| Servo motor based windmill. |
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| I picked up
this old Hitachi welding robot for a few cartons of beer.
The owner was happy to get rid of it, this model was a
bit of a beast to operate and very out dated. |
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| I lasercut and
welded together a simple platform to hold one of the motors.
The platform includes tail furling and bolts to a car
wheel hub at the top of my mast. The motor is rated at
1100 watts, so I can expect 500 so watts as a windmill. |
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| A 3 phase rectifier
was mounted on the decoded cover on the back of the motor.
These motors include a electric brake and opto decoder,
both of which have been removed. |
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| Up in the air.
There has been stuff all wind since I put the windmill
up ( typically ) so havn't got any power figures yet.
But the windmill starts up easily as there is no cogging
in this type of motor. During the day I monitored the
output voltage. Its was just below charging voltage, sitting
in the 8 to 12 volt range. |
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I decided to make a modification in
improve output voltage. The motor is wired as a 3 phase
star, each leg consisting of 6 1mm wires in parrallel.
I seperated the windings and changed to 2 lots of 3
wires in series/parrallel. This will double the output
voltage and half the output current.
By doing this the windmill will start
charging much earlier in light winds. If this windmill
works out, I might play around with a switching circuit
to switch back to the original winding configuration
as the wind picks up. |
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