
How to build a windmill - DanielRibeiro
http://jacquesmattheij.com/how-to-build-a-windmill
======
nettdata
I had to chuckle at how he nonchalantly just whips up a mill simulator or a
Python script for the shape of the blade. Each of those alone would be worth
digging into in detail.

Needless to say, this article is my motivator for the day.

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btilly
The windmill is really cool, but reminds me of some trivia.

Remember how Don Quixote was fighting windmills because they were "giants
oppressing the people"? _He was right!_ And everyone in Cervantes' day knew
it.

Windmills did not, contrary to popular belief, mostly spread as convenient
labour-saving devices. Instead they spread as a way for the local lord to
enforce taxes. When peasants had hand mills, there was no easy way to see how
much food they really had grown, so it was hard to collect taxes. But if they
go to the local miller, the miller takes your grain, grinds it, and then takes
the lord's cut right there. There is no possible hiding of the food you've
grown.

In countries with a strong peasant class, like Sweden, the lords were unable
to introduce this form of central taxation. And I've read reports that hand
mills were still in use there as late as WW II.

~~~
tjic
So windmills were basically like paycheck deduction of taxes in 21st century
America?

;-)

~~~
btilly
That is an excellent analogy.

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lifeisstillgood
How do you find the time?

This is actually a serious question - for the various makers on HN, is it
sacrificing other things, older (or no) children, flexible jobs, independant
income. Or just really awesome time management?

I would like to know so either I stop beating myself up for bad time
management, or improve it.

~~~
jgrahamc
I've built lots of little side projects (see <http://jgc.org/labs.html>) and I
have lots of other commitments (like a full time job and I'm not wealthy) and
I can tell you a few things that have worked for me:

1\. No TV. About four years ago I got rid of my TV. It started as an accident
and turned into a habit. Now I watch movies either via a streaming service or
DVD. I also watch some TV series (typically I will watch one series at a time,
finish it and then move on so there might be one evening a week where I will
watch, say, an episode of Downton Abbey). The key here is that I _never_ plonk
myself down in front of a TV and channel hop and I'm ruthless about the
quality of what I am watching.

2\. Null route reddit, Facebook, etc. I realized I was wasting a lot of time
on sites that have no actual value other than as a pure distraction. I simply
null routed them in my broadband router.

3\. Slow down. Some of my projects take forever because I don't have time. I
stopped worrying about it and gain satisfaction when I do finish things. Just
the other day I was making a nightlight out of a candy can, an old perfume
bottle, an old wall wart and some LEDs as a gift for a small child. I realized
that I'd started it when $SIBLING was pregnant.

4\. Make time in a relationship. It's also important to tell your spouse or
whatever that you are going to spend time doing something away from them. That
way you can carve out some space (might be just an hour a week) where you do
what you want.

5\. Parallelize. I tend to make lots of things simultaneously. That way when
I've got a spare 20 minutes I can do something on one of them. For example, on
the nightlight I recall a couple of months ago realizing I didn't need to go
to bed right then and I could spend 15 minutes hot gluing some parts of it
together.

PS One more thing... I think some 'distractions' become less important as you
get older. In my experience, it's more important when you are younger to know
about the latest TV shows, movies, memes etc. than as you get older. You may
'need' to know about them for some forms of social acceptance. As I am no
longer young I don't feel the need to 'fit in' as much and so when someone
says "Did you see X Factor last night?", I just go "No" and we talk about
something else.

PPS And by observing others in the 'maker movement' who have children their
solution seems to be to involve their children in the things they want to do.
Chris Anderson is a good example of this, his kids seem to always be involved
in his projects. I saw a talk where he was discussing 3D printing techniques
and a number of his examples were of things he'd made with his kids for them.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
This is what I love about HN - I throw my hands in the air at the whole world,
and suddenly people I respect are giving me a fix.

Just the things I was looking for. I suspect we all really know many of these
- especially TV!

The one I would not have guessed is accepting the pace. Things take the time
they take, given everything else in your life. A friend has just got me to
restart an OSS project based on us agreeing slower, more realistic output from
each other.

Just pottering along and celebrating the wins - I could get to like that.

As for makers involving children - I can see that being the most rewarding
portion - just this afternoon I picked up my 3 year old from pre-school and we
wondered into the churchyard. He needed an item beginning with S, and so we
stripped some bark for twining, tied a cross piece to a stick and added leaves
for hair.

He had a stickman to take in tomorrow.

I did too much of the making, but he enjoyed it I think. Its a start.

Thank you.

Good luck with the Babbage replica.

