Engineering a Smarter 3D Printed Wind Turbine

Over-engineered? Maybe. Cool? Definitely! In this video, I design a wind turbine featuring variable pitch blades, powered rotation, a full weather station, and single custom motherboard to control it all!
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While this project didn't quite generate enough power to sustain itself, it certainly has the potential to. All it needs is properly designed blades that are a bit larger, and a higher gear ratio to spin the stepper motor generating the power quicker. With that, this prototype is a great demonstration piece as to how full-scale wind turbines actually operate. Is this how all small turbines should be designed? Definitely not. Simpler is better unless the efficiency gains are substantial, and the scale needs to be quite a bit larger before that holds true!
MinutePhysics turbine video • The Physics of Windmil...
Wind Turbine CAD and files
cad.onshape.com/documents/081...
github.com/DDeGonge/SmartWind...
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#windturbine #3dprinted
0:00 - 0:55 Intro
0:55 - 1:20 Bigger Blades
1:20 - 3:00 Why Airfoils
3:00 - 3:50 Flow Simulations
3:50 - 4:48 Blade Pitch Assembly
4:48 - 5:16 PCB Assembly
5:16 - 6:36 Power Rectification
6:36 - 7:15 Annoying Electronics Stuff :)
7:15 - 8:00 Initial Subsystem Tests
8:00 - 8:25 Base Assembly
8:25 - 10:00 Final Subsystem Tests
10:00 - 11:10 Real World Testing!!!
11:10 - 11:46 Onshape!
11:46 - 12:26 Outro

[@3DprintedLife]

Sorry for any confusion on the airfoil section! I didn’t realize until now that I was drawing the force vectors backwards. What I had actually drawn was the direction air would move, and the resulting force acts in the opposite direction.

[@ronp1436]

On 1:30 your explanation of how the airfoil works is also wrong. The wind should come from right to left and make the wing move up in your case. And the opposite is true, which is how planes helicopters and everything that flies work - the wing moves to the right and generates lift upwards.

[@3DprintedLife]

@@ronp1436 yep that part was intentional and explained the error a few minutes later

[@miege90]

Isnt the airfoil design flipped again in the final shot?

[@benjaminsteakley]

Its gonna sound weird. Have you tried including a small fly wheel with a one way rotational direction? a coupling from the blades to the load shaft via one way ratchet connection. Fly wheel spins freely even after the blade stops spinning

[@bialy100k]

@@ronp1436 In general this explanations of aerodynamic are so messy, I already quite well know "how it works" and loose thread what author want to say. :/

[@adrenalinejunky789]

PLEASE do a v2!!! This is soooo freakin cool!

[@3d.printed.flight]

I'll print the blades! if you do I live in massachusetts to!

[@sammcmurchie8136]

I love this! I'm majoring in renewable energy engineering (still early on in my degree) and I just learned about some of the physics behind this stuff. Since you mentioned that you're going to redesign it, I have a couple notes you can hopefully use. First I just want make a note of the difference in design philosophy of a big wind turbine vs a small wind turbine. Big wind turbines are maximizing the swept area of the blades, which it turns out is the simplest and most effective way to get more power out of a turbine. But you're building a small wind turbine, which means increasing power through blade size is more or less off the table. That means your best best is to squeeze as much efficiency as you can in the amount of energy you capture from the wind and to reduce energy conversion losses. I know you mentioned 3 blades is more efficient than many blades, and they are, there's a bit a nuance lost when we say it's more efficient and leave it at that. Mostly the 3 blade design is more efficient for a full size turbine because of material and installation costs. The Minutephysics video touches on Betz's Law which tells us that the maximum amount of energy we can harvest from the wind is 59%, but in practice our wind turbines fall short of that figure. The more blades we put on a turbine the closer we can approach that theoretical maximum, but with diminishing returns. And when the blades we use for a full size wind turbine can be around 100 meters long it becomes more cost effective to settle on lower energy efficiency with individual turbines and to just make more of them. However, you're 3d printing those blades, you can totally throw on some extra blades and see a benefit. So long as you space the blades evenly and use an odd number of them (to keep angular momentum constant), you should see an increase in power generated. There's probably an optimal number of blades that likely relates to how wide the blades are, but that's beyond what I can tell you. The only other way to boost your power output is higher wind speeds, so the higher you can place it above the ground the better. Kind of a no brainer, but I figured I'd say it anyway. Also, as another commenter has said, most of the power that wind turbines generate comes from the outer third of the blades, with the inner two thirds mainly just providing structural support. That just comes down to leverage and how more torque is generated when the same force is applied at greater radii. That's why we increase the length of the blades when we want to increase the power generated by a single turbine instead of trying to increase the efficiency. You could probably skeletonize the inner parts of the blade if you wanted, but as I said before efficiency is your best friend with a small wind turbine and it would give you a poorer energy yield. Could look cool though! Best of luck with your next design!

