Diary Entry - December

Moved forward again by collecting the pylons from the engineers. They couldn’t source the bearings we agreed and fitted alternatives in specially machined housings. I am concerned that they may be a bit too stiff to allow the turbines to spin freely. Ken has some acetyl bearings to evaluate.

After fitting the acetyl bearings and completing a test run the results were dramatic. This was an opportunity to test out the instrumentation that Simon has been building. The new bearings, with light lubricant, increased the top speed of the rotor by 150%. This is visually very exciting to watch and children grow more curious about what is being built.

I had underestimated the time needed to build and develop a prototype wind tunnel on a spare time basis. The instrumentation has been built from up from a component level as off the shelf sensors were either very expensive or did not match the input range for the data logger. Simon’s hard work and experimentation has produced equipment that is designed to make the data created accessible to children. We can set specific wind speeds and measure revolutions. I am particularly excited about the real time data from the data logger and how it will allow children to repeat test quickly and evaluate changes they make to their turbine design.

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