Pringle Tube VAWT Wind Turbine Plans
Pringle Tube VAWT Wind Turbine Plans
Make a vertical axis wind turbine (VAWT) with a Pringles tube
windAlthough
vertical axis wind turbines are less efficient than
windmill type
wind turbines they are typically much easier to build by the amateur DIY enthusiast. If you are interested in making your first
wind turbine then the following plans should be of interest to you.
They were put together by
Mike Edwards as part of his final project at
Parsons The New School for Design.
The Pringle Tube Wind Turbine
The mini
wind turbine described in this article (and pictured above) was designed to generate act as a low-voltage power supply then spun indoors by the air blown from air-conditioning ducts, dryer vents etc. With basic weatherproofing it could also be used outdoors to act as a battery charger or to light some LEDs.
Making a Pringles Tube Wind Turbine
The
turbine blades (pictured above) are made from a used
Pringles can and a couple of CDs. Rather than using an expensive and often difficult to find
bearing, a standard paper towel holder is used. The alternator was built using 28 AWG
enamelled magnet wire however much thinner 36 AWG * wire is recommended since it enables far more
turns to be used in the coils and therefore a higher (more useful) voltage to be generated.
*
Click here to view our guide to wire sizing, AWG to mm diameter conversions and so on.
Basic soldering skills are necessary for wiring everything up, and a hot glue gun is used to hold everything together.
In order to hold the coils in shape sewing machine
aluminium bobbins are used. (Steel bobbins are far more common - and completely unsuitable for this project.)
Aluminium bobbins can be found in sewing machine shops and online. The magnets used are round super-strong
neodymium magnets.
Plans for wiring the coils together and constructing a three-phase AC to DC
bridge rectifier from
diodes
are provided.
The Completed Wind Turbine
The finished
wind turbine generated 5.8 Volts with a current of over 120mA - certainly enough to power a string of LEDs or to charge a couple of AA/AAA batteries. Using thinner (e.g. 36 AWG) magnet wire with more turns in each coil would have increased the output voltage sufficiently to make an excellent iPod charger. Adding another disk of 8 magnets to spin beneath the coils in addition to that already spinning over the coils would immediately double the current generated by this wind turbine.
View Full Plans for the Pringle Tube VAWT
For full details on making your own
Pringles Tube Wind Turbine, click here:
Pringles Wind Turbine (Pleech) - Version One on the
Instructables.com website.
Templates to help you position the
coils and
magnets are also available online in PDF form in the following two files:
Page 1, and
Page 2.
Article Last Modified: 18:04, 8th May 2007
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