Lamp Post Engine

[goldstar31]

Illuminating

 

[ShopShoe]

And then Tesla would have built a giant coil and lit the bulbs with no wiring.

The Buzz would be very much there.

--ShopShoe

 

[Leonardo]

Your Lamp Post Engine is beautiful. Congratulations!

This remembered me the Gastown Steam Clock in Vancouver. I was there in 1991 and was surprised with the thing... it was really nice to see and hear.
Then I learned that it is not a real steam powered machine but it is amazing anyway.

 

[Steamchick]

I've run the numbers for the falling-weight thing: A 1kg weight, lifted one meter, stores 9.8 Joules -- at least on the surface of the Earth.

Diesel fuel has an energy density of around 35MJ/liter (according to this site). So the equivalent amount of diesel to a 1kg weight lifted 1 meter is 0.28 micro liters -- 0.00028 cc. That's probably less than what you'd take out of a diesel tank by opening the cap and blowing the vapor out of the neck.

On a mass per mass basis, gravity is a really inefficient way to store energy.

Hi Tim, as one of the Engineers who was involved building the Dinorwic pumped storage Generating station, I reckon gravity storage has its place. Dinorwic was built to provide peak load power cheaper than having "fast response" steam lanterns spinning for long periods not generating much. The power taken into the gravity store cards from nuclear plant - that has a longer life at smooth load, I.E. not having the load dropped at night, or low demand periods. But that was in the days when we had lots of industry, shift work, a lack of thermal insulation and thermal electric lighting.... so would it be economic to build today? Possibly? Combined with Snowdonia and Anglesey covered in wind turbines?
On lamp-posts: almost every lamp-post has a decent power supply for lamps that have now mostly been converted to LEDs... so could have charging points so they could sell power to battery electric cars.... dozens on every street. Especially as the cars sit around doing nothing for more than 80% of their life, so could provide a huge national store to stabilise grids and make variable generation - like wind, solar and tidal - more useful, without cost of back-up steam plant.
Sorry I digress from your beautiful creation! Keep up the good work.
Incidentally, do you have more info on your generator? Would a hard-drive motor be convertable to a generator?
Ta
K2 (stuck in the darkness of 1970s).

 

[goldstar31]

The thoughts of coal and steam along with gasoline and diesel fuel will shortly be only memories.
It will be only modellers making miniatures.
I my own life, I have seen gas lamps lit manually and later by a clockwork timer. I have seen house lit by gas batwing burners down stairs whilst upstairs it was candles and in the country Tilley lamps lit with paraffin/Kerosene fuel. I've seen wood and indeed peat fires changed to gas and electricity-- and microwaves and heating things which I still do not understand. I've flown in aircraft that were not much faster than a car at the time and enjoyed travelling in style in passenger planes that were actually faster than a Merlin or griffon powered Spitfire with its rivets ground down to give perhaps another mile an hour.
I'm glad that there are people who enjoy making replicas of what seems only yesterday as 'Normal'
Yesterday- really it was- my son brought in a couple of Mercedes, a bit of yesterday in his Lotus and today wanted a complete set of decent twist drills. All that expence and whatever for university, travel abroad and computers and phones and- a set of drills. What ever next?


Well he did say that he was going to change a somewhat troublesome switch on my disability scooter.
Long live a lovely bit of Yesteryear.
Thank you

 

[Steamchick]

Hi Norman.
I still have 2 Tilley lamps, and a few hurricane oil lamps, as well as candles: all for when the electrickery goes off. Only happened half a dozen times or so in 30 odd years of living in the centre of Sunderland (Not quite the outback? - Don't answer that!). The last time was because a "new" - ish joint for the street-lamp had let water in and Kaboom! - No lights or TV. - So back to battery radio, books and Tilley lamps (That's 3 times in the last decade I think?). So I keep mine well maintained. Also, I was silver soldering yesterday with a paraffin blow-lamp (I have 5), and Swedish petrol blow-lamp (What a beauty!), and even still keep meths for the small jewellers' meths blow-lamp, and other jobs. It's so much easier to be "cordless" rather than have to lug the large Propane cylinder and hoses out and put away afterwards.... Actually, the meths blow-lamp gets used rarely, because butane tins and pencil blowlamp are convenient... though more expensive. But great for silver soldering those little finnicky model assemblies!
Keep on keeping-on!
K2

 

[goldstar31]

Hi Ken
Suddenly, my reply was deleted.

