Dia. Mag. Alternator

[z.monkey]

I fitted the new driver ring plate this morning.  I pulled the old driver ring pins replaced them with 6 inch pieces of 1/2"-13 threaded rod.  They use the same holes as the feet of theDiaMag6 alternator.  There are no heads on the rods so I needed to improvise some feet.  I used a flange nut as a foot, and a regular nut as a jam nut to keep the feet in place.  This acts as a leveler too.  I am going to have to do some adjusting to get the threaded rods to act like driver ring pins...

[z.monkey]

DiaMag6 is now my Beast of Burden for UABMM2 over on that thread.

Back to DiaMag7 and the sharp sheet metal edges.  I was fretting over having to chamfer the slots for the wire, and I was kinda stuck there.  Inspiration comes in the strangest places.  I was on the way out to the garden to get some things for my salad; radishes, garlic, and cucumbers.  I walked past the alternator from the Savage Salvage thread, and just happened to look right at the windings, and also the solution.  Its a Chinese alternator.  The windings have a casing, like an isolator which looks like its a sheet of plastic.  They wind the coils, and then fold the sheet of plastic into the slot, and press fit a piece of bamboo in there.  It might be a chop stick!  Genius!

So, I found some relatively thick plastic sheeting.  Vinyl, about 16 mils thick.  I don't need to pretty finish the winding slots.  I can get them to an acceptable shape, and then put a little sheet of vinyl in there to protect the wire from the metal edges.  I was thinking about buying some of that Super Poly-Thermaleze magnet wire, and its expensive, like $65 for a pound.  I guess my sub-conscious was looking for a way not to spend that $65...

[z.monkey]

There, I had to make 16, and get them installed...

Ready to Re-Wind...

[z.monkey]

The DiaMag7 is another step towards what I want to do, but to make more power I need more windings.  I also want a larger diameter rotor, with more poles so it doesn't have to rotate as fast.  With two poles I'll have to spin the shaft at 3600 RPM to make 60 Hertz.  When we add poles we can divide down the shaft speed.  With 4 poles we only need to spin the shaft at 1800 RPM.  With 8 poles we would only need to spin the shaft at 900 RPM...

With a monolithic magnet we can only have two poles.  Large diameter (2, 3, and 4 inch) monolithic magnets are very expensive.  A 2 inch Diametrically Magnetized Ring Magnet at K&J is $180.  A little costly for my prototype...

http://www.kjmagnetics.com/proddetail.asp?prod=RY04Y0DIA

Been looking at various rectangular magnets thinking that I can get a thin magnet that won't have too much radial tolerance, but, you know, its a flat, and I need a radius.  Finally I found some radiused magnets at Magcraft.  To build an 8 pole, 2 inch outside diameter rotor will cost around $50 for the magnets...

http://www.rare-earth-magnets.com/p-36-nsn0625.aspx

I got a piece of round aluminum stock from MSC to fill the inside space.  Its 1.75 inches outside diameter.  So the radiused magnets should fit neatly around the aluminum roller.  Now I need to draw the stator and bearing brackets, and get some aluminum sheet on order...

https://www1.mscdirect.com/CGI/NNSRIT2?PMPXNO=4451647&PMTERM=02629459

It took me a while to find these, searched lots of different places on teh interwebz.  Magcraft had the perfect match for my next alternator, the NeoMag8.  I did change the name there.  the DiaMag alternators were based on a diametrically magnetized monolithic magnet.  With the radiused segments, we now have a compound rotor, and not a monolithic structure.  So I changed the name to reflect this.  Now its NeoMag for Neodymium Magnet Alternator...

[z.monkey]

Managed to rewind about 3/4s of the coils...
Two windings, 90 degrees apart...
Blarg, tired...