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Easy construction, a 12-year old can do it!

A project log for Propel-E 50 | A powerful recycled windturbine

A windturbine made from PET-bottles! Completely 3D-printable and open-source.

bram-peirs-fw2wBram Peirs @ FW2W 08/29/2020 at 16:350 Comments

One of our primary goals is making our windturbines very easy to assemble. Think an Ikea-style kit that everyone can build with basic tools. This also means omitting the use of resins, these are used for holding the magnets and coils into place. And for neodymium magnets it's very important to prevent contact with moisture, or this can happen:

We avoid using these because this kind of 2-component adhesives are not that easy to work with. ..You have to weigh the hardener precisely since you only need a few grammes, stir very very well and work fast when applying because it hardens quite fast.

We came up with a solution! Which is printing the magnets IN the part. This is done by putting the magnets in the caveties, and printing a 'lid' of 5 layers on top of it:

To test, we emerged the part in water for 24h and weighed it before and after:

The weight appears to be the same before and after, and no traces of water are visible in the part!

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