~~~
warp
Years ago when offered a raise at a previous job I asked for less working
hours instead. So nowadays I get paid to work 32 hours a week, but still work
a normal 40-hour work week. That gives me 8 hours / week at the office for
hobby software projects, and more than enough time in the evenings and
weekends to spend time with family and friends.

~~~
WickyNilliams
That's a very interesting approach to career progression, I like it! Wonder
how well such a request would be received in most occupations? A higher wage
is nice, but more free time is infinitely more valuable.

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singular
Really awesome article @jacquesm, I love these intricate, in-depth, long
struggling-for-a-labour-of-love stories.

In fact, not to wax overly lyrical, I think a lot of stories that appeal to
people in general follow that pattern. Something about the best aspects of
humanity in that kind of endeavour.

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terhechte
That's a fantastic story. Now that the research is done, open sourcing this
data could allow many people especially in poorer places of the world (once
they can access the right tools, which might be a severe stumbling block) to
create similar machines and gain power.

I wouldn't have thought that creating a windmill is such a difficult thing.
Always cool to learn something new from an unknown domain.

~~~
jacquesm
I will open source the data one of these days, promise.

~~~
zafka
I had forwarded your article to a friend a few hours ago, and he asked me if
it had been open sourced. I told him I did not know, but from what I have read
of your writing, I was sure you would be most helpful to anyone following in
your footsteps. Just the information you have already passed on is invaluable.

~~~
jacquesm
Ok, done:

<http://jacquesmattheij.com/how-to-build-a-windmill-ii>

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starpilot
Technical error: the force of the wind depends on the square of the wind speed
(q = rho * u^2/2). The cube law refers to power (proportional to rho * u^3/2).

Good article though. For those using software to design and analyze mechanical
designs with "pretty good confidence," there's nothing more humbling than
actually trying to build it.

~~~
jacquesm
You're absolutely right, I was using 'force' in the laypersons sense of the
word, not the way an engineer would use it, I should have used power instead.
I've updated the post to correct the error. Thank you!

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tmh88j
Just being pedantic, but shouldn't it be called a wind turbine, not windmill?
After all, it's outputting electricity and you're not grinding down grains or
corn. Either way, this was very interesting. Good work.

~~~
pbharrin
That was the first thing that came to my mind as well!

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patrickk
How great would it be if he could mass produce these! He gained incredible
insight leading to variable pitch blades, process of making the various
parts...if I were a homeowner & actually had cash I'd buy one in an instant.

Or even write a detailed ebook showing others how to do the same, and maybe
sell the tricky parts like the stator sheets and blades to budding windmill
DIYers. Great project.

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davidw
> It has survived numerous storms and worked very well supplying our house
> with reliable power, far more reliable than the solar panels we had used
> exclusively up to the point the windmill was finished.

Italy certainly has its share of troubles these days, but the above made me
smile a bit. There are still some good things here.

~~~
koevet
Italy? I understand this marvel was built in Canada.

~~~
davidw
Exactly. I, on the other hand, live in Italy, where solar panels work pretty
well.

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kriro
This is great. If someone asks me the dreaded "what is a hacker" question
again I'll link them to the article.

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js2
This is the best thing I have ever seen on HN. Kudos.

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jcr
jacquesm, For some strange and unknown reason, I'm recalling a story about a
very powerful magnet suspended in the air, and very heavy metal table... also
in the air, attached to said magnet.