[@3DprintedLife]

This is a lot of really helpful info, thank you!

[@sammcmurchie8136]

@@3DprintedLife Of course! I wrote a lot because your project is so cool! Just a small addenum to what I wrote though. As I'm reading what I wrote again, the way I said that you could add more blades to approach that 59% makes it sound like I'm saying you could just keep adding blades and keep getting more efficient. But there will actually be a tipping point where you begin getting less efficient with more blades. How to find the sweet spot in the number of blades isn't something I've learned yet, but you might be able to find it experimentally or with a simulation

[@paradiselost9946]

@@sammcmurchie8136 i keep thinking of positive feedback loops... take the idea of ducting them. people think "air speed up"...vague ideas about venturis... fail to realise that in an open system like the atmosphere, the air just slows down, builds pressure, and prevents more air from entering... whats the term? oh yeah. air is "incompressible". just like water. so most people dont realise that any turbine inside a duct has to be a restriction, that youre stuck with 50% due to PE to KE conversions. if the fluid flows freely, no energy extracted. if its completely blocked, no energy extracted. half the flow possible, half the energy extracted. betz law is a slight modification of the same idea. hence the 59%. logarithms... i liked that minutephysics vid. its the same effect as a prop, just backwards. one contracts a column of fluid increasing in velocity, the other expands a column decreasing in velocity. any attempt to slow the air down increases its pressure which reduces the pressure gradient that creates the air flow in the first place. pretty simple! ducts on wind turbines simply dont work. other than maybe reducing any tip vortices. but then i wonder... what if you duct one with an air accelerator, aka dyson fan type thing? use a portion of the generated power to produce a low pressure zone behind the duct, behind the turbine, so the air entering the duct isnt tending to stall and stagnate. the air accelerator being an interesting thing, using a small portion of high speed air to induce a large amount of low speed flow... there were plans from long ago floating around for a multi staged venturi burning propane for a jet engine... i think it might have actually been what they used on the fairey rotodyne. one of the rotor tip propulsion concepts, anyway. dont break betz limit. just increase pressure differentials to produce higher windspeeds with proportionally more airflow in a given area. just a thought. if you could actually duct the wind between buildings and do something with it rather than have it simply spilling over the top... or possibly something like the idea of the sand trikes with the props going faster than the wind, is that somehow applicable? numbers of blades... gets tricky. someone said eleven? meh.

[@sammcmurchie8136]

@@paradiselost9946 Hmm that's interesting. If we could find a viable way to increase air velocity it would be a huge boon to the technology, even if it was at the cost of the air density. Swept area of the blades and air velocity are the most important components of the wind power equation, with velocity being the most since it's cubed. I can't help but think that, unless it's simple and cheap to manufacture and install that it wouldn't catch on for the big turbines. Not while It's cheaper and more straightforward to just pour a bigger concrete base and build a taller turbine with a bigger swept area. Actually, come to think of it whatever structures and components we would add to support those things would have to increase the side profile of the turbines, wouldn't it? That means that they're more vulnerable to failure during high winds since they survive stormy winds by weathervaning. Still, I think for the smaller scale that maybe you're right and that trying to create a high wind speed is something that should be explored. Doesn't even need to be one as small as this because there are some wind turbines that can be laid flat on the ground when wind speeds get too high. Can't remember how big those ones get though. Anyway, take this with a grain of salt because like I said in my first comment I'm still relatively early on in the degree. I mostly just know some of the important physics about most of the various RE technologies and less about specifically how the engineering takes advantage of it

[@AndrewTSq]

I always heard you do the blades in glassfiber / carbon fiber, cause materials as alu does not like the sudden big changes in forces. So not sure how 3d prints would survive then?

[@johboh]

Inspiring video! I appreciate you showing all your challenges and that everything is just not a smooth ride.