To start all over again. My late and wonderful wife was brought up in two old country houses o the Northumbrian Coast. One was at NORTH Sunderland Seahouses and the other was at Embleton which more or less marked the end of the Great Whinsill Dyke to mark what miles further West marked the Roman Wall of Hadrian. The places were full of all sorts of parffin lamps etc but because of the constrainsof the Court of Protection, I was unable o take away te paraffin weedburner. My electric one is 'naff'But 'Housty' brn had the roof held on with-- fish bones and in what had been the cesspit was the remains of her grandfather's Lagonda car. Christine was dentally on the crest of a wave and earlier was offered a little house of her own from 'The Lady of the Manor for nothing more than £148. She was talked out of it! But like you she did have one of the fascinating mouth blown meths blow lamps which she 'did' her orthodontic work.
But today came a Christmas e-mail from my Australian cousin who lives with a thousand or is it more cows in a place beloved of BBC comedians called WaggaWagga. Seriously. Its a place called Tumbarumba and for fun I christened one of my dinghies with the name.. But poor Rod and the good people of the area have been rained out and burned out with- as Rod reports- 600 electricity posts were destroyed together with TV and phone masts and the joys of going around his supermarket with a shop lady and a torch and hand held calculator to pay cash at the end of the shop. His son in law farms on the boundary with Victoria and has been virtually wiped out with two houses gone and machinery destroyed.
Today my son called in for one of his Mercedes after collecting the Lotus and put the Mercedes SLK230 Kompressor back in my garage. Then he drove off to the comfort of getting both a new electric gas cooker and a dishwasher. Some people( mine) have no idea. I at least recall the throne in the back yard where the ashes were dusted and the midnight mechanics came to remove-- the night soil. I recall in the Wensleydale Valley- a FIVE seater divided by a drystone wall. 3 seats for us and 2 for the ladies with last week's newspaper when the company got boring!
My little grandchildren would have hysterics as my daughter when young was introduced by her mother on a French autoroute to a Turkish thing with starting blocks for feet( and a hole) and one pulled the handle and fleed before the tide came in.

I suddenly recalled the gaslamp at the end of the colliery row where I was born and the man on a bike with a ladder stopped at it to wind it upand change the gas mantle. Irecall the miners coming back from a shift and knocking the remains of the calcium carbide at the foot of the lamp and scurrying to put it in a glass lemonae bottle, urinating in to set it off and fire corks at each other.

I doubt that people will not believe such things. Incidentally Christine's dental surgery- complete with instruments of torture- is in the Beamish Museum.
Christine's childrens gas mask is in the car loft together with her Dad's 'tin hat' and service respirator.
My capbadge was donnated to a WAAF fighter Controller lady to wear on a respirator bag when she took her 'old man' back onto the D-Day beaches( probably for the last time)
Thinking of Hendon- and my beloved Squadron, there is now the Goldstar memorial at the Royal British Legion National Arboretum. It bears the names of all 'The bosses' includin 'Arhur'Daddy' Harrs or Bomber Harris to the rest of the Worls and later the bosses of the Squadron , some of whom trained on -- Gloster Meteors. Oh yes-- and one is still alive- writing books.

To keep the place in history it was endowed by Dr Christine Wennington Atkinson nee Alder in memory of Corporal Henry James Alder - and to all the Goldstars- past and precent.
Of course for the old and weary that still surviive there is 'The Seat' It is lovingly cleaned and the dedication is still there. The other seat is in the Masonic Hall i the Beamish Museum and again to a family member but tis time to the Architect who designed not only the hall but Newcastle Central Railway Station and many other buildings in Northumberland and durham.
Sadly, his most important work was to provide a tap at the end of each street that served Lord Armstrong's factories- along Scotswood Road along the banks that brought fresh drinking water where it had never existed before. A man with a lesson for us all

 

[Tim Wescott]

... Would a hard-drive motor be convertable to a generator? ...

