My tallest welding project ever.

[Schnellboot]

Just wanted to share my latest and tallest welding project. I made and installed this tower for my father´s farm wind turbine. I is 49 feet tall and has a square section of 16 inches. Weight is 400 pounds aprox. I built it with my CST 280 using 1/10" dia 7018 rod. Mains are 1" 1/8 steel angle and the cross memebers 5/8" angle. I supports a wind turbine of 0.4 kw peak power that feeds a 12 volt DC system. This week end with a 10 to 15 mph wind the system charged the batteries at 18 to 25 amps rate, not bad!

Hope you all like it.

Regards:

Jerónimo.

[walker]

Very nice! Do you have anymore info on the generator portion of it? I would be very interested to see some pictures and hear some details of what you used as I am looking to do something similar on my weekend cabin.

[Schnellboot]

Very nice! Do you have anymore info on the generator portion of it? I would be very interested to see some pictures and hear some details of what you used as I am looking to do something similar on my weekend cabin.

Thank´s walker! The generator is a triphasic brushless type. It has permanent magnets on the rotor and a triphasic winding on the stator. The coarse voltage regulation as well as the overspeed protection works on the horizontal furl of the tail. The rotor is about 8 feet diameter, the 3 blades are fiberglass and the hub is cast iron.
The unit comes with the voltage regulator, it has a fullwave rectifier and a dump load for fine voltage regulation. Also the regulator includes an amp meter and a volt meter.
Rated power is about 0.3kw at 14 mph wind speed, output voltage is for 12 volt battery systems. We installed 2 AC Delco deep cycle batts rated at 110 amps each in parallel, but plan to add two more soon. We connected also a 1500 watt power inverter for illumination and ac power of fridge and the like.

Originaly we mounted it on a lower tower, but this one lets it catch higher wind speeds with notable less ground induced turbulence. That translated in efficient operation, with less noise and less stress to the machine.

Just let me know if you need more info, I also have closer photos of the machine.

Regards:

Jerónimo.

[Schnellboot]

More pics.

[Sberry]

I would like to see a couple pics close up of the cable clamps installed.

[Schnellboot]

I would like to see a couple pics close up of the cable clamps installed.

To be honest I don´t have close ups on the clamps. What would you be looking for? Any input is wellcome.

Thank´s!

Regards:

Jerónimo.

[fun4now]

nice job.
i would love to add wind turbine power to my place. i got lots of wind, just no $$ for the turbine.
have you looked at the ones that are tube shaped ? supposed to work better in low wind and changing directional wind.
any idea what kind of $$ the setup was ??

[Schnellboot]

nice job.
i would love to add wind turbine power to my place. i got lots of wind, just no $$ for the turbine.
have you looked at the ones that are tube shaped ? supposed to work better in low wind and changing directional wind.
any idea what kind of $$ the setup was ??

I don´t know how the tube shaped types work. This one has pretty low wind startup caracteristics as well as low rpms max peak out that was what we were looking for (our weather is rainy, windy and with high humidity, ice hitting the blades during a storm and birds have damaged faster turning turbines in our past expereince).

The turbine costs usd 1500, the tower cost (materials only) was around usd 700, the power inverter and batts around usd 1000.

Regards:

Jerónimo.

[Sberry]

I saw a job today with 2 clamps installed, the mechanic did a nice job and used thimbles nice and tight and installed the clips back wards. As Ironhead said, cant saddle a dead horse, maybe someone has pics from a site with clamping instructions?
Ok, here is the first google hit. http://wolfadventures.org/Ropes%20Co...rds/clamps.htm Nice tower by the way.

[azshadeguy]

How did you stand it up? How did you anchor it?

Nice job