User:Dhesley1519/ENES-100/Generator Project

Week1 Narrative
Task #1 for me this week was trying to deepen my understanding of what it is we are actually building. With some guidance from my team mates I feel like I have a better grasp on the subject than I did a few days ago. The first steps this week for me were to lay out the position of our copper coils on the Plexiglas frame using a compass, protractor and a straight edge. The positioning of these coils is very important for the overall success of the project, they must line up exactly with the magnets mounted on the rotor as they pass by for the appropriate current to be produced. 6 coils must be mounted on each end of the generator and they must be exactly 60 degrees away from one another on the frame of the generator. We also worked as a team to spool our first copper coil (11 more spools to follow). Each spool must have the copper wire wound around it exactly 500 times. My team mates counted out loud as they wound the copper and I marked the count on a piece of paper while I controlled how fast the copper wound off its spool. After failing to find appropriate spools in local stores for our copper coils, Brian is attempting to print them out on the 3-D printer. Those spools are key in the progression of this project and having 12 of them by the end of the week would be a big step forward.

Week2 Narrative
Week two and the coils are designed but we have hit a few snags with the 3-D printer but we managed to get a few spools finished. I was searching for an effective way to cut our lexan sheet into the pieces we need, the only thing in the shop that looked like it may do the trick was the scroll saw. For another project someone had converted it into a cutter using a hot wire so I had to figure out how to undo what they had done. after I did I tried to cut a sample piece of lexan only to have it not cut the way we wanted it to. So the search continues for the best way to cut our material. My focus then became the bearing system. This is a challenge due to our financial restriction so I attempted to find things in the shop at school to work with. I found a set of pretty nice bearings that I think will do well and I found a few pieces of steel that would maybe make a good shaft. The problem was that nothing fit into the bearing snugly, and even if it did, I had no way of holding it in place. some of the steel I found was VERY close in diameter so I experimented with heating the bearings and trying to slip them onto the shaft but the idea didn't work. I simply can't get a snug fit. I then thought to use a piece of 3/8" all thread as the shaft but the pieces in the shop were bent and seem a little too flimsy. I am going to abandon this idea as well.  I must continue to search for a sturdy shaft that fits my bearings snugly and has the potential for alteration if the project demands it.

Week3 Narrative
I had a few ideas and we are beginning to run a little short on time so I decided to start thinking outside the box a little to solve this bearing issue. after digging through almost every box in the shop, I realized that my bearings fit very comfortably into the end of a piece of 1 1/4" PVC pipe. I think that a piece of this pipe only about 7" long will make a nice, sturdy shaft for us to mount our rotor to. so after some more digging I discovered an old length of 1/2" "Shark-bite" pipe that, with a little force fit on the inside of the bearings. So in a sense I have an inner and an outer shaft to my design.  I cut the pipe to appropriate length (7") and then pressed all my pieces together. unfortunately, the pressure exerted by me pressing all the pieces together caused the metal of the bearing to warp and they began to catch and didn't spin well at all. I was not ready to give up on the idea however and i decide that if I removed some of the material from the pipes with a file that I could relieve this tension and have the bearings spinning freely. This did work but a bit but I will have to work on it a little bit more to get the bearings to move freely. The other thing I did was work on the steel shaft to fit through the inner shaft and actually mount the assembly to the frame of the generator. There was some nice stainless steel stock, but it was only threaded on one side and nothing was threaded or cut to length. I then found a tap and die set in the shop and decided to cut the stock to length and thread the other end. After one failed attempt I seemed to get the right size and was able to make a suitable shaft. I still need to get nuts for this rod but it is starting to shape up nicely.

Week4 Narrative
This week's tasks were a bit more daunting because they moved me away from mechanical issues which is what I am most accustomed to. Brian was able to finish about five spools for the generator and we spent allot of time winding the exact amount of copper wire onto these spool (500 winds each). Also I was beginning to try to figure out exactly how and where to mount these spools on our frame, the placement of the spools is very important. It must be precise in order for our machine to run efficiently. The holes in our spools are slightly off center which presents a bit of an issue. We were given an idea that I really liked which was to use slots at 60 degree intervals on our frame so we can adjust the distance the spools are from the center of the frame. I used a compass and some geometric identities to lay out exactly where the spools are to be placed, from here it is a matter of routing out the slots and mounting the spools with plastic hardware (metal hardware may interact with the magnetic field). I think that it will be best to save this step for when we have the materials that our final product will be made of. It was proposed during our presentation that we should perhaps use different materials to build our frame. Once we have a more precisely built frame I can more accurately layout our coils. The mock up frame is close to the size we need but is slightly askew which makes it difficult to obtain the level of precision we need.