[@creativefun1758]

Great and creative videos as always. I'd love to see a version 2. Try to incorporate wireless data transition threw RF, and make an app that communicates the information in the form of a GUI application for your desktop or phone.

[@3DprintedLife]

That's a cool idea, would really take the data analytics to the next level

[@stefa168]

A version with an ESP32 board with ESPHome could be a potential solution

[@Ed.R]

Yes some sort of data logging is essential for doing any optimisation. Could just be an SD card module in the turbine. Or even better as you say transmit the data wirelessly. I've used HC-05 or HC-06 bluetooth modules on many projects and an Android app called Bluetooth Graphics. The app will display the data as a graph and do data logging. The range of Bluetooth isn't great though so another option is nrf24l01 wireless modules. These require a second MCU to receive the data, can't be picked up directly with a phone or computer, not that I know of. These are just a couple of alternatives to WiFi and creating an app that I have found easy to implement because I'm not great at coding.

[@dlanm2u]

@@3DprintedLife put the antennas in the blade lol

[@patricklaqua5590]

Very cool! As an engineer myself, I can appreciate the honesty in you sharing your experience and mistakes. It's all part of the learning process, any professional will agree!

[@MostlyPennyCat]

As a sailor this makes a lot of sense. "Square Rigged" ships can't sail into the wind. Technically nothing can, but square rigs really suck at it, obviously you just get blown _backwards_ All sailing ships have to sail "close hauled" to the wind, about 10° off to one side or the other. The yachts and dinghies you've seen with "triangular sails" are called Bermuda Rigged. These are curved and act like an aerofoil. You align them with the "apparent wind", which is the sum of the real wind plus relative winds from your motion on a point-of-sail. By aligning the mainsail you extract lots of work from the apparent wind, which consists of two force vectors, fore and aft and port and starboard. The fore vector pushes you forward and the port and starboard pushes you off course. The keel or board under the hull is designed to permit one and block the other. This is how sailing ships go faster than the wind while almoat sailing into it. I suspect the same will be true of this wine turbine.

[@BirdbrainEngineer]

Variable pitch is... not that great of an idea so close to the ground. For variable pitch to help and not reduce power output, the wind velocity would have to be essentially constant - a difficult proposition when there's lots of stuff like buildings and trees around... the wind is very turbulent and you'll spend essentially no time in the sweet spot with the pitch. Maybe it would help to apply wind speed averaging over a fairly long time period (like a minute or so) for the pitch. Though then you'll probably also want some code to detect how gusty the wind is - with large variability in the wind speed due to gusts, the average might move above the more constant baseline wind speed. Also, yeah, take it to the seaside or the lakeside of a large lake, to an area not occluded by buildings, terrain and vegetation to get more constant wind.

[@totally_not_a_robot1342]

Great video! I have not had as much time to watch youtube with university but it's great to see another upload from you!

[@chronometer9931]

I'd like to see a V2, I'm also curious about other designs

[@YourArmsGone]

Qblade is a pretty good wind turbine optimization program. It's a little old but it will optimize blade twist and angle of attack at different windspeeds and rotations.

[@madeintexas3d442]

I'm super excited for the next video. I have been waiting on that one for a long time. These videos never disappoint.

[@stratos2]

Yes, please keep working on this! I'd love to see it properly optimised. No fancy features, just actually tuning the blade pitch for the wind and rotation speed so it actually performs well and see if you can outperform a simple commercial windmill.

[@3DprintedLife]

Yeah I would like to simplify this for V2 and make it actually viable for extended use. I definitely expect it could outperform a fixed pitch turbine (even when considering power consumption to run the controller and motors), but I still really doubt the performance improvement would be worth the greatly increased up-front cost to support the variable pitch.

[@thecatofnineswords]

Really cool project. So many areas for optimisation, but as an initial "Ohmigod it works", it's bloody cool.

