Windy Cindy IIIb

This is a photo of Windy Cindy in one of her latest forms. Unfortunately, after a little head-scratching, I soon realised that she was producing too little power so the experiment has been abandonded (in this form at least). I'd like to now go back to the stepper motor design and place it inside this new housing. If you are from the UK you'll be aware that the body in this version is made from an abandoned traffic cone; simply saw away the bottom to the right angle so that the blades obviously don't rub. The motor in this version is from a room cooler fan but, as mentioned, will now be 'discarded'. However, the blades from the cooler are proving to be useful as a hub. You may be able to see that previously used balsa wood blades have been bolted onto the room cooler blades to extend them. The fitting is rather nice on this hub as it uses a basic spring to just slot onto a shaft. Hence it should be relatively easy to secure this to the stepper motor shaft. I also have my eye
on a treadmill motor on a popular auction site so that may be interesting. All-in-all the design is becoming better engineered now as the use of an internal 'mecanno'-like frame and the new hub and body are making it more durable. Its also easy to take it apart for maintenance and modification purposes. Let's see how things progress. To conclude although the room cooler experiment kind of failed we're steadily making progress: two or three steps forward and one step back! Cheers, Tim :-))