Posts Tagged ‘pvc wind turbine blades’

Commercial turbine blades are carefully engineered and cost a fortune. A maker called Abe Connolly came out with a much cheaper solution using PVC pipe. They should be 8″ in diameter and 24″ in length. Now the 8″ diameter gives you the perfect curvature to efficiently convert the straight line motion of the wind into the rotation of the turbines. Use schedule 80 pipe which is a heavier PVC that makes a very strong blade.

Now you probably will not find this at an average hardware store, you may need to talk to a plastic supplier to come up with a short length that was left over from another project. Now you need to clamp it to your workbench so that it does not roll around. Then use an angle iron to draw a straight line on the PVC. Actually create 3 lines each 5 1/4 inches apart. Now cut the pipe with a sabre saw using medium blades. Take your time since this is heavy duty plastic it will be slow going. Do not forget your safety glasses and I would not wear my fine clothes because it is going to get real dusty.

Next cut diagnose lines through each PVC strip, each one will make two blades. You can use your sabre saw to make these cuts. Just clamp it to your work bench cut halfway on one side and then flip it and cut the other side. You will also need to cut little pieces of the edge to give a blade look.

Once you finish cutting all your blades, you now want them into a wind shape this will transfer the most wind to the generator and you do this by putting a rounded profile to this leading edge which is the shorter one and a tapered profile into the trailing edge. Use a sander to do this, and stop 2″ before the edges to leave space to secure your bolts onto the PVC. Be sure to wear goggles and a mask for this task, it will kick up a lot of dust.

After a good bit of sanding you should have a nice wing shape on all 3 blades including a nice sharp trailing edge. So now you will need a way to attach the blades to your generator, so drill 2 holes at the end of each blade for 1/4 inche blots. You can use these to attach the blades.