[@Berkana]

1:12 If you don't mind me adding a slightly different take on this, I'd like to add some constructive critique. At the small scale, you may be able to do an optimization that is not limited by the three blade limit. In a wind turbine blade, the outer third of the blade is doing most of the work. The inner part is mostly structural. Each section of airfoil contributes in proportion to how close it is to the tip, since the further out on the blade the section of air foil is, the larger the area it sweeps. The speed of the section of the air foil also increases as you get further from the hub. Suppose you measure sum total of the blade length of all three blades together. For the same amount of total blade length, you would do better at the scale you're working at to make a hoop that has many short segments of blade sticking out of it, with the hoop itself perhaps held to the hub with a few thin spokes. You may even be able to accomplish this with less material expenditure than with your current design. What I had in mind is a turbine with nine blades, but the same diameter, but the blades are only the outer third of the blades you're currently using. These nine blades would be mounted to a ring or a hoop. Kind of like this, but with better aerodynamics through 3D printing: kzbin.info/www/bejne/fqWxY4Z9n5Z5rLs

[@RABRABB]

It's amazing. You made a gorgeous team engineering alone! Your humor was sofisticated. It was just pure fun to listen to your video. :) I definitely want version 2! (I don't understand comments on Hackday, all bitter, they don't get the potentials.) But I see :)

[@3DprintedLife]

Thanks I appreciate that!

[@damondeath4563]

Gotta love this type of stuff. This makes my creative gears turn in my head. Goo Sheet man.

[@RedstoneCraftermc]

Great amount of knowledge and insight in this video thank you

[@JoshuaDHay]

Most underrated channel

[@3DprintedLife]

Thank you! :D

[@WIld-cHILd-1273]

Holy crap really cool project your hard work deserves applause :D

[@enerconfan9138]

Great design, I always wanted to do something like this but never got around actually doing it. For the next version you definitely need to beef up the whole structure, especially the blade roots.

[@3DprintedLife]

Yep for sure! I’m surprised this thing didn’t explode during the outdoor testing to be honest 😅

[@PCBWay]

This is INCREDIBLE!🤩🤩🤩

[@MiguelSilvaFX]

hi DDeGonge just to let you know i've added your project to my pcb catalogue repo . keep up the great work.

[@MostlyPennyCat]

Put a rechargeable battery in to power the controller? Give it an emergency _battery very low_ mode where it shuts down the controller until the battery has recovered. Use ULSD NiMh AAs as charging them is _very_ safe and simple, they just reject more voltage when charged. So min functionality is: 1) Spinning blades always charge the battery pack 2) Controller defaults to ultra-sleep with a hardware timer to check battery pack voltage every _x_ minutes

[@senorjp21]

This is awesome! Thanks for the new video

[@James68257]

Love the video, would love to see a v2

[@AhmedShabasy44]

Man you are so good talented person don't care for people who judge you. cause you are epic.... much appreciation and support from Egypt.

[@bluebeard2283]

08:30 The people would be honored to witness this. Great video.

[@3DprintedLife]

They still judged me lol

[@AlexJoneses]

As a fourth year mech e I can say I truly understand just how much engineering and effort went into making this really cool mini windmill, and it is such an awesome project, but seeing that biased worm gear makes me want to throw a rock at it

[@tatradak9781]

The future of small wind turbines is dual blade design

[@mattharvey8712]

Bravo......variable pitch.......blades.....cheers

[@mystamo]

Pretty rock solid channel. I subbed. You will get big with content like this. Just keep it up. I like the narration.

[@3DprintedLife]

Thanks I appreciate that!

[@planetace3227]

Really nice project I would love to see a V2, or some stuff about generating power with this one and store that. Actually I work on a vertical Wind turbine and could use some input on those topics :-)

[@billstrahan4791]

I'm so glad that went where it did, because at 1:36 I paused the video to see if anyone else had already pointed out your diagram was inverted...or reversed...or...let's just say wrong, that's easiest. But you appear to have it all sorted out a minute later. :)

[@3DprintedLife]

😅

[@MatchaMakesThings]

Really cool project, probably not needed to redo for a version 2. I think you exhausted most of the interesting content on this topic.

[@3DprintedLife]

Yeah agreed, if I did another version the goal would be an actually useful power generating turbine which would be a lot lot more work and probably not as interesting for a video

[@MatchaMakesThings]

@@3DprintedLife Still the video was great! Really well made and lots of interesting information! Love your content and respect the follow through!

[@3DprintedLife]

Thank you!

[@MassoOficial]

The best video about wind turbine

[@3DprintedLife]

Thanks! :D

[@nothankyou8209]

I would 100% like a v2. Making it useful as an actual wind turbine that actually generates power would be amazing.

[@jeffreyholloway7767]

Thus is so cool and interesting.

[@CDRaff]

1:00 Me basically every time I design something from scratch. A millimeter looks much bigger in CAD than it really is.

