Making windmill turn with wind

[John Godwin]

Hi, new to the forum here. I'm about to begin my first build and was curious as to what most of you use at the base to allow your windmill to turn into wind. I assume some type of bearing system, but I didn't know if there was a concensus choice for some thing (i.e. bicycle wheel) or do people just choose different setups? I realize this may be a dumb question, but over the years I've learned to ask lots of dumb questions before getting into a build..lol. Thanks in advance.

[Anthony Mc Keon]

Hi John,
We are having great fun experimenting with our wind turbine and in relation
To your question I used a rolling bar taken from a treadmill. This bar ( shaft ) has bearing on it and I have attached the treadmill motor to the top of it. If you look at this link you should get a good idea of how it is put together . Feel free to share the link as my family are giving me hard time over the hit rate I'm getting .

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JaWv94gNY_8

[Andy Rhody]

I don't know if this will help but here's one very simple way that people sometimes use to solve that problem and although it has it's limitations, it's cheap and easy to do and you can get everything from Lowes or Home Depo. (I'm here in the USA).

Use a galvanized pipe about 8 inches long or so on the bottom of the wind turbine that is one size smaller than the size of the tower pipe. Then slide the turbine pipe inside the tower pipe. This usually works pretty well. It should turn relatively freely. (if not a little electrical tape can be used as shims). Then to avoid slip rings, a "stop chain" can be used.

Here's one that I did. Notice the "stop chain" on the right hand side.

http://i41.photobucket.com/albums/e295/andy47bottles/Science/006-1.jpg (http://s41.photobucket.com/user/andy47bottles/media/Science/006-1.jpg.html)

[Rob Beckers]

The stop chain Andy suggested keeps the wires from twisting up. However, many people I know do without: In theory a turbine should make (over time) as many turns clockwise as it does counter-clockwise. In practice the way prevailing winds turn will mean it doesn't quite work out that way, but surprisingly all it takes is a once-a-year or so untwisting of the cable that's inside the tower.

Slip-rings is another option, one that is much more complicated and error-prone to get right.

-RoB-

[Caleb Saseen]

Instead of a Horizontal Axis Wind Turbine you could build a Vertical Axis Wind Turbine and eliminate this issue. If it is your 1st build The VAWT is easier to build then a HAWT.

Hope this helps