Junk Power

This guy has made a sries of youtube films on recycling junk hardware for power...the chuck/gearbox/motor assemblies from rechargeable drills/screwdrivers would make an invauable asset to be hoarded for the renewable-energy-engineer's toolbox!

Recycling drills and hard drives for generators (part 1)

YouTube Link

My initial design ideas using these would be to build a wind/hydro power wheel using a spare mountainbike wheel and mount several of these drill-generators positioned around the perimeter (much like the old-style friction bike-light dynamos) using the same principle.

If you could imagine the base of a vertical-axis wind-turbine being mounted to a bike wheel and the chucks with small rubber-wheels rotated like a 'planetary' gear system by being rotated by friction against a far larger wheel, that would enable the chuck of the drill-mechanism to rotate far faster owing to the rotaion-ratio of a large 24" bike wheel against a 2" generator wheel mounted on a shaft and locked in the chucks jaws

...and here's the rest of the recycle tech series covering hard-drives in particular

Recycling drills and hard drives for generators (part 2)

YouTube Link

Recycling drills and hard drives for generators (part 3)

YouTube Link

Thanks for the vids Citizen Smith this stuff is gold for young up 'n coming engineers like myself. I've built a few small generators using bits and bobs round the house but never thought of using a comp hard drive (damn just threw one out two weeks ago!)

I bet you could make a meen little generator with the quality components in them, thats definetly a project for the near future thanks again!

Starred

Solars cool for cats but wind could be a real boon, especially in the windy times, cause when the wind comes the suns usually behind cloud
One power source can take over from another!

Nows the time for a few of us to become aware to these ways of generating power.
Any person who can make it happen will be a real asset to a team.

We have more than our fair-share of the EU 'wind-quota' here in the UK so it makes sense to use lo-tech recycled-mechanical methods to harness that power for an encampment.

I'm still at the early stages of learning about low-voltage DC systems but that first vid changed my plans of attempting to cast my own stator/rotor assembly that I've seen, mostly using car brake hubs and neodymium magnets, for multiple scavenged 'chuck generators' instead