Gravity based wind mill design

[Onevoice]

I've had this idea mulling around for a while and I thought I'd codify and post it out there to see what others think. There's lots of ideas out there for building unbalanced or imbalanced wheels. The idea is simple. Have weights shifted to the outside of the wheel on one side and to the inside on the other. The imbalance causes rotation and hence energy can be captured. The tricky part is how do you shift the weights in and out without sacrificing the energy gained.

The first idea that came to my mind was to use magnets to shift the weights in and out. This approach though comes with its own set of drawbacks. Since a magnetic field is symmetrical, The same amount of energy used to move into a field is required to move it back out again. My solution is to never move in or out. Keep the field strength as static as possible during the complete revolution. The above also holds true for magnet - magnet interactions. There are just too many variables and flux deltas to produce any kind of consistent field.

I started looking at creating a large roughly circular magnetic field as the stator but the number of magnets and variances in field strength made this look more and more like a poor solution. Having a ferric stator however, allows the interactions to be based on rotor magnet attractions to a fixed ferric runway. Each magnet is concerned only with its own field as it moves through the cycle.

The next requirement for an imbalanced wheel is for the weights to shift out on the downside and in on the upside of the wheel in order for gravity to act upon the wheel and cause rotation. I toyed with different mechanisms such as sliders or hollow tubes but these turned out to be impractical to install and tune and the movement would be minimal. I finally decided upon a hinged extention approach. Using a 6" hinged extension the mill could easily shift the weight 12" across the radius. The greater the degree radial of movement, the more gravity's energy will turn the wheel. A stator consisting of a continuous band of ferric material can be used as a flux trap for the rotor magnets. They can freely travel around the wheel but magnetic attraction prevents them from leaving the proximity of the band. The band can be bent outward on one side which will cause the hinged extentions to fold inward, following the band, and supply the imbalance.

The exact path of the band is critical to ensure the maximum amount of gravitational energy that can be absorbed. If a typical imbalance wheel concept can be broken into 4 quadrants. Top, bottom, left and right, it can be seen that the downward side quadrant is the source of maximum energy gain while the upward side quadrant is the source for the maximum energy loss. Of lesser notice are the top and bottom quadrants. Very little energy is gained or lost in these areas by a well designed wheel but they they can easily become sticking points that stop rotation. Both of these areas can be effectively mitigated using the hinged weight approach by simply not going there. The angle on the hinged weight does not need to extend beyond the 90 deg mark on the top or bottom and yet it can be fully open (0 deg) on the downside and fully closed (180 deg) on the upside. The stator can be shaped so that the weights are traveling nearly horizontal across the face of the wheel at these extensions.

Does this sound like a viable approach? I've already started working on a prototype. Am I wasting my time?

[exxcomm0n]

There is another few threads that are debating/teasing with the perpetual motion idea.

One of them has spurred me to dabble @ it a bit and give it a whirl.

Feasibility depends on scale. Build small (aka CHEAP).
There are a few things that scale does matter quite a bit as to whether they will work or not, but just a few and usually dependent on purpose.

Build it.

It is NEVER a waste of time to prove/disprove something with your own hands and eyes.

If it works, please remember the theme of the forum and open source it to your peers so they can replicate it, validate it, and disseminate it to a world the needs it desperately.

BTW........love the Jerry icon. Takes me back to days on tour.

[Onevoice]

Thankx for the inspirational words Exx,

Status update:

I'm using a 10" diameter wooden wheel from one of my previous failed experiments. Its mounted on an old hard drive spindle so that I can keep the face open. I've built a set of 4 wood lifter arms 2" long and mounted them 1 3/4" out from the hub. with brass hinges. On the outside, I have 4 1/2" neos affixed with scraps of PC case shunts. I also have a fair bit of Mu metal to shield the sides from each other while they travel through the inner part of the path.  For the stator, I have 1/8" steel rod that I'm bending into the pathway and affix to the outside framework using copper strips and brass screws. The first thing I am doing though is to build a sort of pendulum testbed so I can gauge the best distance between the stator and rotor. I'm having trouble though getting a clean curve to the steel. I'm getting lots of sticky points. Anyone have any good ideas for getting clean curves into thick steel wire?

[Onevoice]

Note to self: never use particle board for prototyping.

I was testing how strongly attracted my rotor levers are to my stator band and accidentally dropped my rig on the table. Good news is a 1/2" N42 neo 1/4 inch away from a 1/8 inch steel bar has enough pull to hold up horizontally with 12, 1 1/2" nuts n bolts hanging from it (more than 1lb weight). Bad news is I need to scrap all of the wooden pieces I've fabricated and use 1" by 2" pine ferring strips instead.

[Onevoice]

It never fails to surprise me how Karmic Koincidences happen. A couple of hardwood flooring samples dropped into my lap a few days ago. Even the cardboard backing is much stronger that the particle board I was struggling with. I'm also shortening the lifters on my wheel by a quarter inch to give a little more room for the stator brackets and to lessen a little the attraction strength between the rotor magnets and stator. I'm hoping that this will minimize the magnetic friction due to my own crudely bent stator ring. My goal is to recreate my phase 1 test (a magnetic pendulum) this weekend, and to fabricate the parts I'm going to need for phase 2.

Asking again: Does anyone have any suggestions for methods of bending a 1/8" steel dowel into smooth arcs?

Asking first time: Does anyone know a good source for thin "soft Iron" dowels. I need at least one piece 1/8" dia. and 3' long.

Asking first time here: Anyone here have a suggestion for an inexpensive (aka free) 3D software I can use to draw a model of this and post it up here?