[@3DprintedLife]

ikr! Happens every time

[@ismaelgoldsteck5974]

Well designed!! You should definetly try a pid controller to optimize based on the turbine speed

[@MakersAcres]

Congratulations! I want to build a bigger one!

[@scruffy3121]

Airfoils don't usually generate high (static) pressure, they only generate a low (static) pressure on the convex side Wich is also known as lift. (the foil is sucked up by the low pressure, basically)

[@ILiveInUrWall_]

1:00 you doubled it and gave it to the next person also how does this guy not even have 100k the content quality is better than some 1m+ sub channels

[@gazehound]

Would love to see a v2

[@hillppari]

pitch control is nice to slow down in stormy weather and ofc they have brakes aswell

[@jacobthellamer]

Nice project! Maybe put a competitor on the output of the servo motor before rectification? If you know how many poles it has you can work out your turbine velocity? I am in the middle of my wind turbine project made from a recycled Nissan Leaf motor. Fixed speed fixed pitch but I am using a wind vane and geared motor to adjust direction. My blades will be 4m each and I have built some control boards that can switch 100kw into a dump load. I will be relying on blade stall to keep output reasonable in high wind situations.

[@swagatrout3075]

good video would love a pat 2

[@bano99]

Great job, I'd also like to see the V2, maybe with some efficiency measurements. Thank you!

[@pauserratgutierrez]

I would like to see a v2!!

[@user-xv6cj1gl8w]

literally yesterday i was thinking about watching your videos, and here we are today

[@nachhilfehvm]

I love your videos

[@moritzkitzmuller9589]

please a part two. Also would it be possible for you to live record the prozess of the 3d construction of the model?

[@piconano]

The head assembly needs to rotate freely to line up with the wind in less than 2 seconds. Also, this design is too fragile and will blow up in strong gusts. I went through 10 iterations to make mine work flawlessly. Mine uses a NIMA23 and burns out 1W Zeners. I had to design a circuit to shunt the output to a power resistor when the voltage went above 14V to protect by SLA battery and slow down the props. You'll get there in a few more iterations as you learn what works and what doesn't.

[@andrasschmidthu]

I have created a hand generator powered lamp with a microcontroller. If you want to boot the MCU by the generator itself then it is a good idea to run it on lesser voltage and without a regulator. I have done a circuit that allows charging when powered off and the MCU itself turns off charging when the voltage reaches 2.7V. That is enough to keep it running. Using a big enough capacitor it is possible to have enough time to boot the MCU initially before the voltage rises too high. An alternative idea is to collect energy directly into a supercapacitor (2.7V) which takes much time to charge so it will never be driven to overvoltage (a supercapacitor auto-balancing MOSFET is a good idea though to prevent overvoltage). And use a charge pump (step up converter) to elevate the voltage before the supercap is totally charged. For me it was a problem that the MCU used more than 1mA (ATTiny1624 run at 2.7V 5MHz and ADC constantly running uses this amount) which can be too much for such a small scale project. I could only optimize it by reducing to the slow internal oscillator but that would not be enough to drive my step up converter. It is hard to achieve low power and you have to design everything with that goal in mind. The actuator servos also have to be made sure to not consume electricity when not used. This is all not necessary if you can achieve high enough voltage with the generator but that is challenging if the windblades are small.

[@AlphaMoody]

Love the video! I am a uni student and I have a wind turbine project that I have to do and I'd really like to know how you made the wind vane so that the props face the wind ill really appreciate it if you could make a video about that or tell me how.

[@Termynat0r]

Great project! I would love to see a V2. When you mentioned the unsteady wind I noticed that the blades loose velocity very fast, maybe add a weight to smooth out sudden wind speed changes? Just a thought :)

[@labedbelkise3186]

That was freaking cool , am majoring in renewable energy and i have a project to make which is creating a wind turbine controller by wind speed sensor/ wathervane using arduino ...the wind turbine is actually available in the lab it's just the part of putting up a design who can hold the turbine and turn it according to the information of the speed and wind direction is what I'd love from u to help me with ...am very much a beginner in this field so I'd really appreciate it if you could help me with explaining that part ( sorry for any mistakes english isn't my first language)

[@fadedneko3123]

i would love to see the improved version

[@TheBrennan90]

Fust a few ideas i had. Balance the blade assembly and move the wind sensor to a spot not affected by the blades them self. As you said in your video the blades redirect airflow and slow it down

[@inertproductionsalternate9114]

V2, dont use a stepper motor for generation. They require too much torque to backdrive. Also, lift is generated on the high pressure side but pushes the blade. Think about a piston. If I have 2 different pressures on either side of a piston in a theoretical no friction environment, it will push the piston towards the lower pressure side to equalize the pressure.

