Blog #6

Throughout week 3 we focused mainly on the motor and our blade design. We had a lot of struggles working on the motor from the beginning, starting with trying to remove it from the washing machine. After that, we were faced with the struggle of figuring out what each of the wires coming off the motor does so that we can figure out how we need to rewire. After we came to a general consensus on what each wire was for, we realized that we were missing two capacitors. The start and the run. The start capacitor helps give the motor boost when it is first beginning to spin, then the run capacitor works when the motor is already spinning. While we were waiting for the capacitors, I started the design of the blade brackets. The blade bracket's main purpose would be to hold the aluminum blades firmly in place. Below you can see the design I made in illustrator. 
The slits you can see in each arm are where the blades would be placed, then screwed in. There would be one near the top and one at the bottom of the blades. It took quite a few tries to fab this up, most of the time being spent on the centerpiece where the blade brackets would actually attach to the motor. By the time we finished that, the capacitors arrived and we were able to get back to work on that area. After some mild struggles, we got it all hooked up correctly. With a drill attached to the rotor, spinning it at full speed, we were able to generate just enough electricity to light up a small LED that takes about 3 volts to power. Once we got there, our mentor told us that we should call it quits. At that point, it was too late to order a new motor or continue fussing with that one. We decided that our time could be better spent helping out the Barn Raising intensive and the work we did on the turbine is a good place for another group to continue off of in the future when the barn is actually being built.


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