Day 4 - 24/09/2013

We started the day by finishing off soldering the cables to the stator and setting up the photovoltaics to charge the batteries. We then came to the hypothesis that by having all of the class' projects connected onto the bus, the bolts/terminals would not be big enough to be permit all of the cables, so Kieran and Gary went to see Bernie (Mechanical Fitter tutor) about modifying bus bars for us. In the end he just gave made new brass connectors for us and they fitted perfectly. We then decided to put a rope in the pulley on the post so that when the time was needed we could erect the vertical shaft turbine. Once that was done Gary rigged together a few diode boards and attempted to build a 3 phase rectifier. For some reason he decided to plug it into the work benches at 400V and blew up 3 of the 8A diodes. After revising his mistake he has successfully created the 3 phase rectifier. When the batteries were fully charged we managed to run the G.T.I. for 8 minutes and 14 seconds which was impressive as we were just using the photovoltaics and today was a very overcast day. After the batteries were discharged, we hooked them back up to the photovoltaics and got the batteries charged and ran the G.T.I. for a second time. This time we lasted 8 minutes and 30 seconds. For the rest of the day we were brain storming on which design to use for our wind turbine.

Finishing of rewiring the stator

Darryl soldering the final wire on.

Beautifully soldered cables.

 Completed rewired stator.

Modified Bus

 Modified, more efficient 24V Bus.

Putting up the rope

 Kieran putting up the rope whilst Gary spots.

3 Phase Rectifier

 Circuit diagram of what was done.