Hi, my name is Jonathan and I am a rising sophomore at Stuyvesant High School.
Watch the final video for my wind turbine:
Explanation: My mini-wind turbine generates its electricity from the force of the wind which spins the propeller, causing the diametric magnet to spin and alternate between poles. Which is how AC is made. This change in magnetic field induces an electric current from the conductor, in this case, coiled wire. For every coil, the amount of amperes are increased, having several hundred wires would increase the voltage output substantially(The wires should be as close to the magnet as possible). The AC power is then sent out through two output wires from the coils and into my board. The AC power first goes through my full wave bridge rectifier, two diodes will conduct out the positive side of the AC power, the other two will conduct out the negative side, alternatively in pairs. The jumper wires will then
Intro
Hi, its Jonathan and I’m a rising sophomore at Stuyvesant High School. Bluestamp Engineering has been a hard, yet fun couple of weeks. Many times my projects have failed because of the most simple errs. Fortunately I found out why I had these problems and resolved them. My started project was the voice changer because I thought it’d be pretty cool to have a simple yet working device. Unfortunately I had several problems because of my bad placement of several components. My main project was the mini-wind turbine. I chose this project because I’m interested in producing renewable energy and to create a small light show. Unfortunately, I need a strong gust of wind to produce enough power for that. BSE has definitely been one of the greatest experiences I’ve had, it’s taught me many engineer’s skills and how to interact with others in the real world. I look forward to making my own projects with what I’ve learned.
First Milestone
I have now built the generator part of my mini-wind turbine. Currently, it is able to produce AC energy. The main problems I faced were to reduce the amount of friction on the shaft so that it can spin at optimal speed and to prevent my acrylics from squishing onto one another because of the wires. The friction issue was resolved when I spaced my ball bearings and adjusted the distance between the acrylics. How I did this was by using every millimeter of the screw to place the acrylics as far away as possible. This and gluing on the collar shaft placed a little space in between the ball bearings and acrylics. To prevent my acrylics from squishing onto one another, I had to put various objects in between the acrylics. If I had realized this earlier, I would not have to recoil multiple times(there are about 350 coiled wires on both sides).
My project is composed of several parts. First off is a 3-Blade propeller, it is spun by the wind. The shaft is like the spine of my project, it holds my ball bearings, magnet, acrylics together. The laser-cut acrylics are like the form of the object, they are held together by the screws and bolts. On the back is my collar shaft, it is used to hold my shaft in place. The ball bearings are used to reduce friction and spin along with the shaft. This magnetic is a diametric magnet, the poles are on the top and bottom inside of the usual front and back. The wires coiled around the acrylics are 27 awg wires, they are used to produce a stronger voltage.
The physics behind this turbine is based on magnetic induction. As the magnet spins, it changes the magnetic field around it. The coils are placed in this constantly changing magnetic field. So, when the conductor (coil in our case) comes in contact with the changing magnetic field, it induces current into it. This phenomena is known as Induction. This induced current is responsible for the voltage across the coil and it depends on the number of turns. Higher the number of turns, higher is the voltage produced. There are two output wires, one for each side and two wires joining the two coils together. Currently, my generator is capable of generating up to 800 millivolts.
My next step will be to converting AC energy to DC.
Watch my video here:
Starter Project
For my starter project I built a voice changer. At the beginning of the project all I had to really do was solder (The process of joining together two pieces of metal using a “filler” metal, by melting the filler metal and chemically fusing the metals together) on the parts. But, at the end I realized my biggest mistake and the reason why my voice changer wouldn’t work is because some of my parts were on backwards. This is extremely important because some parts cannot function with others if even just one component is placed the wrong way. One example of a part I placed backwards were the diodes. To fix these errs I had to desolder the parts in order to resolder them back on. The process of desoldering is to heat up the soldered metals with the soldering iron. Then, I used the desoldering pump to suck back up the solder. How this works is that the desoldering pump creates a vacuum and sucks up the heated solder when it is in a liquefied state. The LED(light emitting diode) is a type of diode whose current only goes one direction. Placing it the wrong way will not only prevent the LED from blinking, it will also prevent the other parts of the device from getting electricity to fully function. In the end, this project was one of the most fun things I’ve done. Normally I’m not a patient person but somehow I endured through the long hours trying to figure out what was going wrong but, I prevailed. Components:
- Resistor: A device with a level of resistance to restrict the flow of electricity from running too fast
- Capacitors: A device used to store electrical charge
- LED: Aka light emitting diode, a device that lights up when an electrical current runs through it. This diode only allows the flow of electricity to go one direction
- Zener Diode: A type of diode that not only allows the flow of electricity to not only go one direction but allows it to go the opposite direction when it reaches a certain voltage point called “Avalanche Breakdown” or “Zener Effect”
- IC: The “Integrated circuit” in this case functions as the “coder” which sends signals to the other components on what to do
- PCB tabs: Quick connections to wires
Watch my video here:
How this device works is that the person speaks into the microphone and the sound is amplified out the speaker on the other side of the box. There are also button functions to manipulate the sound into robot voice, high pitch, low pitch or vibrato. If the microphone and the speaker are too close, it will create an audio feedback loop or produce a screeching sound. This project is credited to Velleman-mini kitMK171. I will now start on my main project, the mini wind turbine.