[@waitemc]

I've been wanting a variable pitch ceiling fan for a long time .

[@johnhodgkiss9882]

Good video. But what are the figures of how much power it generates per wind speed?

[@Rundumsfliegen]

You got me there with that "Disclaimer" XD

[@3DprintedLife]

:D

[@stanislawpalka9015]

Great Video. The most important parts are aerodynamic profile of blades and Pitch regulation. Where one can find info about design of aerodynamic profil of blades?

[@blaqkhavok4863]

All about a V2. Would love to see it put out a 12/24/36volt out (when scaled up x4?, looking to adapt this to a 3-4ft blade length turbine and have it run power to a charge controller as a secondary source to solar... thing about 3 of these at 3 diferent points off my roof. Curiouse to see what kind of storm resiliance this could handle as well.. Keep up the great work!

[@irkedoff]

Don't know how I missed this. I enjoyed this. Please share with us if you redesigned it.

[@donaldolafaurie]

First of all. Fire video! Can you do a Mimi project we’re you use water instead of wind to generate power?

[@stefanguiton]

Excellent!

[@OhHeyTrevorFlowers]

Thanks for sharing! I would watch a V2 turbine video if you have the urge to make one.

[@gehteuchnixan4156]

What do you do about the Cable twisting around the Pole, when the Turbine is rotating? Did you set Endpoints? I'd suggest Maybe a Brush-Ring. :)

[@sebastianmuller1210]

I would like to see V2!

[@aqelixenergy]

Looking forward to an update on this project, anything planned?

[@stevenfaber3896]

Awesome. Please think about a method for overspeed protection, IE a breakaway that squeezes the blades into or out from their hub center, and then either faces into/away from the direction and shuts down at that point Amazing so far!

[@3DprintedLife]

Yeah for that I was thinking of pulling the blade pitch negative to a balance point where the blade is so ineffective that it just generates zero force

[@martin09091989]

Stepper motors are realy bad as generators!! Thy make relatively high voltage at low rpm because there fine poles, but because of that you can´t get any power out of them. (A NEMA 17 maby 5 Watts) The slower you turn a generator, the less power it can deliver per given mass. But turning a "slow" generator faster makes it less efficent because you saturate it. Use some hobby BLDC motors as generators! Get as low kV as you can or even rewind them yourself! (easy customizable for the aplication) Rewind them with thiner wire, more turns and go from a delta configuration to star. This way you get a useble voltages like 12-24V at somthing like 1500-3000rpm at the generator. I have a wind turbine with a 1meter rotor disc, that drives the generator over a gt2 belt at a 3 to1 ratio. The small Hobby motor is wired to roughly 80-100kV so i need just 1000rpm at the generator to get over 12V, but the generator can´t handle more then 70wats now. But no problem, bacause the turbine can´t deliver that much power under normal conditions anyway!!! 😉 The Turbine could make like 1kW at very high winds, but in reality it just makes 5-30 watts most of the time, but because of the tuning for those conditions i make power at those low winds all the time.

[@3DprintedLife]

Huh that’s really good to know, I’ll try experimenting with that to get more power if I do go for a v2!

[@gabrielgraf2521]

I would love to see a version two. And maybe you would like to build it more rigid, so it don't wobbles so much when there is much wind

[@niconico3907]

It needs weight balancing I think.

[@Pyroplan]

For the direction an pitch you can calculate the moving average over a certain time (e.g 10s or 1min) and use this to control your wind turbine :)

[@3DprintedLife]

Yeah that was the eventual plan, but I definitely need more altitude to get more stable wind speeds

[@rolandorodarte893]

Using hall sensors sound like a great idea I wonder where you came up with that!

[@3DprintedLife]

Get outta here no one asked you 😂

[@E-dart]

Yay he uploaded

[@stratos7755]

For V2: Dont use a stepper motor, but an alternator specifically made for wind turbines...

[@bowling6535]

What are the PCBs to make it change direction and pitch the blades?