If no one's tried it, here's my guess -- I think yes, but they're designed to operate on 5 volts and spin up to 5400 RPM, so you'd either need to rewind them (lots of work with fiddly little bits of wire) or gear them way up. And they're basically 3-phase AC machines, so you'd need to rectify their output.

The drives that I've taken apart sometimes have the back half of the motor built into the casing, so you may have that as an added difficulty.

You can get itty bitty pager motors (see "quad copter motor" on eBay). They have the same issue with wanting to turn fast, but they're going to be easy to mount and they're brushed, so they'll produce DC.

 

[glue-itcom]

Must admit that I've not taken one of these small motors apart, but I bought a bag of different types of motor and then ran each in the lathe with an input speed of 1000rpm to see which gave the best result driving a small LED. I have looked at disc drive motors but as Tim says they are often integrated and designed to run at quite high speed.

Somewhere there is an old model generator design with an open frame - not sure where I last saw one though.

It might be nice to design a more modern model generator just to see what can be achieved, I'm thinking a permanent magnet design.

 

[goldstar31]

In light.- hearted vein

George Formby in 1937


'I'm leaning on a lampost'

Enjoy!

 

[ALEX1952]

Beware! running a generator to power the house during a cut, you must disconnect the house from the grid as you could cause harm to someone working to fix the fault.

 

[goldstar31]

In my professional life, I was leading a team of electrical staff to finally isolate a thief who had been stealing electricity. I was simply taking nopart in the actual work but merely was taking notes with a view to my proceeding though the criminal courts,

I found that a live connection had be effected through the ring main from an adjacent building.
It is as dangerous as that.
Writing as above also calls into question the legality of not only the wiring but placing a generator into what becomes the supply company's arrangement.

I recently had a couple of workshop/garage extensions done and my daughter had an armoured under ground cable etc connected to a summer house and both. Prior to all this I was authorised even to break and reseal then the company lead seals. No longer!

 

[glue-itcom]

Beware! running a generator to power the house during a cut, you must disconnect the house from the grid as you could cause harm to someone working to fix the fault.

Dear All, note that this is a model lamppost, and a very small generator that is working at 5V. The best we are going to do is light an LED. We might be able to run some very low power stuff eg 5V 1A
Best regards, Nigel

 

[Caster]

Love the lamp post engine. A stepper motor makes a good generator and gives a good output at low revs. On this model there is a stepper motor hidden inside the casing. You can get very small ones that could be suitable for this application..

 

[Peter Twissell]

I would also suggest a permanent magnet stepper motor. They have a very large number of poles (typically 200 pulses per revolution, where a brushed DC motor produces 6 pulse per rev.)
The 4 wires from a stepper are connected to the two sets of phase windings. Each pair gives an AC output, rquiring a pair of Wheatsone bridge rectifiers to produce DC.

 

[glue-itcom]

Love the lamp post engine. A stepper motor makes a good generator and gives a good output at low revs. On this model there is a stepper motor hidden inside the casing. You can get very small ones that could be suitable for this application..

That is a very cool engine, do post more details

 

[Caster]

There is a build series on this engine here

 

[glue-itcom]

I've made so many engines that sit around "gathering dust" and so I get in trouble, but the lamppost engine is apparently good enough to go in the china cabinet..

...I think that is a win. Plans available, not sure you could make it in 24 hours as a present though

 

[Tim1974]

Love it well dun

 

[glue-itcom]

This is a great video taking you through home casting an elaborate base for the lamppost engine



This engine was on the workbench off and on for some time and so now seeing others building it and improving on the design is very rewarding. Making the plans felt like a chore, but seeing this makes that all worthwhile.