Dia. Mag. Alternator

[DreamThinkBuild]

Hi Z.Monkey,

Very good work for a prototype. Must of been a lot of work to get those cuts and not cut through into the other side(especially aluminum), that takes some skill without a 4 axis milling machine. I used to run a VF-2 4 axis mill at my brother in-laws shop before I messed up my hand.

Anyway, keep up the great work.

[z.monkey]

Very good work for a prototype.

Thank you.  A few more upgrades and I'll be able to convert my mini-mill into a legitimate mill...
I need more vertical space now, the 12" bench top drill press.  You can see there is not much room there...

[phoneboy]

Nice work! This link might be useful to you as far as converting your drill press to do some real milling, should save your some time and looks fairly easy to make. Hope it helps. http://books.google.com/books?id=HNgDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA180&lpg=PA180&dq=convert+drill+press+milling+machine&source=bl&ots=5seu590ZU6&sig=kjrhv84gcanj1Y3IWjk2gyffOWA&hl=en&ei=QJeXTdvIEqG00QHxrbnxCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CCYQ6AEwATgU#v=onepage&q=convert%20drill%20press%20milling%20machine&f=false

[z.monkey]

Nice work!

Thanks Phoneboy.  I love Popular Mechanics.  My Grandfather had stacks of old copes in his garage, plus a whole lot of tools, so your link there is kinda nostalgic for me.  Trying to remember...  I think it was 1978 when I started building stuff and paying attention to things like Popular Mechanics...

Those old ads...  LOL!  Some of that stuff is still in Popular Mechanics...

[z.monkey]

I put some windings on the DiaMag7 last night.
I resisted the urge to cleanup these plates more, and break the edges of the aluminum.
Yep, shoulda done that...

Although this coil looks pretty, its useless because its all shorted out.  And I mean everything.  The polyphase windings are more labor intensive than bobbin windings.  This means more contact with the core material and stress on the wire during the winding process, and then add in the sharp sheet metal edges, and you get thoroughly shorted out coils...

Then also there is the other problem, the lump of wire that is setting right in front by the axle.  There is a way to make this look better as the coil is designed, which is to wire the second phase the other way.  This would flatten that mass of wire somewhat,   But the wire is still in the way of the axle, and the magnet is stuck in there.  You would have to unwind the coil to replace a bearing, or the magnet.  That's not fun...

I could cleanup the whole mess by going to a Multi-Pole design, where I have more room to make windings, but then I am abandoning the whole DiaMag concept.  The diameter of the stator and windings would have to increase, and then add 8 or 10 poles on the stator.  Then the windings for each set of poles sit in a fraction of the diameter, and the wires would not have to traverse half of the diameter of the alternator...

The more I work on this thing, the more it is turning into a regular alternator...