Help needed with Hyde Generator

[Mark69]

just get a hockey mask and catchers mitt!  crank that biotch to 10K!!!!!!!

[Michelinho]

Hi Steven,

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

from PaulR is a very good advice, not only for the wall but that grinder motor is not made to run vertical, the ball bearings will break down fast. Plus balancing will be easier.

Take care,

Michel

[Steven Dufresne]

from PaulR is a very good advice, not only for the wall but that grinder motor is not made to run vertical, the ball bearings will break down fast. Plus balancing will be easier.

Hi Michel,
Good points. In that case, sideways it definately will be.
-Steve
http://rimstar.org   http://wsminfo.org

[Steven Dufresne]

Hi All,
No one can say I don't take people's advice! As this update shows, my Hyde generator now sits on its side for safety and so that the motor bearings are oriented the way they were meant to be. I got and installed the newly fabricated aluminium bosses/wheel hubs from a local machine shop and they are beautiful (see annotated photo below.)  They did a great job - what a difference a metal lathe makes! I also made some new rotor disks taking extra care to make them nice and round with a consistent radius and no wobble (well a little with one disk but I haven't fiddled around yet.) The annotated photo below is intended to clarify what the parts are in relation to each other. I just got it to this stage, assembled for the first time and haven't attached any segments or electronics yet nor have I adjusted spacing and all that perfectly. I just wanted to see how fast I could get it turning without bad vibration and with everything bolted together tightly.

I did do one speed test with my photo tachometer and slowly spun it up to around 4200 RPM with no wicked vibrating observed. Very quiet running. It was very smooth throughout. That's a huge improvement over my previous approach with the vacuum cleaner motor and long shaft. Unfortunately that 4200 RPM was at the top of the dial so I'm not getting my 10,000 RPM yet. I know the 10,000 RPM was a no-load value but I was hoping that with load I'd still be able to get 6000-7000 RPM. Still, it was my first run and I might still be able to fiddle and get more speed, one thing being to feed it 120VAC instead of 110VAC. That's simply a matter of doing another run with the variac turned up more this time but now my photo tachometer is refusing to show me more than 0 RPM so I have to figure out what's up with that first. It's not batteries since I also tried powering the tach with a bench power supply. Possibly it's the proximity of the tach to the rotor. I'll have to shift things a bit. I'll monitor current when I do the test since I don't want to burn out the motor.

I did have to shorten the shaft on the end that was for connecting to the flexible shaft so if this doesn't work out, I won't be able to retore this back to the original mini-bench grinder that it was. C'est la vie.
Anyway, enjoy.
-Steve
http://rimstar.org   http://wsminfo.org

[Michelinho]

Nicely done Steven, don't forget that the motor is rated for about 3,600 rpm. At 4,200 rpm you are at 116% and 7,000 rpm is almost 200% of rated rpm. Do all preliminary testing at 4,200 rpm and go to 7,000 rpm for the final tests. That way if the motor dies, you will have data to rely on.

Bonne chance,

Michel