Help needed with Hyde Generator

[Steven Dufresne]

Guys,
I'll admit, I am more nervous than I was with my previous experiment of a few years ago that went up to 8400 RPM but with a much simpler rotating object, so I'll take your advice and also be on a different plane. Not that it makes much difference, the motor's capable of 10K+ but I'm aiming just for 6K to 7K.
Thanks for the concerned comments,
Steve
http://rimstar.org   http://wsminfo.org

[Steven Dufresne]

Hi All,
Here's an update on the Hyde generator. Things were delayed a bit due my being out of commision for a while with a "just kill me now" cold  . But as the photo below shows, I now have the grinder motor mounted on a rectangular aluminium tube adjustably attached to one of the legs of the wooden frame. There is a little twist in the leg if I put torque on the motor by hand. That probably won't be an issue due to my being able to ramp up the motor speed slowly (more below.) But I might attach to another leg at 90 degrees to the existing one since both disks will be rotating in the same direction, possibly putting some torque due to conservation of angular momentum. I have to think about that some more.

Notice that I've separated the base that came with the grinder from the actual grinder and extended long wires between them. I then plugged the base into my variac (also in the photo.) I find that if I set the variac at about 100VAC and then turn on the grinder at it's lowest speed, it doesn't turn. But I can then slowly turn the variac up from 100VAC to 110VAC and the grinder very slowly accelerates. I can then use the dial on the base to ramp up from there to 10,000 RPM. That's a big improvement from without the variac where the grinder immediately speeds up to 3000RPM. So I have very slow ramp up and ramp down and jerk is no longer an issue (though I'll keep it in mind anyway.) In my experience, that's huge. It'll also help in doing balancing where I'll want to start slow.

I'm not sure I like the use of the aluminium tube. I might go with a 2x4 (wood) instead. That's because if you look at the patent drawing in the first post for this topic, you'll see that this whole thing is sandwiched in a capacitor with about 2kV across it. The aluminium tube will be asymmetric in the electric field, though theoretically, I think it should have a net-zero effect. The 2x4 would be asymmetric as well, but being a dielectric instead of a conductor might make less of a difference. Any thoughts on that?

I also don't want to fill the area surrounding the grinder with too much since that's where a lot of electronics (capacitors and diodes) will be.

Anyway. Next step is the bosses for holding the disks to the shafts.
-Steve
http://rimstar.org   http://wsminfo.org

[Steven Dufresne]

Quick update... I finished drawings for the bosses, the parts that attach the disks to the shafts, today and brought them to a machine shop. They're going to have them done for me next week some time and they're charging only $40 CDN
($31 USD, 24 EUR), dirt cheap. Since they'll be done entirely on a metal lathe the face of the boss should be 90 degrees to the shaft - far better than anything I could have done myself. They'll be aluminium.
-Steve
http://rimstar.org   http://wsminfo.org

[Paul-R]

It seems that the perspex discs will be rotating in a horizontal plane. This means
that if they centrifuge apart into pieces, those pieces will be travelling at speed
in that plane, which is likely to include your legs. And don't imagine that cricket
pads will do the business.

I would have the discs rotating in a vertical plane, and right up against a wall.

[Steven Dufresne]

@Paul-R,
I was already planning on staying out of the plane at your previous suggestion, but now that I think of it, I'm also going to build a better top for the tops of the legs so I'll make the new top be a board the matches the board used for the base and then there's no reason at all I won't be able to sit it on it's side in the corner of a room. But I'll still take more precautions than that since if any parts do fly off, they can still ricohet around so I'm planning on also adding walls to the thing so it's completely boxed.
-Steve
http://rimstar.org   http://wsminfo.org