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tlb
Wind force goes up as the square of speed, not the cube. Available power goes
up as the cube.

Friends of mine are building vertical axis turbines. The key to safety seems
to be to make the blades out of lightweight foam & kevlar so that if they do
shatter they aren't flinging big heavy pieces around.

~~~
jacquesm
You are correct. The post has been updated.

As for vertical axis turbines, they are a very tempting way to spend a ton of
money without ever shipping a viable product. Many very solidly engineered
examples of this exist, none of which have stood the test of time. This is a
real pity because I think that the Darrieus rotor is one of the most pleasing
purely technical designs ever made by man.

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codediva
How much did it end up costing altogether, and how much would it cost to make
another?

~~~
dionidium
FTA:

" _If you bought a machine with those specs commercially it would have cost
about $10,000, but that would not be a variable pitch one. This machine cost a
(fairly) large multiple of that, not counting our time, tooling and so on, but
it could be reproduced well under that $10,000 mark if you already had all the
tools and the knowledge and you didn’t have to go through a prototyping
stage._ "

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Enginoob
I do not believe you have built a windmill- you have built a proper wind
turbine.

Very cool project- there are a good number of residential scale manufacturers
out there, but I believe this is the first homebrew wind turbine I've seen.

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erikpukinskis
I bet <http://opensourceecology.org/> would be really interested in this, if
they wanted to open source the plans.

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Tipzntrix
How much of the difficulty could have been avoided if the windmill wasn't for
generating power? This is an amazing project, but I wonder if it would be
quite possible just to get something looking nice that stands strong (even
against wind force at the cube of its speed) without such quality lathes and
metalworking tools. Obviously, you have decades of experience in the field as
you noted, and I doubt this would be possible for most people.

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stephengillie
I'm impressed that you made your own plasma cutting table. That project must
be worth a blog post on it's own!

What gauge and quality of metal is that?

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na85
Nice article. The aerodynamics behind windmills are extraordinarily complex,
so 500 Watts is a pretty good output!

~~~
wildmXranat
I think 500W was for the 1/2 scale model and the final scale turbine would've
been above 1kW. I still marvel at the thought of it all.

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OmIsMyShield
Yup, he said that he designed for 2.5kW @ 10m/s wind speed, doesn't mention if
he achieved that, though.

~~~
dmckeon
FTA: "In the end the machine produced 2250 Watts at 10 m/s winds ..."

Cool tech - it would be interesting to see a cost/benefit analysis mapping
months to break-even from local $/kWh costs and local wind speeds.

We'll know that alternative energy generation has really arrived when real-
estate listings include sun-exposure / insolation figures and annual wind-
energy availability along with annual tax estimates and water well outputs.

~~~
ansible
_Cool tech - it would be interesting to see a cost/benefit analysis mapping
months to break-even from local $/kWh costs and local wind speeds._

In the article he mentions they don't have grid power, so the payoff will be
pretty quick vs. the generator they have. He said they used the generator a
lot because their solar panels weren't enough.

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Datonomics
He takes homebrew to a whole level by building his own CNC plasma cutter.

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ck2
What's the noise level like?

I've read the circular ones are far more quiet?

~~~
jacquesm
Until you hit 500 RPM dead quiet, above that it makes a swooshing noise, but
that quickly gets drowned out by the wind :)

Yes, Eggbeater (the proper term is a Darrieus rotor) are theoretically more
quiet, and even more efficient.

Unfortunately those designs suffers from an incurable tendency to vibrate to
pieces. There are so many modes of resonance that they don't live long.

Cap Chat in Canada has or had a fantastic machine of that type, but it was
shut down after a minimal amount of operation because the safety of the
machine could not be guaranteed, even in moderate winds. Google for Cap Chat
Eole for more information.

I went there to visit the machine because I considered a VAT (vertical axis
turbine) but decided against it because of this tendency to spray windmill
bits & pieces.

There are a few more of them near the Canadian Rockies but those are also
mothballed.

I still believe this to be one of the most beautiful designs.

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sneak
Sweet hack!

