I am building a Magneto, need help with the coils...

[fleebell]

  "I guess my newest, and last, concern is where to buy magnets and coil wire online, and what type of magnets to get, and whats a good price to pay for em, and do they ever wear out (under any circumstances?), and I guess that'll be it. Oh yeah, how much waste heat do you think this will generate? Probably depends on wire size huh..."

No magnets don't really wear out if you buy the supermagnets (at least not in this lifetime). Even the old alnico types will last if not abused.

   I don't think heat is really going to be much of a problem with rotors that size. You can always leave the hole in the middle of the coil board big enough that a simple vane fan could be mounted in the hole on the inside of one of the rotors and pull air from the outer edge on one side of the coil board and have exit the other side.

I suggest you ask the guys in the magnet motor message sections on where to get them,   I normally just get them off of ebay but as many as those guys buy they should know where any good sources at decent prices may be.

Good luck with your project and be sure to post a picture  There isn't too many 4' diameter alts around and I would like to see it.

Lee B
www.leebell.net
The Pack Rat workshop

[CavoriteMan]

I'l go with thirty windings first, and see how that works. 

Try this for your coil calculator...
http://www.66pacific.com/calculators/coil_calc.aspx

Cav 

[twilightinsanity]

   Wow, thanks man. That coil calculator page is great! Very usefull.

   I would love to find some sort of formula for caculating the amount of output from a coil with the gauss and speed of a magnets passing said coil. I'm sure theres a formula of this type out there, but I havent been able to locate one. Fleebell also was looking for something like that...

[twilightinsanity]

   Good to know magnets won't need replaced any time soon. You know while were on the subjet of magnets, I was thinking that all those big permanent magnet setups (the ones that use only magnets in opposition to each other) are kinda cool, but they seem to be rather like what I have now - a good source of cheep energy as long as you don't need very much of it. Along those lines I was thinking that jewelry magnets (or other similarly small magnets) could be arranged on a small cylindrical tube, within another small tube. Like say a 1 inch piece of pvc covered with magnets inside a 2 inch pvc tube with magnets on the inside of it. Basically the dimensions of two D cell batteries end to end, with room enough for a small magneto in one end. Basically a permanent flashlight battery. What do you think about that? Do you think it would be possible to wrap a coil around the tubes and get electron movement that way?
   That's my rainy day project anyway. Maybe it'll work...

   I promise to post a pic or two of the magneto when it's done just for the sake of novelty. I'm sure everyone will get a kick out of it.   Hopefully it will also generate enough eletricity to make it worth posting pics and details of the entire setup.

   Hmmmmm, I was reading some Tesla stuff a seond ago, and I came across his high frequency AC single post lighting arrangement. It's neet!   And more importantly, he said that it was shock-proof (skin effect) and created full spectrum lighting with the right gas in the bulb (argon I think).  Maybe if my current project works out I'll have enough juice to expirement with that idea a little. I think I'll take the word of the inventor about the shock proof part though! Maybe I can talk my old lady into trying that part out... Heh. Well anyway, first things first.