Week Five

Weekly Objectives:

The fan that was ordered last week has arrived, so our goal this week is to test the generating ability of that, and hopefully begin constructing the whole project. We were also able to begin communicating with someone in the fashion school, so we will try to begin discussing the specifics of the project with him soon.

What we Accomplished:

Unfortunately, after testing the new fan that we ordered to see if it could produce the necessary voltage, we determined that it could not. When spinning the fan to simulate possible airflow, we found that the motor, similarly to the last one, only produced around .1 volts AC, which is not nearly as much as we need. We figure that since both fans produced around the same number of volts even though they were two different fans, these fans must be designed to generate a current no matter how quickly they are spun. With this realization, we have decided that instead of using a motor from a computer fan, we will buy a small generator instead. This way, we can be sure that it will be able to produce enough volts to charge the phone. The generator that we decided to buy can be found here. Considering this "new" method of generating a current, we will have to re-design the housing for it. and also the turbine itself.

Because the generator that we ordered will be able to produce enough voltage on its own, we are going to reduce the number of turbines we have to just one. However, because the generator that we ordered also requires more torque to spin it, we will have to make the turbine larger and also slightly heavier. We have not yet done the sufficient calculations for this, since the generator had arrived toward the end of week five, however we do plan on trying to figure the optimal turbine size.

We were able to do rough tests on the new generator we ordered this week. Manpreet has access to a multi-meter, and was able to find that the generator could produce the voltage that we need to charge a phone, we just need to have it first, be able to be spun by wind, and secondly, spin fast enough. 

Another important accomplishment we were able to have this week, was that we were finally able to contact and meet with someone in the fashion design school. Since we could not seem to get a response through emails, Justin and Anchit went to the department during the lab period, and asked the assistant head of the department for help, and she was able to put us in contact with someone later that same day. We have scheduled a meeting with the person that we were put in contact with next Wednesday, May 10th.

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