[Stoves] Experiences Using a Hand Crank Generator for Fan Stoves

[Charlie Sellers]

There are all kinds of rotating electronic applications/devices that might be be better - the extremely light weight of a single CD means that VERY little energy is required to spin it, so that motor is infinitesimal (and weak).  A better example would be an older hard drive, before they improved the rotor air bearing (to make it have less resistance) and from a day when the disks/platters were much heavier.  These motors will never have sintered magnets (there will be a ring of isotropic NdFeB which is selectively magnetized and no stronger than is needed, to save costs) so may never be the best for fans (it would never take a watt to power the disk drive, so you can't expect to get a watt out of them  as a generator), but the general motor type is worth considering.

I also think that hand cranking is not optimal (I did this tiny work mostly to demonstrate a possible power source for a field medical instrument that EWB needs), but there may be applications we are not anticipating...

Charlie

yes, mass manufacturers can get batteries (and other components) much cheaper than we can, but usually their quality is awful




AJH <list at sylva.icuklive.co.uk> wrote: On Sat, 19 Jan 2008 10:11:06 -0800, Charlie Sellers wrote:

>See: http://www.bioenergylists.org/en/sellershandcrankpower 

I decided to investigate this a bit more and dismantled a redundant cd
drive. It yielded 2 two wire motors of the type Charlie describes, one
for positioning the laser and one for the door/tray. The actual
platter motor is on its own printed circuit board with an 8 wire
ribbon connecter, I cannot see how to make this latter generate
electricity.

The first two are the sort I remember from toy cars

I then took apart a hand cranked 3 led torch. Its generator was the
same size and very similar to the two from the cd drive. This torch
has a failed cell, so it only lit when cranked. It's a lithium ion
3.6V button cell that costs GBP450 to replace, the whole torch costs
less!

Although these drives may be a rich resource for small generators I
still have reservations and favour the thermo-electric generator
approach.

AJH



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