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I really like the look of Lloyd's device, hopefully I can motivate enough to try a small replication.
Hopefully not too far off-comment, I just wanted to mention my own personal experience with the Tesla 'bladeless' turbine.
In 1998 I got a book on the turbine, full of article reprints, photos, and patent reprints. I was enthralled by the simplicity of the device (if you want to see the basic principle of this turbine in action, turn your kitchen faucet on just enough for a clear (laminar flow) stream of water, keep the flow slow enough to avoid bubbles (cavitation). Take a pizza cutter (smooth round disk freely rotating around its center on a stick) and hold the leading 1/8" or so of the disc (pizza cutter) in the stream parallel to the stream (up and down). The adhesion of the water and its viscosity cause the smooth laminar flow to stick to the surface of the disc, dragging it around. This is the basic principle.
Just for fun, I have built 2 models 2" diameter, the second years later because the first was so cool. They had 6 or so discs about 1.5" diameter with center pie-wedge exhaust holes about .5" diameter.
These were mounted to a shaft inside a simple circular casing 2" diameter about .5" thick with simple exhaust ports: pie-wedge holes in the sides of the casing also .5" diameter. No bearings. These would spin up fast enough to sing in the low kHz from the sound of it (high Hz maybe? my ear ain't trained).
The really cool part about these is I built them with an small bladed knife, compass, ruler, tape, and white glue, using index cards as the bulk of the device, a drinking straw as the nozzle, and a blowgun dart as the shaft. The discs are just circles with the pie-wedges cut out around the center like the pictures in the turbine patent application. (The fancy swirls like Jetjis cut out are for the pump design but should work fine for a turbine. Impressive work, those!)
The casing is 2 circles about .5" diameter bigger than the rotor (stack of discs and spacers). Taped/glued to those is a strip about .5" wide and 6.5" long, with the straw flattened to about .125" on the end taped between the leading and trailing ends of the strip. In the picture, the discs are green, the casing is black, and the straw and shaft are dark blue. Not to scale and approximate. Tiny picture, I know, but windoze paint is pretty sloppy and I was in a hurry.
My discs were too close together and weren't fastened to the shaft (the friction bit in as the speed increased), the balance was sloppy, no bearings, and come on, it was made of paper! yet, you blow bursts of air into the straw and the discs spin. The faster you blow short hard bursts into the straw the faster it would spin until up to speed, then you could blow hard extended breaths until hyperventilated. Whee! And such a nice buzzing-insect/electric-motor sound the toys made! Never tested the torque except by grabbing, lightly singed my fingers but stopped the beast.
Sounds fantastic, I know. I mean, just try to build a waterwheel style turbine out of index cards!
I guess my point is I built a sloppy, +-.0125" tolerance, bearingless, paper tesla turbine and it did spin up. Over and over. Well worth investigating if you have a machine shop.
He had problems with the larger-diameter discs distorting (stretching), but those were big discs- up to 5' diameter! The smaller the diameter, the higher the happy RPM for that rotor.
Love this forum!
Anyone wants info from the articles or patents in that book ( "Tesla's Engine: A New Dimension For Power", compiled by Jeffery A. Hayes ) just ask.
The valvular conduit that is part of the turbine design is really cool too, a no-moving-parts one-way valve for bursts of fluid under intermittent pressure (us patent no. 1,329,559).
Good day!
Hopefully not too far off-comment, I just wanted to mention my own personal experience with the Tesla 'bladeless' turbine.
In 1998 I got a book on the turbine, full of article reprints, photos, and patent reprints. I was enthralled by the simplicity of the device (if you want to see the basic principle of this turbine in action, turn your kitchen faucet on just enough for a clear (laminar flow) stream of water, keep the flow slow enough to avoid bubbles (cavitation). Take a pizza cutter (smooth round disk freely rotating around its center on a stick) and hold the leading 1/8" or so of the disc (pizza cutter) in the stream parallel to the stream (up and down). The adhesion of the water and its viscosity cause the smooth laminar flow to stick to the surface of the disc, dragging it around. This is the basic principle.
Just for fun, I have built 2 models 2" diameter, the second years later because the first was so cool. They had 6 or so discs about 1.5" diameter with center pie-wedge exhaust holes about .5" diameter.
These were mounted to a shaft inside a simple circular casing 2" diameter about .5" thick with simple exhaust ports: pie-wedge holes in the sides of the casing also .5" diameter. No bearings. These would spin up fast enough to sing in the low kHz from the sound of it (high Hz maybe? my ear ain't trained).
The really cool part about these is I built them with an small bladed knife, compass, ruler, tape, and white glue, using index cards as the bulk of the device, a drinking straw as the nozzle, and a blowgun dart as the shaft. The discs are just circles with the pie-wedges cut out around the center like the pictures in the turbine patent application. (The fancy swirls like Jetjis cut out are for the pump design but should work fine for a turbine. Impressive work, those!)
The casing is 2 circles about .5" diameter bigger than the rotor (stack of discs and spacers). Taped/glued to those is a strip about .5" wide and 6.5" long, with the straw flattened to about .125" on the end taped between the leading and trailing ends of the strip. In the picture, the discs are green, the casing is black, and the straw and shaft are dark blue. Not to scale and approximate. Tiny picture, I know, but windoze paint is pretty sloppy and I was in a hurry.
My discs were too close together and weren't fastened to the shaft (the friction bit in as the speed increased), the balance was sloppy, no bearings, and come on, it was made of paper! yet, you blow bursts of air into the straw and the discs spin. The faster you blow short hard bursts into the straw the faster it would spin until up to speed, then you could blow hard extended breaths until hyperventilated. Whee! And such a nice buzzing-insect/electric-motor sound the toys made! Never tested the torque except by grabbing, lightly singed my fingers but stopped the beast.
Sounds fantastic, I know. I mean, just try to build a waterwheel style turbine out of index cards!
I guess my point is I built a sloppy, +-.0125" tolerance, bearingless, paper tesla turbine and it did spin up. Over and over. Well worth investigating if you have a machine shop.
He had problems with the larger-diameter discs distorting (stretching), but those were big discs- up to 5' diameter! The smaller the diameter, the higher the happy RPM for that rotor.
Love this forum!
Anyone wants info from the articles or patents in that book ( "Tesla's Engine: A New Dimension For Power", compiled by Jeffery A. Hayes ) just ask.
The valvular conduit that is part of the turbine design is really cool too, a no-moving-parts one-way valve for bursts of fluid under intermittent pressure (us patent no. 1,329,559).
Good day!
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