Wednesday 15th Lab session

Last Wednesday we had our first EA1 lab session of the year. A good start was made on the next stage of the turbine build.

The Stand
A stand is really useful for balancing the blades. The stand will also be able to be used for a display which we hope to have in engineering so that everyone can see the turbine. In the lab session we managed to get hold of all the steel that would be needed for the stand thanks again to engineering. Picture shows Suneil standing proud! and how the stand will look once we have it all welded. Next step is to prepare for welding and then weld.

Rectifier box
The rectifier box was marked out ready for drilling.

Tail
A start on the tail was made. Unfortunately an error was made in choosing the right size piece to create the hinge between the mounting and the tail. so a bit of a change of design is needed.

In looking through the store for suitable pieces of metal, Steve suggested that using some smaller size box steel would work well if we added a second piece that created a triangle. So we cut 2 long pieces of box steel for the main tail body and then a 3rd 300mm length to be used to bolt the tail on to.


A few more cuts to do with a hacksaw and some edge cleaning and its ready for welding.

Another large part of the tail is the plywood fin. Don suggested that we should make the tail in the shape of the EWB Cardiff logo, I like that idea. Need to get hold of a sheet of marine plywood.

3rd Stator hole
Due to misplacing of one of the wires in the stator, we needed to move one of the mounting holes out a bit. Steve pointed out that there was still enough room on our mounting plate to move the hole out a bit. Especially using an 8mm bolt.