Jeff Birkle
28th February 2008, 22:22
Hi ALL.
My name is Jeff Birkle. I live in the Toronto area.
I've been machining-building race car engines for 20 years, and designing and manufacturing some tools, fixtures and equipment for the automotive trade along the way.I've enjoyed all of it, but.......
I'm an avid outdoorsman and prefer to be in the woods or on a lake. I bought a piece of property in Flinton Ont in 2002 and built a small cabin that i frequent.
Since then i've been spending a lot of time doing R and D on R.E.
One of your members spotted me on another R.E. website and informed me of this site, which is awesome that finally i have other people in the area.
My cabin is off grid.
All my hot water is heated by a wood stove during the cooler months.
I have a 30 watt solar panel. 600 amp/hr battery bank and a 1000 watt Can tire inverter.
One of my first designs for R.E. was a water turbine made out of wood and used an axial flux alternator with cheap ceramic magnets. Cost was about $15 for wood and $50 for alt. In my tiny creek with less than 22" head and only 100 gal/min it put out 12 watts.
The newer version is made of steel and aluminum with Neo mags and puts out 26 watts during the dry season, and so far up to 80 watts during a rain storm, but i can't wait to test it during this spring run off. I'm still making changes to the design and think i can get another 30% out of it.
My next project was a wind turbine. Again with the cheap ceramic mags and 3 blades that where just flat deck boards ( 6" wide 1" thick ), no twist or taper or airfoil design, just cut to 5 feet long and bolt them on. I put a preset 15-20 deg angle ( which i now know, should have been less. Around 5 to 10 Deg would have produced more power ). It still made around 70 watts and never went more because the 15-20 deg angle made the blades hit the wind as it rotated, which was great because i never had to worry about overspeed or overcharging the batteries.
My latest Wind turbine ( in progress) uses Neo mags and blades with airfoil but still no twist or taper. I am looking at low wind speed right now and thus far i am getting 12 watts at 35 RPM at 3 MPH. I have a manually adjustable pitch angle design for the blades so i can easily change angles and acquire data. I am currently spending most of my time doing new blade design and will be making a mold so i can cast some from fiberglass or fiberglass-wood core.I am also building a machine to carve wood blades.
I am also getting into electronics and have some designs-schematics for load controllers and load diverters.
The outdoors and environment are very important to me. It's part of who i am. I would love to leave the race engine world and spend more time in the R.E. field, building-manufacturing, supplying and helping people with there DIY projects or selling complete units for people who don't have the time or knowhow.
I have a lot of contacts for magnets,magnet wire,fabricating facilities, materials and soon blade fabrication. I have knowledge from my past of horsepower-torque, air flow,fluid dynamics, balancing, welding, machining and designing and some electronics.
I would like to know what you think!
Thanx for taking the time to read this.
I'm off to Flinton this weekend to tap some maple trees.( Starts running the middle of March!)
I'll show some pics when i can.
My name is Jeff Birkle. I live in the Toronto area.
I've been machining-building race car engines for 20 years, and designing and manufacturing some tools, fixtures and equipment for the automotive trade along the way.I've enjoyed all of it, but.......
I'm an avid outdoorsman and prefer to be in the woods or on a lake. I bought a piece of property in Flinton Ont in 2002 and built a small cabin that i frequent.
Since then i've been spending a lot of time doing R and D on R.E.
One of your members spotted me on another R.E. website and informed me of this site, which is awesome that finally i have other people in the area.
My cabin is off grid.
All my hot water is heated by a wood stove during the cooler months.
I have a 30 watt solar panel. 600 amp/hr battery bank and a 1000 watt Can tire inverter.
One of my first designs for R.E. was a water turbine made out of wood and used an axial flux alternator with cheap ceramic magnets. Cost was about $15 for wood and $50 for alt. In my tiny creek with less than 22" head and only 100 gal/min it put out 12 watts.
The newer version is made of steel and aluminum with Neo mags and puts out 26 watts during the dry season, and so far up to 80 watts during a rain storm, but i can't wait to test it during this spring run off. I'm still making changes to the design and think i can get another 30% out of it.
My next project was a wind turbine. Again with the cheap ceramic mags and 3 blades that where just flat deck boards ( 6" wide 1" thick ), no twist or taper or airfoil design, just cut to 5 feet long and bolt them on. I put a preset 15-20 deg angle ( which i now know, should have been less. Around 5 to 10 Deg would have produced more power ). It still made around 70 watts and never went more because the 15-20 deg angle made the blades hit the wind as it rotated, which was great because i never had to worry about overspeed or overcharging the batteries.
My latest Wind turbine ( in progress) uses Neo mags and blades with airfoil but still no twist or taper. I am looking at low wind speed right now and thus far i am getting 12 watts at 35 RPM at 3 MPH. I have a manually adjustable pitch angle design for the blades so i can easily change angles and acquire data. I am currently spending most of my time doing new blade design and will be making a mold so i can cast some from fiberglass or fiberglass-wood core.I am also building a machine to carve wood blades.
I am also getting into electronics and have some designs-schematics for load controllers and load diverters.
The outdoors and environment are very important to me. It's part of who i am. I would love to leave the race engine world and spend more time in the R.E. field, building-manufacturing, supplying and helping people with there DIY projects or selling complete units for people who don't have the time or knowhow.
I have a lot of contacts for magnets,magnet wire,fabricating facilities, materials and soon blade fabrication. I have knowledge from my past of horsepower-torque, air flow,fluid dynamics, balancing, welding, machining and designing and some electronics.
I would like to know what you think!
Thanx for taking the time to read this.
I'm off to Flinton this weekend to tap some maple trees.( Starts running the middle of March!)
I'll show some pics when i can.