How big can you go with high-end industrial 3D printers? VERY big! Here is a wind blade mold for research in wind power.
The mold for making the blades is being printed using the Big Area Additive Manufacturing (BAAM) machine at the Manufacturing Demonstration Facility (MDF) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. BAAM is 500 to 1,000 times faster and capable of printing polymer components 10 times larger than today’s industrial additive manufacturing machines. Since the molds will be used to create research blades measuring 13 meters (42 feet) in length, BAAM provides the necessary scale and foundation for this ground-breaking advancement in blade research and manufacturing.
I found two old discarded batteries from HP and Lenovo laptops I owned which did not hold the charge and I was wandering what to do with them. I googled and found that they may actually hold 18650 battery cells that are still in working order. If the internal battery management system detects that even one of usually six cells is not in line with working parameters it will probably shut down the entire battery.
"Dead" laptop batteries. Used force and screwdriver to open them. Watch your fingers, you will need them trough entire life. You can see the 18650 LiPo modules in blue and green.
I discovered that there a hundreds of projects using the same refurbished module ranging from simple cell phone power packs to large solar system batteries.
Here is a tutorial on how to create a larger battery pack with 3d printed frame modules for storage of solar power that can be used in small electric vehicles:
Do keep in mind that you will have to test each module and that there will be some that are just dead and can not be used.
Since you can make battery of any size, you can literally make a Tesla powerwall equivalent for a fraction of the originals 3500+ USD price. This guy made a DIY Tesla powerwall for some 300 USD:
Think about it: a battery for your entire house for just 300 USD made from junk old laptop batteries. You will probably have many many questions so I strongly recommend checking the entire content on Jehu Garcia YT channel. This guy is a battery guru!
Soon I'm going to visit our regional electronic waste processing company in town of Slavonski Brod to see if they can give me more old laptop batteries to salvage the 18650 modules.
Do you have any experiences with 18650 batteries or any projects you made? Let me know in the comments!
Brian developed a 3d printable DIY PMG generator ideal for producing electricity from small wind turbine. You will need some disc magnets and copper wire, but you will get a functioning generator. It can produce up to 50 watts at high RPMs.
Here is the generator being assembled and tested:
Here are four generators mounted on a modular multi-blade wind turbine in a strong wind:
The files and manual are not free, but come at reasonable 35 USD:
There are several other non-printable DIY generators on that page so it's a good resource for anyone interested in home-made wind power.
If you are looking for larger DIY generator of the same type for bigger diameter wind turbines, there is a complete manual in PDF format that can be found at: https://www.scoraigwind.com/pmgbooklet/itpmg.pdf (remember to click the captcha that you are not a robot). It gives out much more power, but you will need some heavier woodworking, bigger magnets, resin and longer blades and higher tower.
Here is an interesting simple wind power project of a small handheld wind powered Savonius turbine that charges your devices via USB port.
It has 3d printed housing and wind turbine with few electronic pieces and a small DC motor for a generator. The motor could be salvaged form old broken electronic devices.
It could probably be used outdoors in natural wind and indoors as a harvester on a AC unit. There are not many tests on it but it could be improved even if the original design doesn't work.
Doug Conner developed a 3d printable homemade Stirling engine, a type of motor that creates mechanical motion from temperature differential of a medium which is air in this case. The engine is made in ABS on a Stratasys FDM printer.
This engine has some metal (brass, aluminum) parts, couple of metal screws and some rubber O-rings, but that is unavoidable due to the nature of the technology and ABS material limitations.
It takes some 50 deg F (or 28 deg C) of heat differential to move at stable speed at about 300 rpm without additional weight or load. Project homepage:
