Water Turbine Project

[Ted Ewert]

Ted as far as I can tell the picture labeled "Vortex" was the part that spun. It was housed in the picture labeled "Device". Water was forced up the central nozzle of the device and into the center of the plastic discs. Its only path of escape was out the vortex shaped channels, which radiated out from the center.

They can be seen faintly on the "vortex" picture, as the plastic used to make them was translucent somewhat. The "slots" picture shows where they were expelled under pressure.

I cant get a total overall picture of the device as half of it is in pieces. Weston cut those discs by hand, each one has probably 30 or 40 of those spiral channels and there is at least 10 separate ones. He narrowed the fault down to this disc, one of the laminations became unstuck at high speed.

Photo attached is of where the PLASTIC parts hit the HARDWOOD floor, which is the roof of his workshop. Looks fairly placid, but the upper spot on the right has actually cracked the floor board. The photo doesnt really do it justice.

Im constantly amazed at this chaps work. I watched him cut out an acrylic disc the other day, put it on his lathe and it needed no machining to make it true, just a bit of sandpaper on the edge. All by hand with a bandsaw. Hes and old draughtsman/tool maker, and has all the old calipers and mechanical means for measuring and drawing/making stuff. Truly a wonder to watch at work, things like computers put this sort of talent to rest in the common world unfortunately, he used to make a living with his many skills before them.

Regards

True craftsmen like your friend are a rare breed these days. I love to watch those guys work too. They make it look so easy.
The damage looks bad enough that it's good nobody got hurt. The thing must have had some serious power. If I can get mine to blow up like that I'll at least know I'm on the right track.

Cheers,

Ted

[Ted Ewert]

@ted, we've been thinking of making it in two stages; up, then out. Perhaps the distinction between the two can be blurred somewhat..

I'm changing my plans - I will now buy a bunch of thin plastic breadboards and cut out circles.

The circles will have thin washer spacers in one design, and curved bits cut radially in another..

A drum rotating in a drum

Will report back

Sounds good. I may try the stacked cones since it keeps nagging me. I'll have the water come up the middle and feed out between each layer.
I was thinking that the PVC pipe should always rotate with the discs in this type of pump. The pipe has a higher angular velocity than the discs and consequently a lower surface pressure, which will keep the water plastered up against the inner wall. A stationary pipe wouldn't work too well.

Ted

[Inquorate]

lab notes

YouTube - centrifugal pump experiment

Any comments appreciated :-)

[Inquorate]

Rule of thumb

Cut the water entry holes with a jigsaw, then glue the layers together. If you glue them together then use a spade drill-bit to make the holes, the first hole weakens the glue, the second hole breaks the discs apart and you end up almost taking a cubic cm of flesh out of your thumb, except it ends up hanging on by a thread.

Take care.

[Ted Ewert]

Cut the water entry holes with a jigsaw, then glue the layers together. If you glue them together then use a spade drill-bit to make the holes, the first hole weakens the glue, the second hole breaks the discs apart and you end up almost taking a cubic cm of flesh out of your thumb, except it ends up hanging on by a thread.

Take care.

LOL. If there is a way to drill or cut your hand as part of the job I've done it. You found out the hard way that spade bits are only good for making rough holes in large pieces of wood. I like to use Forestner bits for plastic as they make a nice clean hole and they don't grab. Regular twist drill bits work ok if you don't feed them too fast.
Good work. It's not easy fabricating all this stuff with minimal tools. It takes a lot of extra thought to make it work with what you have. However, I know they cost a little, but you may want to start saving for a small, bench top drill press. It will make your fabrication jobs not only more accurate, but more enjoyable (and safer). I'm sure your wife would just love it as part of the new household decor.
I still like your funnel as a base for the tubing. If you cut out a piece of breadboard to fit in the top, with a hole in the middle, it could support your shaft.

Cheers,

Ted

[everwiser]

Your homemade Archimedes screw looked great and it's great that it ended up working. If you wanted to pressurize the pumped water, you could add a tapered shaft inside the washers so that it tries to compress the water (which can't be compressed) and causes the pressure to rise. This would be similar to a plastics extruder's screw which starts off with deep flutes that shallow as they near the end of the barrel causing a massive increase in pressure. This could possibly gain you some torque. I'm sure it will be a balancing act as adding compression/pressure will add to the initial drag to get it started but it may be worth considering.

[Ted Ewert]

Your homemade Archimedes screw looked great and it's great that it ended up working. If you wanted to pressurize the pumped water, you could add a tapered shaft inside the washers so that it tries to compress the water (which can't be compressed) and causes the pressure to rise. This would be similar to a plastics extruder's screw which starts off with deep flutes that shallow as they near the end of the barrel causing a massive increase in pressure. This could possibly gain you some torque. I'm sure it will be a balancing act as adding compression/pressure will add to the initial drag to get it started but it may be worth considering.

