Bicycle Wheel Alternator

[z.monkey]

Howdy Y'all,
This is a strange contraption that I constructed.  It's a Bicycle Wheel Alternator in transition to become a Motornator.  Huh?  Motornator?  Well, that's a new kinda thing.  You might have heard about automobiles moving to 42 Volt electrical systems.  Well, part of the industry wide plan is to integrate the starter motor and the alternator to make a motornator, specifically a 42 volt motornator.  This is all top secret at the automotive manufacturers.  But if you are industrious enough you can ferret out the details by reading industry magazines like Automotive Engineering Magazine.

Originally, the device was going to be a Searle Disk.  But, with a 20 inch BMX wheel, chain drive, and a 1/3 horsepower motor, I didn't have the balance, power, or sophistication to make this thing a Searle Disk.  So, reeling to find something to do with this thing I made, I decided to make an permanent magnet alternator with it.  It worked relatively good despite it's inefficiencies.  I was using rectangular magnets on the rim of the wheel.  This limited the clearance between the magnets and the coils.  There are 14 coils on the device, and when connected in series it produced 180VAC open circuit voltage.  But when I put a load on the device the voltage came down fast.  Thus meaning the dimensional clearances in my mechanical construct resulted in almost no current output.  It was, however, enough to shock the bejesus out of me when I tried to hookup a load with the stator spinning.

Now it is in transition to being a motornator.  The drive coil and collector coils will be one in the same.  Each coil will have a drive circuit and a collector circuit which are switchable.  The motornator has two modes.  When in motor mode the collector circuits are switched out of the circuit.  A microprocessor system energizes the coils in an alternating fashion to spin the stator up.  This is the starter function.  The magnets around the periphery of the wheel act in a flywheel effect to store energy. Then when the  engine is started the motornator switches to collector mode and each coil has an individual rectifier and regulator assembly.  The collected and converted current are fed back to the storage battery for use later.

This project was literally built from a bicycle wheel, PVC tubing from the hardware store, a motor from Grainger, and a Basic Stamp with it's carrier board.    The motornator will be using a Microchip Digital Signal Processor.  I have considerable mechanical challenges ahead of me with this one...

I am putting this project on Overunity.com because I think there is potential for a Overunity device here.  NASA originally invented this device, I believe.  The rationale was that it is difficult to store energy in space with batteries.  They developed a system where the solar cells on the spacecraft would spin up a heavy flywheel, that had most of the weight around the periphery of the flywheel.  Then, when the spacecraft is on the dark side of the astronomical body, the collector function kicks in and the stored energy is extracted to operate the spacecraft. 

Hopefully you all will have fun with this one...

[z.monkey]

Nuther Picture...

[z.monkey]

Chain Drive Mechanism.

Had to have a bicycle sprocket specially modified to do this, that cost $20...

[z.monkey]

Here you see the motor and storage battery.
Also my custom plywood deck, that's a party!

[z.monkey]

Here is the motor mount, that part is 1/8 inch oak panels, and lots of 1/4 inch machine screws...