[@gillespage5489]

Why are you not using a simple tail and vertical stabilizer for facing the wind. it's a little weird to go the electronic route at that scale. Also you can derive the wind speed by the voltage generated to decide if you need more or less attack angle... and remove that Anemometer from there.

[@winmancaboose]

Having cheap micro wind turbines for remote sensors would be a great idea.

[@margarita8442]

very clever

[@Thinkflite]

Look at velocity triangle at 3 points along the blade for a given rpm. your video is excellent though thr CFD results are poor to say the least as the boundary conditions do not take account for rotation. Ie, you assumed the blade was stationary woth am oncoming airflow... Loved the video and look forward to further interactions.

[@micultimy91]

go further with this idea and use a hover board motor as a generator. that will change the whole design, but there's a community out there that would love an implementation like that

[@thesoupin8or673]

Fun! Another!

[@enkiusz]

How did you calculate the wind factor for the anemometer (to convert RPM -> m/s) ?

[@wardus9415]

Definitely need a v2.

[@pauljs75]

Need a brushed slip ring (or cylinder?) at some point in this, so it can turn freely past 360° without having any wires bind up going to the generator part. All that other stuff, and skipped having one of the basics somehow. It's also likely the pitch could be regulated mechanically by a flyweight governor. If it's able to consistently hit a target RPM independent of generator load, that's probably good enough.

[@3DprintedLife]

It has a slip ring! And a flywheel governor actually won’t work here since the optimal blade pitch is dependent on both rotor speed and wind speed, which is indirectly affected by generator load

[@pauljs75]

@@3DprintedLife Depends on the load threshold, but if it's close to the output available it will have a braking effect on rotor speed. That's why it's mentioned.

[@CulinaireZaken]

Do you know robert Murray smith's channel? He has a complete series about windenergie and generators. Very informative!

[@3DprintedLife]

I hadn’t, but I’ll check it out. Thanks!

[@SetitesTechAdventures]

If you improve the gear ratio that'd be cool. I'd like to print a dumber turbine and my only issue right now is finding a gear ratio to power the 775 motor in have for the project. My current plan is to use my limited skills to combine some turbine projects I can find with a planetary gearbox that I think has a 1:15 ratio.

[@MrBerry1404]

You should improve the whole generator section as you clearly have a higher energy potential in the wind! With your turbine at roughly 0.5m² it would be possible to harvest about 30-40W at low windvelocitiy. Also the angle of attack is seen on the first point of the blades throughline, which can highly depend on the profil design in every section like you mention. For next improvements maybe download QBlade as it is very good in analyse power output and design changes can be seen better in the power curve changes.

[@3DprintedLife]

Yeah I did expect that kind of output, I think there was a lot more to be captured by there wind using wider blades and definitely going with a better generator and inverter setup

[@AlphaMoody]

can you make a video on how you made the wind vane

[@MrFranklitalien]

you should check out the work people at Harmony Turbines have been doing, I'm sure you would find their work interesting

[@S1baar]

What will you do with all the extra boards

[@rdmcfoxinator2131]

I think for within the code you should have the Angle of the base and the Pitch of the blade be adjustable depending on the average every minute. For example if the Wind is Blowing on average 10mph, but it has been gusting occasionally 13 mph every 10 seconds Then the Computer would set the Pitch of the blades for 11pm winds instead of a sudden change to accommodate 13mph. Another Example if the Wind has been consistently been blowing from bearing 258 for average then a gust of wind Coming from a car passing by 156 will cause A small angle Change.

[@rdmcfoxinator2131]

Note should only keep Data that is Newer than One Minute (you can change it if you like)

[@kiloohm]

Cool. In V2 consider failure modes; such as high wind over speed when the motor and wires can burn up. A braking system may be considered. And Ice, imbalance. And an improvement would be 75VDC to maximize the use of cheaper smaller gauge wire, longer wire runs with less drop and compatibility with the cheaper $90 Victron 12/24 charge controllers while maximizing their efficiency. And move the mounting pole fwd closer to the blades to reduce shaking for reduced horizontal leverage.

[@Hobypyrocom]

1:59 you switched high pressure with low pressure side in the speech... blue is low pressure, red is high pressure also the explanation at 2:40 is wrong, the airfoil was correct the previous time... you should not put the wind direction arm behind the speed and behind the blades, they all create disturbances which will alter the measurement...

[@agustinblanco4052]

I'd love to se a v2 :D

[@bermudatriangle2036]

No list of parts to order?