v AC for the outer coils, 60vAC for the inner coils with a hand spin of the outer casing.
But very little current, 100 mA :evil: It would easily light a LED, but not a 6v, 3w bulb.
There was some mild cogging even at such an air gap.

So I am guessing, that with our 240v mains power the coil resistance is just too high to get any decent power out as an alternator. I could be wrong, but that's what I think, Ghurd?

If you got a steel strip rolled up to go in and reduce the air gap would that improve things much?
Or multi strips wound around it,something like joist strapping from screwfix. :?

Shocking really that you can get so much for so little from China - makes you realise just what is powering our wasteful and consumer based lives!

Now if only there was something we could buy from China at that source of price that came with a nice set of neos already :) I imagine that if the demand was there China could probably make some really good PMAs at a similar price.

With such high voltage I wonder that there must be a way to wire it differently to trade off some voltage for higher amps? What size wire is used in the coils?

Microgreen
A year or so ago I got quite excited about a range of Chinese PMAs from a company called Ginlong, they looked well engineered - not converted from anything, but properly designed from scratch, anodised ally housings, weatherproofed, proper thrust bearings not ball races, and using standard thrust bearings so replacement would be easy, et cetera.

I had trouble finding out a price or supplier in UK so dropped the idea and used a bicycle hub motor instead (which works very well, in fact).
Someone in Germany started selling the Ginlongs on eBay a month or two ago, at the outrageous price of nearly £900 for a 1kW unit. Compare that to an equivalent output bicycle hub motor at a couple of hundred pounds and you'd need to chew up an awful lot of bicycle ball-races to make going for the Ginlong worthwhile.

It's been said before on this forum, the moment someone can market anything as "wind turbine" the price goes up between five- and tenfold.

Someone's having a laugh, and it's the reason I think Ben's idea for kit alternators ought to do well at a reasonable price, and ought to sell like hot cakes if there's an option to buy them readymade - as soon as people found out about them of course!. You wouldn't need to sell much of a range, say just two types 500W and 1000W at just two outputs, either 12V or 24V, and I'd think you'd be well away.

Hi Tim,

I find you get extremes on Ebay, some things are amazingly cheap while others seem completely over priced.

When you look at the materials used to make that ceiling fan, its all there except the neos, wouldn't cost much more to put them in - gives you some idea of the profit margins that must be there.

Agree, Bens idea for a kit would do very well. If the market is big enough then a small amount of investment and a trip to china to find a manufacturer would be the start of a very nice business.

What we need is someone like Lidle or Aldi to market a small 200w one for use with caravan's and sell it for £70. ;)
I must be doing a lot for wind power I'm near a really major road and thousands of people a day will see mine and must go home and think I want one. :mrgreen: