If you flatten the copper pipe a bit to give it a larger surface area at the bottom and make it into an arc to cover as many of the magnets as possible until the drag becomes too much, you might not even need a heating plate at all! It would also reduce the amount of magnets needed for the full-scale heater as you could get more energy from fewer magnets by covering more of the them. I'm really enjoying this project, thank you for this video
^^^^ Came to post exactly this! And you vary the distance of the pipe to increase or decrease load. After all you are just inducing a current in the copper "winding" that's really a pipe, its a like a transformer but the field is generated with magnets. You want to take advantage of all the field flips, thus make a copper pipe hoop with a break in it for the inlet and outlet. Might even be better with thinner pipe like 10mm microbore, but loop it round a few more times. Its surface area of the heater coppper that is warming your water after all. You would control the speed of your windmill by tightening the gap between the magnets inducing more load.
I too, came to say this! The arc should go 98% around the circumference! This is an awesome proof of concept, but it's at this point, I would sit down and completely redesign the entire lot! It can be made exponentially safer and more stable by building an actual rack to mount things to, and everything would be made more precise, for at least a little balance, before someone loses a finger, or an eye!!! You start getting too comfortable around contraptions like this, and somebody gets hurt... I wouldn't need any more evidence to see the possibilities are endless!!! I can already see instant steam generation happening with a bit of tweaking, and we all know what that means!!! Wish I had the time and space to do this 😫
I find your videos so easy to explain such a complicated science, I am sorry I can’t give you any constructive advice, because I am not clever like you, but be assured, watching your videos is very satisfying.
The egg on toast was absolutely the best part of this video. I remember the comments saying that it would never work to heat up anything useful, and here you go and make a delicious snack. ha ha ha ha!
The drag isn't a bad thing. The amount of power you produce as heat is going to be *_exactly proportional_* to the power taken from the rotor by the drag. You don't actually need it to spin fast if you have high torque and very strong coupling via this drag. This may be the best option since you're going to be starting with the high torque, low speed power source of wind power. Especially because every "gearing" stage will have power losses associated with it.
Exactly this. If you want to increase the amount of coupling, try adding a ring of a high-permeability material below the magnets. (Think of this roughly as resistance for magnetic fields. Air is a terrible conductor of magnetic fields. You want the magnetic circuit to be as low resistance as possible.) Steel is pretty good for this, depending on composition. Or look into Halbach arrays. Actually, a switchable (geared) Halbach array would be a decent way to modulate the output...
Hey @nighthawkinlight please try to make a (nitrogen gas from plain air ) fertiliser nitrates from high electric voltage like it forms during thunders storms in nature. Yeah totally needed for all people
Instead of having the sail self furl, as the speed increases you want to bring the magnets and heating plate closer together, so you get more drag, which slows the windmill. You could use a mechanical governor for that.
Or maybe rather than closer together, the pipe could be bent in a way where it can be aligned with, let's say half of the magnetic circle, but at low speeds the magnetic circle would be slightly out of alignment. and some kind of governor mechanism would move the bearings the magnetic disk sits on so that the pipe is better aligned. Overlapping circles moving between full overlap and slight non-overlap
The problem with that is it doesn't reduce the wind force on the windmill assembly and they've got some occasionally very stiff winds to contend with. So will help to control the speed from getting too high, but he'll still want some way to reduce the forces the windmill is feeling.
@@johnfreiler6017 Maybe the sails could be held in pitch axis by springs in a way that if the wind is too strong it can overcome the springs and set the sails along the wind at extreme
"In this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics". Seems like you are exactly correct, it's possible to make the system more efficient material wise but not energy wise. The amount of heat generated will be equal to the amount of energy in rotational force lost. Making something that heats up more/quicker will impart more drag on the system. The curved pipe idea is a good balance that would be easy to make self regulating.
What a great video Tim, love how you take all the information you gather and then do what you want and or think works best for you. Good job on that egg cooker.
This is basically how demagnetizers work so it is no surprise it demagnitized your wrench. Rapidly changing magnetic fields disorganize the magnetic field of the iron. dont put credit cards anywhere near this, it will break em.
@@justaguycalledjosh Okay, so don't take my wallet into an MRI scan. Got it. It's also best to avoid listening to Pink Floyd in one as well, because that led to some STRANGE hallucinations.
Hey Tim! Great to see the progress, I just want to throw my $0.02 worth into the ring You're right that an induction element anywhere will get the same efficiency theoretically as elements coating the whole thing watt for watt, I would however suggest that a symmetrical design would keep the induction drag torque balanced on your magnet wheel, preserving your bearings for longer (hopefully) :) I hope you manage to get your hands on a copper casting/machining. As copper is one of the best thermal conductors out there, especially highly pure copper, you might be able to get away with packing a copper tube with long pieces of scrap wire (before bending it!) and either circulating water through or circulating something like diesel/oil that you use to heat water at an exchanger.The oil will help prevent anodic corrosion although I have no experience to say if this will be a problem, your induction heater is essentially a short circuited generator or transformer, you may end up with issues of hydrolysis of water within the heating pipe although realistically the copper is just so much more conductive than even a brine that this shouldn't be significant? All the best!
Loving this! Who wouldn't enjoy being snuggled up at home, all warm and cosy listening to the crackle of high velocity magnets flying overhead. Anyway, I think it's brilliant. It might be the most energy efficient but it's certainly got fun efficiency and surely that's far more important!
Another great inquiring video Tim. Thanks very much. One reason the aluminium is slower to heat the water compared to your copper tube is almost certainly because you have much more water in the icecream container you had mysteriously emptied. Weight for weight, aluminium is a better electrical conductor than copper so it should be better at being inductively heated.
I love watching how you explore different effects. One of the things that doesn't get shared enough is the value of quick prototyping to test different theories. Thank you for sharing.
* edit * as pointed out, an eddy current break **is** actually a type of induction heater, but anyways: I imagine people saying that steel would work better are thinking of induction heaters. This isn't an induction heater, this is an eddy current brake. While I'm no expert, I believe you were entirely correct when you said that making the magnetic "circuit" better wouldn't improve the efficiency. It would however increase the braking force for a given speed, so if you wanted to be able to make more heat at a lower speed (and provide more braking torque as a result) you could improve the magnetic circuit to do that. A cursory look on Wikipedia shows a lot of eddy current brakes designed just to be used as brakes and not for heating, which use a spinning copper discs with strong magnets on either side of it. Since you're looking for heating, I imagine the best setup would be two discs of magnets with a flattened thin copper pipe between them carrying the water. If you want to increase the braking force at lower speeds, you could just run the copper pipe further around the disc or increase the diameter of the disc. You can also provide a backing steel ring on the magnets to improve the magnetic circuit, in a similar way to that of a halbach array, although not as effectively (anything that reduces the "resistance to magnetic flux" to talk about it like an electrical circuit, will increase the strength of the magnetic field through the copper). Since steel is cheaper than magnets thought, you could put any cost savings to just making a larger diameter disk lol. Oh also don't be afraid of the drag force, the drag force (multiplied by the radius) times the RPM is the heating power. If there's no drag it's not working.
"An eddy current brake, also known as an induction brake ... an eddy current brake is an electromagnetic force between a magnet and a nearby conductive object in relative motion, due to eddy currents induced in the conductor through electromagnetic induction." Just because it isn't an electromagnet doesn't mean it's not an induction heater.
@@punkdigerati You're right! I've done some more reading and on the wikipedia page for induction cooking (not to be confused with the wiki page for induction heating) it mentions that less than 10% of the heating comes from hysteresis losses (which surprised me) and the reason iron works so well is because it's not amazingly electrically conductive but very magnetically conductive, so it concentrates the magnetic field at it's surface which means all the current is in the surface rather than spread out. Since heat from electrical current is proportional to the current squared times the resistance, it produces a lot of heat. It should be noted however, that a lot of these optimizations are to try to make sure most of the heat goes into the thing being heated and not the driving coils, but in the case of this setup, we're using permanent magnets and don't have to worry about conduction losses in the driving coils, as there are none! If I had to take a guess, I'd guess that's why induction cooking goes for cast iron, but eddy current brakes go for copper disks as they care about mechanical drag force at low speed (which also means more heat at lower speed). Since we can use permanent magnets and the changing magnetic field is produced by rotation, and in light of the statement that only 10% of the heating comes from hysteresis, I think material choice doesn't matter particularly relative to geometry, and the best design will be the one with the most drag force. It's way too late where I am as I'm typing this to be trying to think about all this lol. The long of the short of it is, it's all electromagnetic induction but the devil's in the details and I don't think I'd change anything about my recommendations but I would change my reasoning for it. The root truth is, energy in to a system must equal energy out, conservation of energy. Mechanical power is RPM * torque, and given this is an eddy current brake with permanent magnets, pretty much all mechanical power into the heater will come out as heat ~ somewhere. Success of the design will basically be proportional to how hard it is to turn the wheel at a given speed (resistance torque).
Spot on mates. Finally, a discussion that understands the physics involved here. Contributing to the discussion, the key statements are: - Efficency wise it is entirely independent of material choice as well as magnet arrangement. If the design is not optimal, all what's going to happen is that you won't get much heating power as you are not loading the system much. - "Real" losses are only produced in the mechanical linkage and dissipating heat from your heating element. So the idea of isolating the element is absolutely correct. - The drag (Torque) is key. If your goal is to run the machine as slow as possible, then maximizing the torque is what you want. To do this, increase the induction in the plate. Or increase the change in magnetic field. - The change in the field can be increased by more magnets, a faster spinning wheel or a bigger wheel. As for your goal, a large wheel is best. If I were you, I would use copper or Aluminium instead of steel, the handling is not that dangerous as in a still state no magnetic attraction is present (prevents pinched fingers). Since the magnets are rather expensive, I would try to use both sides of the wheel. I think a copper pipe running in a circle once above the plate and then once underneath the wheel is as simple yet effective as it gets.
ua-cam.com/users/shortsXFGKeXSEylk?si=ipDjiaJAA-mOGrVp its just eddy current heating. I2R. so much magnetic flux cutting a conductor so fast creates an EMF, and that EMF through the resistance appears as "current". the induced magnetic field opposes the field creating it, and you get a braking force proportional to the power absorbed in the resistive heating. the steel backing plate shorts out the unused poles, so the only magnetic field appears between the projecting poles. far more flux can "cut the conductor", so less magnets are needed... the pockets are only very shallow, as otherwise the magnet will just short itself out through the steel, lol. it isnt necessary but it makes a huge difference on performance. ideally, the backing plate would wrap right around so the flux only flows through a small air gap filled with copper disc... but this makes it awkward to vary the amount of flux linkage... it is how they make the "electromagnet" based ones as used in trucks and busses and other applications. (professional dynamometers!). its sad that for something nearing 150 years old, not many people seem to understand them... the magnets are alternating polarity, and as each eddy current "rotates" in opposite directions, the maximum current, and braking effort, and heat, is appearing in the gap between the magnets. theres an ideal location for the magnet and its size regards the diameter of the disc, as the current still needs "room to move". hence, a large section of conductor rather than a loop or thin sheet. theres really no difference between these and a generator, except here we have the generator shorted out and wound with a single turn, rather than coils to make "voltages" that can then be easily conveyed down wires to a resistance or another coil where either heat, or a magnetic attraction/repulsion can be produced.
A good grasp of the concept of Work in/ work out! There are tricks you can use to double the frequency quite easily ....... that might show if ramping it Way up is worth the effort. Cutting bits of steel into the right shape would allow you to bend the magnetic field round 180 degrees and if you angled the opposite pole to arrive midway between the magnets you double the frequency (you would want all the magnets facing the same way for that though. Equally you could use the same trick to link pairs of magnets the way they are to double the field strength (not sure if that will get you more heat though as I suspect you will saturate the field) ...... Think of it like a ladder. Once you reach the top you cant climb any higher no mater how hard you try! Obviously the closer you get to the magnets without touching them the better ...... so a jig to hold your heating element will be a good idea! Slowing the magnets down or even removing half of them would give rise to an effect called Cogging. The heating element will be pulled into and pushed away from the magnets (which is why you don't start off under load). What you want is to set up eddy currents which circulate in the metal heating element so having a more massive element will not gain you much as the currents are virtually two dimensional and your thicker element is 3D. I do have to say that I am enjoying watching you experiment!
as cool as a homemade induction heater would be, i think that the simplicity of a generator might turn out to be more practical in the end. loving these videos exploring induction heating though, keep it up!
As you started describing all the possible optimizations, I was thinking the same thing that you concluded with. As long as you’re taking all the available energy out of the system, it doesn’t really matter how efficient the individual components are. Yes, that matters for a commercial product that needs to get the most out of every bit of material, but that’s not an issue here. I propose a possible simplification. Place your rotating plate beneath a circular water vessel. Pot, boiler, pan, whatever. Arrange the rotating disk such that it can move axially on the drive shaft (something like a drill press quill, for example) and this control the space between the water vessel and the magnets. As mentioned in another comment, that could serve as an automatic governor for the windmill. The default position is at the greatest distance, increasing to the most efficient at peak input, with a simple spring loaded overspeed mechanism on the blades as you’ve already demonstrated. Use that to heat the largest insulted tank you can manage. It may take a while to come up to temperature, but it should be able to maintain temperature for quite a long time with a large enough reservoir.
My approach would be to bend a long copper pipe in a circle so that it sits above all the magnets, and then suspending it on bolts above the rotor, in a way where you can easily adjust the distance to the magnets. This way you don't have to hold it, and you can even finetune the distance to use all the energy available before there is too much drag (i presume this way you can get it a lot closer to the magnets than by hand, should it be necessary). Maybe this is too far fetched but would it be a good idea to try and balance the wheel more? It looks pretty unbalanced at the moment, and i can only imagine how it would be at higher rpm's. I'm curious to see your next video on this interesting project!
That's a lot of work to just make a snack. 😄 Seriously, you have explained induction cooking to me and I now know that it works with aluminium, which I didn't realise. I love your methodology. 😊👍
I think your first design with the pipe is on the right track. You may be familiar with the concept of a bubble pump, which is what drip coffee makers use to move the water from the reservoir up to the basket of coffee grounds. The water is simply in a tube with a 1-way valve, that runs over a heat source, and leads to the coffee basket. As the water boils, it makes bubbles, and because of the check valve, the bubbles (and increased pressure) can only travel upwards to the coffee basket, and the bubbles push the hot water along the pipe! I think you could take advantage of this same effect, by having a tube coming in from a cool water reservoir, a check valve, and then your copper pipe over the magnets, then a tube leading off and up to a ‘hot water storage’ and as the water boiled in your copper pipe, it would be forced onwards, and more water could come in and be heated. No mechanical/electrical pumps involved!
love this idea. But when the copper pipe is at 100°C good thermal isolation is absolutely necessary. With increased temperature, the heat transfer to the environment (fancy words for heat losses), is increased as well.
This is such a fun project to watch and learn along with you! Thanks so much for sharing. I'm excited to see where it goes, along with any other neat projects you work on. :)
I would do a closed copper pipe ring that has been flattened and filled with water over the whole ring on magnets. The thinner the air-gap between the pipe and the magnets the more efficient. And: to adjust the resulting drag force I would install an mecanism to adjust the air gap to the possible applied force of the windmill. Means: lots of wind, lots of power ->reducing the air gap between magnets and copper pipes. This can be done either electronically or mechanical by the help of a defined rpm of the flywheel. Have fun! And thank you for sharing these interesting experiments!
Using a generator is not only lazy, its expensive as well especially as you have to pay for fuel and servicing etc. Unless of course its an electric one, which you could use as part of the process, for example running the pump. You could charge it up using the windmill and have a couple of solar panels as a back up. I think that you're going in the right direction with the induction process, you need to find a way of putting it under a metal tank or even a copper coil. Only because copper is a brilliant conductor of heat, thats why its used in hot water tanks to heat the water. As you say your just trying things out, I have no doubt you will find your own way after all you are a bit of a genious. 👍
Loving your channel. I've just been going over your engine shed design. You were playing around with slip-belt clutch designs. That reminded me of your magnet experiments for heating. You could also make a clutch using those magnets on the flywheel, if you're interested. I used to work on boats, where (since the late '90s) such magnetic no-contact clutches were used as low vibration linkages. If you face your magnet-imbedded flywheel discs along side a thick, conductive plate (thick copper works best), which is also on an axle, the magnets will induce an electromagnetic feedback. That's what happened in your heating experiments. In this case, though, the changing magnetic fields from the magnet disc induces an electrical current in the conductive material, which quickly converts back to a magnetic field. The closer the two plates get to each other, the more the magnets and the changing induced magnetic fields will grab each other, causing the pair to spin side-by-side. The faster they spin, the stronger the magnets, the closer they are, the more they grab. Power one disc with the engine. Connect the other disc to the power tool of choice. Begin with them separated. Start the engine. When it's going, press the discs together, and the tool disc will spin. The closer you get, the stronger the magnetic pull. A no-contact clutch with almost no vibration!
*@Way Out West - Workshop Stuff* 5:23 *I think I know how that "Demagnetization" worked.* You have a rapidly alternating magnetic field, and when you pulled away the metal, you ALSO decreased the magnetic strength. That caused a Demagnetization effect: (Wiki: "Degaussing", title: "Pulse degaussing"). I have also been working in a metal workshop, it had a grinder with a magnetic bed, but after use the part was magnetic, but you could run a program that alternated the magnetic fields such that the metal part became "neutrally magnetic" again.
This is great. Please keep experimenting! My only suggestion is to get the metal as close as possible to the moving magnets. Even a small change in the gap can really affect the magnetic power. Good luck. Rooting for you!
Very fun to follow your progress and trails of different ideas. I think your idea with a pipe with a cupper plate seems promising. If the plate is too big, it will spread out the heat energy and radiate it in all directions, even downwards. To minimize losses downwards, you may need a small gap between plate and magnets, also reduce airflow from magnetic wheel with adjustable brushes around the plate. Then insulate the rest of the circuit. Maybe even an insulated box around the whole circuit, the tank, the spinning magnetic wheel too. Don't worry too much with the losses this early in process. When you get a better wheel that's less wobbly and smaller gap - the insulation will be more effective as well as the efficiency of heat production. My guess is gearing up may be an issue. You sill want some heat in moderate winds. Another wild magnet idea is it to make magnet pockets deeper and stack two or more magnets on top of each other. no idea if it improves things. That may give you half the polarity switching /second (using same amount of magnets) but may increase strength and or reach of each field and more of your pipe may receive heat
My rule of thumb for heating, is that all heating is 100% efficient, because inefficiencies are heat generation. If you're trying to generate heat, you just need to find the easiest way to put energy into a system while having that system do as little with that energy as possible.
Man, that is all I would need to step this experiment up a few notches!!! You need to build a rack to support everything, and make it more precise, for a bit of balance. Get rid of the entire disc and start with something that doesn't have a bunch of screw heads sticking out of it! A rack you can mount the copper pipe to in multiple locations, to keep from losing a finger or an eye! I love this, you're on the right track! I can see the possibility of almost instant steam generation. We all know what that would mean... I'm a former boiler technician for the U.S. military. You could get all your energy needs out of that windmill using this technology... Wish I was there to help, but I'm sure you'll eventually get there... Just BE CAREFUL MAN!
If you made a circular coil of copper tube to follow the direction of the magnets, then you could vary the energy draw of the mechanism by moving the coil towards and away from the spinning magnets. Add in some sort of centrifugal-based feedback and you would have a speed-regulating governor. It might be more robust than the current blade-angle based governor you've got devised for the windmill, and it saves parts since the governor and the output are now one and the same!
Such fun from the mad boffin, Tim. Keep up the great experiments. Your videos inspire me so much....to do nothing really but wait for the next instalment. Riveting stuff always...Oh, copper rivets, might they be useful? Probably not. Anyway, the best of luck, Tim and I hope you are on the mend.
I think the copper heating element needs surface area. You probably could easily knock together a box based on a cheapish copper heat sink and two fittings on each end to increase the surface area water can interact with. Also, I think you don't want to mix aluminum and copper pipes, so a copper heating element leading to copper pipes is safe enough.
I might suggest thin copper tubes that, when coiled the same diameter as the magnet wheel (one pipe in depth, and 2 to 3 pipes wide, or however many you would need to get the same width of the magnets). The small pipes would allow the water additional circulation in the heat while traveling through the pipe.
Copper is better for heat transfer, and has a higher melting point than aluminium. There's a reason pots are copper and not aluminium! If you're going all-in on the making stuff from copper and aluminium, though, I'd suggest getting a proper furnace and just casting it from whatever scrap you can get. You can turn beer cans into useful stuff! Also, nice to see another in the series of you trying to comprehend electromagnetism so you can use it to heat your house. It should be much quieter than grinding steel plates together.
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I would recommend looking into computer liquid cooling. They are designed to be extremely efficient at moving heat away from one place to another with water channels. You probably can get a used one for quite cheap for experimenting.
Focusing on "flips" is an erroneous path of inquiry. If you take a single magnet and run it past a bulk conductor it will experience heating proportional to the power it took to move that magnet. The same effect of eddy current heating occurs with exactly 0 flips. All that is required is that any given spotin the conductor experience a change in the magnetic flux over time.
@@AtlasReburdened Strictly speaking you are correct, but very misleading. Consider for the sake of argument two arrangements: one has a single continuous magnet along the perimeter of the wheel (N up, S down), the other has the magnet divided into sectors that are alternating N up+S down / N down + S up. The former will have no eddy current heating (the magnetic field is unchanging when the magnet spins); the latter will have a fair bit of eddy current heating. For maximum eddy current heating you want the highest change in magnetic flux possible per unit time... and one of the simplest ways to accomplish that is to add more poles (until other effects start dominating, of course.)
Tim... let's take a look at radiators! You'll notice that they have a large surface area in order to heat up as much air as they can. I think that applies here too, even a simple setup could be much more efficient if you added several copper "fins" for the water to pass over, or perhaps a copper coil inside of the pipe. I think the reason copper has been working so well isn't necessarily because it is heated quickly by the magnets (I'll be honest, I don't know much about that), but because it is a very good conductor of heat. Best of luck with your project, it is fascinating!
I second this more surface area in contact with the water gives more heat transfer if you could somehow make a box with the plate you made and then added Fins or channels for the water to go through inside the box and then ran water through the box it may work better just like a radiator! I probably just reexplained a radiator if so I'm sorry but something to look up would be computer water cooling. It's basically what your trying to do here but on reverse (cooling instead of heating) but technically the technology still applies
What you don't understand is, thin copper will not produce as much heat, as the thicker copper does. The eddy currents are increased by increasing copper density, thereby imparting more heat into the water... This is what actually heats the water, not the copper itself...
@@kmspader2239 with magnetic induction, a solid block of copper with channels inside for water flow, would be far more efficient than any kind of pipe with fins, inside or out... It's not the metal producing the heat, it's the magnetic flux within the metal that is....
If you could hold it as close to the magnets as the copper or aluminum, steel would likely heat up much faster due to hysteresis and not just eddy current. That being said, you should stick to copper for this application. You are correct that this kind of setup is very forgiving for matching the load to the power source; you essentially have a water cooled magnetic torque converter here. You could probably imagine such a thing being used in an automatic transmission, except in this case the load isn't allowed to move at all, so things just heat up :-)
4:02 The drag you experiencing is work being done: speed multiplied by torque. The more torque, the more energy is converted to heat (through eddy currents)
@@wayoutwest-workshopstuff6299 The sweet spot depends on the geometry of the windmill blades rather than the heater itself. The mechanical load should be such that the windmill speeds operates in the best efficiency range. And this also depends on the current wind speed. Long story short: For maximum energy output, you would need a controller. (In the old times this was done manually). I would design it to have as much drag to almost stall the mill at full wind speed and then release the torque to find the sweet spot. (This problem is not unique to windmills. Solar has to deal with the exact same difficulty. Trading current versus voltage. Controllers that can handle this are called MPPT which stands for maximum power point tracking.)
Tim, I'm case nobody else has raised this: For a greater (effective) rotation speed, have you considered making multiple heating plates then having them contra-rotate over the magnets?
Ah yes, the flying magnet issue. When I built a pancake generator for a wind turbine, all the magnets were glued down with Araldite and the whole disc was embedded in clear resin. there was even a ring of wire rope embedded outside the magnets and in the resin! Flying magnets are a real thing. Who knew?
To get the magnetic field to flip faster, you should try making a larger wheel that way you can have more magnets. It can go the same RPM and have more magnets travel past the plate at a higher rate due to leverage. It's kinda like how they arrange songs on a record where the louder songs are towards the edge and the softer ones are towards the center. It's all at 33 1/3 RPM but the outer edge is able to have the groove hitting the stylus faster than towards the middle and as-such is able to have more information fed to the stylus meaning it can have better sound quality and better frequency response.
This is a very cool idea if you can get "free" rotational energy from wind or something. If the magnets do get hot they will demagnetise. They have to get pretty hot for that to happen but they will get hot eventually if you run this thing for hours and hours and you don't draw enough heat away from the heating plate.
the more electrical conductivity the material has, the better it will work, I think. This is why motors use copper windings, and if cost is not an object, silver wire is used (silver conducts electricity better than copper. yes it does.) You will never ever completely stop the magnet disk with magnetic interaction alone, because as the magnets slow down, their ability to induce a current in the metal goes away, which creates less resistance on the movement of the magnets. This is a type of brake that can never ever lock up, and magnetic brakes using this exact principle are used on F1 race cars.
some notes on convective circulation, pipe diameter will help for drag but also column height.. the effect will be stronger if there is a long column of very hot water and a long column of very cold water the heater should be near to the bottom of the column so that the column of heated water can be taller, though perhaps not too near the bottom that it might reverse flow, and whatever heat exchanger is used to move heat indoors should be designed so that the water is cooled high in the column so that the cold column is as tall as possible, like for example using a wall-height radiator design rather than one that sits low to the floor oh and regarding design considerations of the magnet wheel, youre correct that the exact design doesnt matter much for efficiency because there will be a 1:1 relationship between the amount of magnetic drag and the amount of heat produced, but like you said you can get that sweet spot of the right amount of drag to happen sooner, essentially tuning the rpm-torque response of the magnet wheel, which means you could tune the wheel such that mechanical gearing is not necessary.. your design goal should be that the wheel reaches drag equilibrium near the rpm where your windmill is most efficient, like for example so that the windmill turns nearly as fast as it can but not so fast that the governor mechanism kicks in.. really ideally the governor mechanism would somehow throttle the induction heater so that the windmill is slowed down by harvesting more energy from it rather than slowed by wasting its energy with the blades, but that would be much too complicated to implement
Making a magnet carrier that can stand higher speeds is an interesting challenge. Maybe a bicycle wheel can be used if one can be sources with a large enough diameter? Since your magnets are disk shaped, cutting slots into the rim of a bike wheel slightly shorter than the diameter of the magnets would allow slotting them in from the inside without the risk of them flying away outwards when it spins. Ring shaped wooden plates either side of the magnets (clamping onto them by bolts with nuts) could be used to keep them aligned and to prevent them from falling out when not in use but they wouldn't take any of the radial load. Problem is on ordinary bike wheels the spokes will get in the way of both the magnets and potentially alignment plates so it might not work as well as I'm thinking... Maybe enough of the spokes can be removed to fit the magnets and alignment plates be placed over the portion of the magnets that stick through the rim? Removing spokes might weaken the wheel too much to hold the magnets at speed though... Interesting challenge indeed.
good job on the retainer plate, that stuck out to me as a really important improvement from your earlier version.. looks good. it occurs to me that an improvement might consider the size of wheel (and number of magnets as a result). if you had a much smaller wheel with half the magnets. I should think that magnetic drag would be the force you need wind (or your drill press) to overcome. with some gearing to vary the speed and torque.. you could perhaps so much the same with less magnets (they just go twice as fast.. half the magnets but with double the RPM. so the main reason to make it bigger past a basic level would be I think to gain surface area of magnets and perhaps to have multiple heating plates with radiators.. but... this might be an opportunity. to creat your variability in how much heat you gather but engaging say heating plate modules 1... or 1 and 2, or 1, 2, 3.. or more... just one more idea. its possible to generate electricity in a similar setup with a minimum of changes.. you could have heating plates and an electricity generating module... good for powering a simple controller and even a pump perhaps.
I don't have any practical experience with magnetic induction to back this up, but I suspect you'd be better off bending a copper pipe into a curve to follow the magnets, and then maybe flattening it out a bit to get more of the copper closer to the magnets, rather than using a plate soldered to the pipe. And then once you have the wind power set up you can adjust the length of pipe to match the power it generates. (I imagine you know that copper work hardens with bending but can be softened again by annealing.) But it'd be worth an experiment to compare! Easy for me to say since I don't have to do the work. ;) You'd definitely want a way to fix the pipe/plate in place for the test rather than holding.
I reckon a circle of pipe above the magnets would be your best bet. No chance of the drag stopping the rotation because the drag is proportion to rotational velocity, as it slows down, drag due to opposing magnetic fields decreases and it should find it's own optimal speed depending on the power available.
how about a raceway around the circumference of the disc on either side of the magnets, so you could use ball bearings, nylon ones?, or little wheels under the frying pan / pipe or whatever you are trying to heat. That could allow you to keep the item the right distance from the top of the magnets and provide a steadier way to hold it perhaps?
To de- magnetise iron, you cycle the magnetic field and reduce the field while doing so. So you created the perfect de- magnetizer when slowly removing something made of iron from your disk.
What you call "drag" is exactly what you need to capture the mechanical power into heat. It shows that mechanical work is being done. Without that "drag", you're not capturing any of the mechanical power, and all the energy is lost to friction in your spinning mechanism. So, you want to maximise that "drag" by making the air gap as small as possible.
@@IvoTichelaar The amount of resistance you can push through depends on the motor. So the more resistance the motor can overcome the better. More resistance with a bigger motor would be hotter.
I think circulation will work better with heat source at the bottom of your loop. Instead of towards the top. The temperature difference will be greater. At the moment you’re heating hot water towards the top which is where hot water wants to be.
Build a mounting for the metal plate so you can lower it and drag does not become a wristbreaker, I would think a copper pipe bent in a circle over the magnets connected to a water supply that circulates the water would be a seriously impressive experiment. Get the water to 80degrees and circulate it through a radiator. Voila heating free if it is connected to a windmill. Or cheap heating if it is run by a 500watt motor that is strong enough to power the disc through the drag. I am surprised with the drag being so strong using copper, maybe another material would be more effective, less drag.
Here it is, the first video of the series converting the garden train to maglev.
Heck yeah, would love freaking cheap maglev train for personal use
👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼
probably the most efficient way to transport garlic
@@juharon How else could you do it?!?
If you flatten the copper pipe a bit to give it a larger surface area at the bottom and make it into an arc to cover as many of the magnets as possible until the drag becomes too much, you might not even need a heating plate at all! It would also reduce the amount of magnets needed for the full-scale heater as you could get more energy from fewer magnets by covering more of the them. I'm really enjoying this project, thank you for this video
^^^^ Came to post exactly this! And you vary the distance of the pipe to increase or decrease load. After all you are just inducing a current in the copper "winding" that's really a pipe, its a like a transformer but the field is generated with magnets. You want to take advantage of all the field flips, thus make a copper pipe hoop with a break in it for the inlet and outlet. Might even be better with thinner pipe like 10mm microbore, but loop it round a few more times. Its surface area of the heater coppper that is warming your water after all. You would control the speed of your windmill by tightening the gap between the magnets inducing more load.
I too, came to say this! The arc should go 98% around the circumference!
This is an awesome proof of concept, but it's at this point, I would sit down and completely redesign the entire lot!
It can be made exponentially safer and more stable by building an actual rack to mount things to, and everything would be made more precise, for at least a little balance, before someone loses a finger, or an eye!!! You start getting too comfortable around contraptions like this, and somebody gets hurt...
I wouldn't need any more evidence to see the possibilities are endless!!!
I can already see instant steam generation happening with a bit of tweaking, and we all know what that means!!!
Wish I had the time and space to do this 😫
I find your videos so easy to explain such a complicated science, I am sorry I can’t give you any constructive advice, because I am not clever like you, but be assured, watching your videos is very satisfying.
The egg on toast was absolutely the best part of this video. I remember the comments saying that it would never work to heat up anything useful, and here you go and make a delicious snack. ha ha ha ha!
Now I’m hungry…
Frying an egg with a drill press. Excellent. Next using a lathe to roast a chicken? Great work as usual. Thanks Tim.
The drag isn't a bad thing. The amount of power you produce as heat is going to be *_exactly proportional_* to the power taken from the rotor by the drag.
You don't actually need it to spin fast if you have high torque and very strong coupling via this drag.
This may be the best option since you're going to be starting with the high torque, low speed power source of wind power. Especially because every "gearing" stage will have power losses associated with it.
Exactly this.
If you want to increase the amount of coupling, try adding a ring of a high-permeability material below the magnets. (Think of this roughly as resistance for magnetic fields. Air is a terrible conductor of magnetic fields. You want the magnetic circuit to be as low resistance as possible.) Steel is pretty good for this, depending on composition.
Or look into Halbach arrays.
Actually, a switchable (geared) Halbach array would be a decent way to modulate the output...
The curved pipe design is really clever. Nice work! Looking forward to seeing where you end up with it
You turn up at the most interesting places on the web.
Hey @nighthawkinlight please try to make a (nitrogen gas from plain air ) fertiliser nitrates from high electric voltage like it forms during thunders storms in nature.
Yeah totally needed for all people
Instead of having the sail self furl, as the speed increases you want to bring the magnets and heating plate closer together, so you get more drag, which slows the windmill. You could use a mechanical governor for that.
Or maybe rather than closer together, the pipe could be bent in a way where it can be aligned with, let's say half of the magnetic circle, but at low speeds the magnetic circle would be slightly out of alignment. and some kind of governor mechanism would move the bearings the magnetic disk sits on so that the pipe is better aligned. Overlapping circles moving between full overlap and slight non-overlap
Does that drag cause more heating?
@@BrettCooper4702afaik it should, as long as the speed doesn't drop too far
The problem with that is it doesn't reduce the wind force on the windmill assembly and they've got some occasionally very stiff winds to contend with. So will help to control the speed from getting too high, but he'll still want some way to reduce the forces the windmill is feeling.
@@johnfreiler6017 Maybe the sails could be held in pitch axis by springs in a way that if the wind is too strong it can overcome the springs and set the sails along the wind at extreme
"In this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics". Seems like you are exactly correct, it's possible to make the system more efficient material wise but not energy wise. The amount of heat generated will be equal to the amount of energy in rotational force lost. Making something that heats up more/quicker will impart more drag on the system. The curved pipe idea is a good balance that would be easy to make self regulating.
What a great video Tim, love how you take all the information you gather and then do what you want and or think works best for you. Good job on that egg cooker.
This is basically how demagnetizers work so it is no surprise it demagnitized your wrench. Rapidly changing magnetic fields disorganize the magnetic field of the iron. dont put credit cards anywhere near this, it will break em.
Only magnetic strips, though. Chip and pin and NFC are fine, unless you manage to EMP the card somehow.
@@Skorpychan This may cause heating in the copper traces of chip/nfc cards. Induction heaters can destroy those as well.
@@rich1051414 Oh dang. DEFINITELY put your wallet somewhere safe before playing with this, then.
@@Skorpychan any kind of coil in a rapidly fluctuating field gets a nice dose of high-frequency AC. It'll break them too.
@@justaguycalledjosh Okay, so don't take my wallet into an MRI scan. Got it.
It's also best to avoid listening to Pink Floyd in one as well, because that led to some STRANGE hallucinations.
Hey Tim! Great to see the progress, I just want to throw my $0.02 worth into the ring
You're right that an induction element anywhere will get the same efficiency theoretically as elements coating the whole thing watt for watt, I would however suggest that a symmetrical design would keep the induction drag torque balanced on your magnet wheel, preserving your bearings for longer (hopefully) :)
I hope you manage to get your hands on a copper casting/machining. As copper is one of the best thermal conductors out there, especially highly pure copper, you might be able to get away with packing a copper tube with long pieces of scrap wire (before bending it!) and either circulating water through or circulating something like diesel/oil that you use to heat water at an exchanger.The oil will help prevent anodic corrosion although I have no experience to say if this will be a problem, your induction heater is essentially a short circuited generator or transformer, you may end up with issues of hydrolysis of water within the heating pipe although realistically the copper is just so much more conductive than even a brine that this shouldn't be significant?
All the best!
I love your method of diy education, from one Irish American, 3rd generation, to A Irish “ Irishmen”, great video!
I love your videos, just on the verge of being eccentric but at the same time teaching me things I don’t know in an easy (for my brain) to digest.
Very nice work. Everyone has their input, here is mine; Good job.
Loving this!
Who wouldn't enjoy being snuggled up at home, all warm and cosy listening to the crackle of high velocity magnets flying overhead.
Anyway, I think it's brilliant. It might be the most energy efficient but it's certainly got fun efficiency and surely that's far more important!
Another great inquiring video Tim. Thanks very much.
One reason the aluminium is slower to heat the water compared to your copper tube is almost certainly because you have much more water in the icecream container you had mysteriously emptied. Weight for weight, aluminium is a better electrical conductor than copper so it should be better at being inductively heated.
I love watching how you explore different effects. One of the things that doesn't get shared enough is the value of quick prototyping to test different theories. Thank you for sharing.
I love seeing Bolesławiec dishware in the wild. Very cool project!
* edit * as pointed out, an eddy current break **is** actually a type of induction heater, but anyways:
I imagine people saying that steel would work better are thinking of induction heaters. This isn't an induction heater, this is an eddy current brake. While I'm no expert, I believe you were entirely correct when you said that making the magnetic "circuit" better wouldn't improve the efficiency. It would however increase the braking force for a given speed, so if you wanted to be able to make more heat at a lower speed (and provide more braking torque as a result) you could improve the magnetic circuit to do that. A cursory look on Wikipedia shows a lot of eddy current brakes designed just to be used as brakes and not for heating, which use a spinning copper discs with strong magnets on either side of it. Since you're looking for heating, I imagine the best setup would be two discs of magnets with a flattened thin copper pipe between them carrying the water. If you want to increase the braking force at lower speeds, you could just run the copper pipe further around the disc or increase the diameter of the disc. You can also provide a backing steel ring on the magnets to improve the magnetic circuit, in a similar way to that of a halbach array, although not as effectively (anything that reduces the "resistance to magnetic flux" to talk about it like an electrical circuit, will increase the strength of the magnetic field through the copper). Since steel is cheaper than magnets thought, you could put any cost savings to just making a larger diameter disk lol.
Oh also don't be afraid of the drag force, the drag force (multiplied by the radius) times the RPM is the heating power. If there's no drag it's not working.
"An eddy current brake, also known as an induction brake ... an eddy current brake is an electromagnetic force between a magnet and a nearby conductive object in relative motion, due to eddy currents induced in the conductor through electromagnetic induction."
Just because it isn't an electromagnet doesn't mean it's not an induction heater.
@@punkdigerati You're right! I've done some more reading and on the wikipedia page for induction cooking (not to be confused with the wiki page for induction heating) it mentions that less than 10% of the heating comes from hysteresis losses (which surprised me) and the reason iron works so well is because it's not amazingly electrically conductive but very magnetically conductive, so it concentrates the magnetic field at it's surface which means all the current is in the surface rather than spread out. Since heat from electrical current is proportional to the current squared times the resistance, it produces a lot of heat. It should be noted however, that a lot of these optimizations are to try to make sure most of the heat goes into the thing being heated and not the driving coils, but in the case of this setup, we're using permanent magnets and don't have to worry about conduction losses in the driving coils, as there are none! If I had to take a guess, I'd guess that's why induction cooking goes for cast iron, but eddy current brakes go for copper disks as they care about mechanical drag force at low speed (which also means more heat at lower speed). Since we can use permanent magnets and the changing magnetic field is produced by rotation, and in light of the statement that only 10% of the heating comes from hysteresis, I think material choice doesn't matter particularly relative to geometry, and the best design will be the one with the most drag force.
It's way too late where I am as I'm typing this to be trying to think about all this lol. The long of the short of it is, it's all electromagnetic induction but the devil's in the details and I don't think I'd change anything about my recommendations but I would change my reasoning for it. The root truth is, energy in to a system must equal energy out, conservation of energy. Mechanical power is RPM * torque, and given this is an eddy current brake with permanent magnets, pretty much all mechanical power into the heater will come out as heat ~ somewhere. Success of the design will basically be proportional to how hard it is to turn the wheel at a given speed (resistance torque).
Spot on mates. Finally, a discussion that understands the physics involved here. Contributing to the discussion, the key statements are:
- Efficency wise it is entirely independent of material choice as well as magnet arrangement. If the design is not optimal, all what's going to happen is that you won't get much heating power as you are not loading the system much.
- "Real" losses are only produced in the mechanical linkage and dissipating heat from your heating element. So the idea of isolating the element is absolutely correct.
- The drag (Torque) is key. If your goal is to run the machine as slow as possible, then maximizing the torque is what you want. To do this, increase the induction in the plate. Or increase the change in magnetic field.
- The change in the field can be increased by more magnets, a faster spinning wheel or a bigger wheel. As for your goal, a large wheel is best.
If I were you, I would use copper or Aluminium instead of steel, the handling is not that dangerous as in a still state no magnetic attraction is present (prevents pinched fingers). Since the magnets are rather expensive, I would try to use both sides of the wheel. I think a copper pipe running in a circle once above the plate and then once underneath the wheel is as simple yet effective as it gets.
ua-cam.com/users/shortsXFGKeXSEylk?si=ipDjiaJAA-mOGrVp
its just eddy current heating.
I2R.
so much magnetic flux cutting a conductor so fast creates an EMF, and that EMF through the resistance appears as "current".
the induced magnetic field opposes the field creating it, and you get a braking force proportional to the power absorbed in the resistive heating.
the steel backing plate shorts out the unused poles, so the only magnetic field appears between the projecting poles. far more flux can "cut the conductor", so less magnets are needed...
the pockets are only very shallow, as otherwise the magnet will just short itself out through the steel, lol. it isnt necessary but it makes a huge difference on performance.
ideally, the backing plate would wrap right around so the flux only flows through a small air gap filled with copper disc... but this makes it awkward to vary the amount of flux linkage... it is how they make the "electromagnet" based ones as used in trucks and busses and other applications. (professional dynamometers!).
its sad that for something nearing 150 years old, not many people seem to understand them...
the magnets are alternating polarity, and as each eddy current "rotates" in opposite directions, the maximum current, and braking effort, and heat, is appearing in the gap between the magnets. theres an ideal location for the magnet and its size regards the diameter of the disc, as the current still needs "room to move". hence, a large section of conductor rather than a loop or thin sheet.
theres really no difference between these and a generator, except here we have the generator shorted out and wound with a single turn, rather than coils to make "voltages" that can then be easily conveyed down wires to a resistance or another coil where either heat, or a magnetic attraction/repulsion can be produced.
Stick a killawatt on the supply line of the drill press, it should tell you exactly how much load(and therefore heat) you are creating.
Firing magnets into the next county was a good one XD
Im loving this experiment Tim, it's so cool what you can figure out with this! Learning a lot over here, thanks as always for sharing 😊
A good grasp of the concept of Work in/ work out!
There are tricks you can use to double the frequency quite easily ....... that might show if ramping it Way up is worth the effort. Cutting bits of steel into the right shape would allow you to bend the magnetic field round 180 degrees and if you angled the opposite pole to arrive midway between the magnets you double the frequency (you would want all the magnets facing the same way for that though. Equally you could use the same trick to link pairs of magnets the way they are to double the field strength (not sure if that will get you more heat though as I suspect you will saturate the field) ...... Think of it like a ladder. Once you reach the top you cant climb any higher no mater how hard you try!
Obviously the closer you get to the magnets without touching them the better ...... so a jig to hold your heating element will be a good idea!
Slowing the magnets down or even removing half of them would give rise to an effect called Cogging. The heating element will be pulled into and pushed away from the magnets (which is why you don't start off under load). What you want is to set up eddy currents which circulate in the metal heating element so having a more massive element will not gain you much as the currents are virtually two dimensional and your thicker element is 3D.
I do have to say that I am enjoying watching you experiment!
as cool as a homemade induction heater would be, i think that the simplicity of a generator might turn out to be more practical in the end.
loving these videos exploring induction heating though, keep it up!
As you started describing all the possible optimizations, I was thinking the same thing that you concluded with. As long as you’re taking all the available energy out of the system, it doesn’t really matter how efficient the individual components are. Yes, that matters for a commercial product that needs to get the most out of every bit of material, but that’s not an issue here.
I propose a possible simplification. Place your rotating plate beneath a circular water vessel. Pot, boiler, pan, whatever. Arrange the rotating disk such that it can move axially on the drive shaft (something like a drill press quill, for example) and this control the space between the water vessel and the magnets. As mentioned in another comment, that could serve as an automatic governor for the windmill. The default position is at the greatest distance, increasing to the most efficient at peak input, with a simple spring loaded overspeed mechanism on the blades as you’ve already demonstrated. Use that to heat the largest insulted tank you can manage. It may take a while to come up to temperature, but it should be able to maintain temperature for quite a long time with a large enough reservoir.
How about building your own pump? Then you can use metal parts moving in the opposite direction of the magnets to heat and move the water in one go
That bread looks splendid!
It always is - Sandra makes the bread in our house
My approach would be to bend a long copper pipe in a circle so that it sits above all the magnets, and then suspending it on bolts above the rotor, in a way where you can easily adjust the distance to the magnets. This way you don't have to hold it, and you can even finetune the distance to use all the energy available before there is too much drag (i presume this way you can get it a lot closer to the magnets than by hand, should it be necessary). Maybe this is too far fetched but would it be a good idea to try and balance the wheel more? It looks pretty unbalanced at the moment, and i can only imagine how it would be at higher rpm's. I'm curious to see your next video on this interesting project!
That's a lot of work to just make a snack. 😄 Seriously, you have explained induction cooking to me and I now know that it works with aluminium, which I didn't realise. I love your methodology. 😊👍
I think the thing we learned is that crowd sourcing directions is not effective.
I think your first design with the pipe is on the right track. You may be familiar with the concept of a bubble pump, which is what drip coffee makers use to move the water from the reservoir up to the basket of coffee grounds. The water is simply in a tube with a 1-way valve, that runs over a heat source, and leads to the coffee basket. As the water boils, it makes bubbles, and because of the check valve, the bubbles (and increased pressure) can only travel upwards to the coffee basket, and the bubbles push the hot water along the pipe!
I think you could take advantage of this same effect, by having a tube coming in from a cool water reservoir, a check valve, and then your copper pipe over the magnets, then a tube leading off and up to a ‘hot water storage’ and as the water boiled in your copper pipe, it would be forced onwards, and more water could come in and be heated. No mechanical/electrical pumps involved!
coffee and eggs next time!
love this idea. But when the copper pipe is at 100°C good thermal isolation is absolutely necessary. With increased temperature, the heat transfer to the environment (fancy words for heat losses), is increased as well.
One of the best videos I've seen for a while, brilliant, well done, thankyou, all the best
I can't wait to see where this whole project goes. You're so smart, I just know it'll be great!
wow that's a nice and fancy egg cooker you got there!!
This is such a fun project to watch and learn along with you! Thanks so much for sharing. I'm excited to see where it goes, along with any other neat projects you work on. :)
I would do a closed copper pipe ring that has been flattened and filled with water over the whole ring on magnets. The thinner the air-gap between the pipe and the magnets the more efficient. And: to adjust the resulting drag force I would install an mecanism to adjust the air gap to the possible applied force of the windmill. Means: lots of wind, lots of power ->reducing the air gap between magnets and copper pipes. This can be done either electronically or mechanical by the help of a defined rpm of the flywheel.
Have fun! And thank you for sharing these interesting experiments!
It's a lot of fun watching you work; i love it. Make a little platform to hold the apparatus above the magnets already, and free your hands!
