(5 July 2010) – Power and Drills

First thing I needed for my generator was either cogs or a pulley/belt system to drive the washing machine engine. I thought about several different options from buying old car pulleys/belt, using a bevel/helical gear, or building my own cogs/gears/pulleys on the cheap.

I decided the cheapest option (since all my projects try to be as low cost as possible) for me is to try manufacture my own pulley’s from wood.
I needed a few things,

* Hole saw
* Reliable drill to run the saw
* Wood turning equipment to cut the grooves.

I had none of these so started with what I did have.

I had an old portable battery drill that had a battery that was dead and generally ready for the trash, I figured I could wire it into the mains and turns out I was able to find an old ATX PSU that put out enough power, so I snipped all the ATX connectors down fit inside case, covered the ends up with heatshrink (didn’t want one accidentally touching something) and rigged up a switch and so on so I could run it like a lab power supply.

(This PSU came in quite handy for other 12v (ish) projects like a peltier effect device I am playing around with.)

So now I have power, then I removed the casing of my drill battery pack, removed all the battery’s and chucked them (they were quite corroded) then basically clamped two cables to the connectors that go inside the drill, unfortunately it wouldn’t let me solder them on so I ended up turning the metal sheet over to clamp the cable in. I tied a knot in the cables before the hole so they wouldn’t tug on the connection. Then ran about 2.5m of cable out to a Molex Plug I picked up from jaycar so I could plug it neatly into the PSU.

I ended up buying a hole saw, I didnt have anything I could modify to make that, but it was only $20.

For the Lathe/Wood turner I found I could bolt the wood I wanted into work with into the drill, and mount the drill into a small vice and I used a rope tied around the trigger, around a nail, down to a metal level so I had it foot controlled. but I talk about this more in part 2.

(17 July 2010) – New Wood Turner

Ive started working on a new wood turner (I cant really call it a lathe as its shaft reliant) pics now, further update coming later.

(click for big)

the offcuts from the MDF I was using to make the pulley’s is used (leave no wood scraps behind) so its all odd shapes, its almost artistic! I just need to cut the bottom to a standard height, mount it to a small board, then figure out what ill mount that to. Probably make it like a vice that can be moved around, bench mountable, I also need to make another end that holds the other side of the shaft so that the shaft is stable, not able to move around, which is the biggest problem with the drill-in-a-vice “lathe”.

(28 July 2010) – New Wood Turner: Wiring

I finished wiring and testing the new setup. Power comes off the other psuedo drill pack and I’ve just hacked the bottom off the drill I am using for the turning. Power then goes too the jandal controller for analogue (ie: more presssure more speed) control of the motor. I mounted the original drill control into a recess into the bottom jandal and glued the jandals together. then it goes off to the drill in the mount.