Embedded Files
Baseline test
With the initial test with the baseline windmill, we received about .75 volts with the predesigned windmill. We had to drill a hole in the bottom of the print however, since the hole was not large enough for the motor to fit into. The props spun well, and was a clearly well designed design. The airfoil shape of the propeller and the angle of the blades likely contributed well to the usage. To measure the output voltage, we hooked up our motor to on oscilloscope with the windmill on top, and modified the voltage shown to demonstrate the output.
The output was just about 3 volts
Redesign on the horizontal windmill
The modified horizontal windmill we made was derived from the original design. We took the length of the initial and slightly increased it, in hopes that it would catch more wind. This however was not the case, as it performed slightly worse, and likely due to the section added simply adding more weight, making it more difficult to spin.
The output was about 2.7 volts
Designing a vertical windmill
To begin designing the vertical windmill, I took inspiration from this design
I tried my best to recreate an airfoil shape to better catch the wind, and angled it slightly using a loft along a path to get a curved design. The idea was there would be hopefully very little resistance when turning, but still be able to catch the wind. This design failed, likely because it wasn't catching enough wind.
For my second iteration, I wanted to modify this design, because I still liked the way it looked. I doubled the length of the airfoil and increased the angle at which the blade reached at the center point of the loft. When printing the part, I also made sure to decrease the infill to 5%, an effort to cut weight. This design also didn't work, I so decided to picot to a different design, which held similar elements, and was also an effort to make it catch more wind than that which was pressing against it on the back end. This is the design I had
This design also didn't work, so I decided to try one more different design inspired by anemometers. I created this design, which in theory should catch the wind very well, and on the back end, be very aerodynamic. I used the spere tool in tandem with rotations, circular patterns, and construction planes to make the "cups" in the right position. With printing, again I tried to make the infill quite low, again, to reduce weight and increase the spinning speed. This design worked!
Creating the voltage filter
To make the voltage filter out, we were told that it would be best to use a 100 ohm resistor and a 1 M ohm resistor to start, then we were told to use various capacitors of different strengths to fully filter the signal. The capacitors we used were around 1 uf, 450 pf, 10000 pf, and 100 uf. This did wonders on the working design's readings, it was much more consistent than what we had seen before, and the variances in voltage were much lower.
The output was around 1.6 volts
The board that we used
The voltage output was much more smooth using this method, and had a good effect on how easy it is to read the data. Unfortuantely, the design we had created for our vertical windmill with the capacitors had a lower output than taht of the horizontal windmill. This is unfortunate, however it requires a much smaller scale than the horizontal windmill would within the real world application.
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