Those are all good ideas, and I'm sure they would work, but I don't have the machining capabilities to pull off things like a tapered shaft.
One of my goals is to build something that most guys can replicate. I only use parts that can be found in any decent hardware store, and I have a basic array of shop tools. Besides, finding a simple solution to this pump issue is an interesting challenge (and I'm a cheap screw). I'm also learning a lot about pumping and hydraulics from beating my head against this problem.
Thanks for the thoughts.

Ted

[Ted Ewert]

I built a small Tesla Turbine to see if that would pump. It turned out pretty good from a manufacturing standpoint, but didn't work worth beans. I have to admit that I didn't do a lot of research into the finer points of this type of turbine design, which is most likely the cause of my disappointing result. It cost me the better part of Saturday, but it was fun to build anyway. I'll have to study some theory to see where I screwed up.




I did manage to put a larger housing around the original 2" screw. This resulted in a higher flow which is encouraging. However, it's still not as much as I would like, so I'm going from a 2" screw to a 3" screw. I have a pile of 3" fender washers that I'll press into service for this new endeavor.
Shaping these bigger washers is more difficult (lots of pounding and bending), so it may be a few days in the making. My first few exploratory attempts were pretty rough, but I'm getting the hang of it. I just hope I have enough washers left to build a decent screw after butchering the first batch (see above).

Cheers,

Ted

[Joit]

Maybe you wanna look at this Design once.
When you scroll down you see more Pictures.

[Inquorate]

magnetic bearings?

@ joit - thanks for the above link, it was an interesting read. Very much out-of-the-box thinking.

@ all; it's probably too early on in the water turbine experiments to commit to working on this idea, but while mulling over how long it will take for my bottom bearing to rust in the water, I thought of having the drum floating in the water, and held in check by repulsive magnetic fields..

Could eliminate a lot of friction.

My thumb is healing, enough that I'm able to use both hands. Will be rebuilding soon,

Love and light

[Ted Ewert]

@ joit - thanks for the above link, it was an interesting read. Very much out-of-the-box thinking.

@ all; it's probably too early on in the water turbine experiments to commit to working on this idea, but while mulling over how long it will take for my bottom bearing to rust in the water, I thought of having the drum floating in the water, and held in check by repulsive magnetic fields..

Could eliminate a lot of friction.

My thumb is healing, enough that I'm able to use both hands. Will be rebuilding soon,

Love and light

Sorry to hear about the thumb hanging up your project. Very inconvenient all this healing time. Work also gets in the way of projects, very annoying.
Got my 3" screw welded up. Now I have to clean it up and set in in the pipe.

Ted

[Ted Ewert]

When I first built my Tesla turbine it would not work either. I then went to the Tesla society to find out why. There are some basic things which must be adhered to before it will work as Tesla designed it. After a quick education, I reworked it and it worked very well. I didn't do too many tests with it, because at the time I was trying to do something else with it. It makes a great pump, and also a good turbine. Tesla invented it to replace the aged steam turbine of his day. They were having all kinds of problems with broken vanes and explosions. This vaneless turbine was to be the answer to one, if not both problems. Soon after his invention, most people abandoned the steam turbine altogether. Since it was designed basically to run off steam, i'll bet it will make a terrific water turbine. Good Luck. Stealth

Thanks for the info, I'll check it out.

[Inquorate]

New toys

Hi all, just thought I'd share a bit of excitement......

I found a pipe bending tool in a little 2 dollar / odds and ends store, and also a metal ruler / right angle / adjustable 360 degree protractor with level thingy

Yippee !

Pipe+bender.jpg (image)

Love and light

[Inquorate]

Sorry to hear about the thumb hanging up your project. Very inconvenient all this healing time. Work also gets in the way of projects, very annoying.
Got my 3" screw welded up. Now I have to clean it up and set in in the pipe.

Ted

Yeah, quite inconvenient feeling.. But on the flipside, it also keeps me / us from running off half cocked; enforced thinking time can also be quite a boon :-)

Also, it helps randomize our lives enough to allow the synchronous coincidences to come into play - like finding a pipe bending tool in an out-of-the-way shop..

Om shakti shakti shakti Om

[Ted Ewert]

Nice find! The thing on the left end of your rule is a center finder for a circle. Those are very handy. I've been looking around for one of those, but nobody carries them in this area. I finally wound up making one a couple of days ago.
On another note... I was thinking that all wounds received during fabrication or operation should be posted from now on. When we sacrifice our flesh and blood in pursuit of FE, the world needs to see it. All gouges, scrapes, cuts and contusions, suffered while selflessly building the next savior of mankind, qualify for posting. That the offending piece should have been clamped to the workbench, you were using the hammer improperly, or that you had cut the grounding prong off the drill cord before being electrocuted, is immaterial. This is not a court of blame, but rather a forum for the recognition of sacrifices, regardless of how dubious the cause.
From now on, the Purple Spade Bit award will be given to all those brave and intrepid FE seekers who are wounded in the line of duty.



Cheers,

Ted