Posts

Showing posts from January, 2014

Mass producing LED powering wind turbines in a kids workshop

Image
The Junior Wind Turbine project.                                                                                                                                              For my latest workshop in my daughter’s school I wanted to let the children each make a wind turbine. It wanted it to be functional, powering a small light and it needed to be cheaper than 6 Euro a piece, which ruled out any commercial kits. The workshop was for 20 kids, which ruled out scavenging hard discs motors or stepper motors and such. Low cost “toy” motors on the other hand need really high rpm to light up a small bulb or a led. Fortunately the type of motors used in solar cell driven toys and kits work better. And these are still available for under 2 Euro. A small flashlight bulb was actually easier to get to glow than lighting a LED, when driving a 6 to 1 gear on a “solar grade” motor by hand. But it required too much torque for a small and simple