I'm pleased to see that you added some distance between the thermometer and the induction plate. I had worried that it was throwing off your results.
Loving this project and the arc into the future of where it will all lead to!
Tim, your ingenuity always amazes me. Your videos are so much fun. Thank you.
Make a copper coil that sits above the entire magnet ring. Flow water through it. The magnets will have more surface area to heat it.
Great that you test your ideas and show us what works or not. Keep going. Would like to see the frame and that egg looks amazing
Using a generator is not only lazy, its expensive as well especially as you have to pay for fuel and servicing etc. Unless of course its an electric one, which you could use as part of the process, for example running the pump. You could charge it up using the windmill and have a couple of solar panels as a back up. I think that you're going in the right direction with the induction process, you need to find a way of putting it under a metal tank or even a copper coil. Only because copper is a brilliant conductor of heat, thats why its used in hot water tanks to heat the water. As you say your just trying things out, I have no doubt you will find your own way after all you are a bit of a genious. 👍
So cool, really can't wait to see how this evolves!
Loving your channel. I've just been going over your engine shed design. You were playing around with slip-belt clutch designs. That reminded me of your magnet experiments for heating.
You could also make a clutch using those magnets on the flywheel, if you're interested. I used to work on boats, where (since the late '90s) such magnetic no-contact clutches were used as low vibration linkages.
If you face your magnet-imbedded flywheel discs along side a thick, conductive plate (thick copper works best), which is also on an axle, the magnets will induce an electromagnetic feedback. That's what happened in your heating experiments. In this case, though, the changing magnetic fields from the magnet disc induces an electrical current in the conductive material, which quickly converts back to a magnetic field. The closer the two plates get to each other, the more the magnets and the changing induced magnetic fields will grab each other, causing the pair to spin side-by-side. The faster they spin, the stronger the magnets, the closer they are, the more they grab.
Power one disc with the engine. Connect the other disc to the power tool of choice. Begin with them separated. Start the engine. When it's going, press the discs together, and the tool disc will spin. The closer you get, the stronger the magnetic pull. A no-contact clutch with almost no vibration!
These are great videos! 👏👏👏
*@Way Out West - Workshop Stuff*
5:23 *I think I know how that "Demagnetization" worked.*
You have a rapidly alternating magnetic field, and when you pulled away the metal, you ALSO decreased the magnetic strength.
That caused a Demagnetization effect: (Wiki: "Degaussing", title: "Pulse degaussing").
I have also been working in a metal workshop, it had a grinder with a magnetic bed, but after use the part was magnetic, but you could run a program that alternated the magnetic fields such that the metal part became "neutrally magnetic" again.
This is great. Please keep experimenting!
My only suggestion is to get the metal as close as possible to the moving magnets.
Even a small change in the gap can really affect the magnetic power.
Good luck. Rooting for you!
I like the suggested wrap around design. That way it can be used as a surface to rest a frying pan on. :)
Very fun to follow your progress and trails of different ideas.
I think your idea with a pipe with a cupper plate seems promising.
If the plate is too big, it will spread out the heat energy and radiate it in all directions, even downwards.
To minimize losses downwards, you may need a small gap between plate and magnets, also reduce airflow from magnetic wheel with adjustable brushes around the plate.
Then insulate the rest of the circuit. Maybe even an insulated box around the whole circuit, the tank, the spinning magnetic wheel too.
Don't worry too much with the losses this early in process.
When you get a better wheel that's less wobbly and smaller gap - the insulation will be more effective as well as the efficiency of heat production.
My guess is gearing up may be an issue. You sill want some heat in moderate winds.
Another wild magnet idea is it to make magnet pockets deeper and stack two or more magnets on top of each other. no idea if it improves things.
That may give you half the polarity switching /second (using same amount of magnets) but may increase strength and or reach of each field and more of your pipe may receive heat
My rule of thumb for heating, is that all heating is 100% efficient, because inefficiencies are heat generation. If you're trying to generate heat, you just need to find the easiest way to put energy into a system while having that system do as little with that energy as possible.
Man, that is all I would need to step this experiment up a few notches!!! You need to build a rack to support everything, and make it more precise, for a bit of balance.
Get rid of the entire disc and start with something that doesn't have a bunch of screw heads sticking out of it! A rack you can mount the copper pipe to in multiple locations, to keep from losing a finger or an eye!
I love this, you're on the right track! I can see the possibility of almost instant steam generation. We all know what that would mean...
I'm a former boiler technician for the U.S. military. You could get all your energy needs out of that windmill using this technology...
Wish I was there to help, but I'm sure you'll eventually get there... Just BE CAREFUL MAN!
Awesome, probably the first thing i would do too!😂 Also what a beautifully fresh egg.
If you made a circular coil of copper tube to follow the direction of the magnets, then you could vary the energy draw of the mechanism by moving the coil towards and away from the spinning magnets. Add in some sort of centrifugal-based feedback and you would have a speed-regulating governor. It might be more robust than the current blade-angle based governor you've got devised for the windmill, and it saves parts since the governor and the output are now one and the same!
perfect plan for our water wheel to heat water...better than making electricity
Hope you're feeling better Tim. Thanks for the video 😊
Thank you - yes, I'm slowly recovering..
Love your Chanel you explain these experiments clearly an with touch of humour keep Chanel up I'm just about to surquibe
Eagerly awaiting additional tests, prototypes, or deployments.
Got an egg cooked, nice!
Thanks Tim 👍💪✌
Such fun from the mad boffin, Tim. Keep up the great experiments. Your videos inspire me so much....to do nothing really but wait for the next instalment. Riveting stuff always...Oh, copper rivets, might they be useful? Probably not. Anyway, the best of luck, Tim and I hope you are on the mend.
Lenz's law in action! Very cool.
I think the copper heating element needs surface area. You probably could easily knock together a box based on a cheapish copper heat sink and two fittings on each end to increase the surface area water can interact with. Also, I think you don't want to mix aluminum and copper pipes, so a copper heating element leading to copper pipes is safe enough.
I might suggest thin copper tubes that, when coiled the same diameter as the magnet wheel (one pipe in depth, and 2 to 3 pipes wide, or however many you would need to get the same width of the magnets). The small pipes would allow the water additional circulation in the heat while traveling through the pipe.
turn the copper coil to match the radius of the magnets. make a jig to hold it maybe. Interesting stuff!
Copper is better for heat transfer, and has a higher melting point than aluminium. There's a reason pots are copper and not aluminium!
If you're going all-in on the making stuff from copper and aluminium, though, I'd suggest getting a proper furnace and just casting it from whatever scrap you can get. You can turn beer cans into useful stuff!
Also, nice to see another in the series of you trying to comprehend electromagnetism so you can use it to heat your house. It should be much quieter than grinding steel plates together.
I enjoy watching your content.
Looking forward to seeing more progress on your overall project. 👍🤠
that bread looks delicious
The best arrangement for magnets & rotation is a generator; off-the-shelf proven tech. Even an old car starter motor or solenoid would do
So the the information. Givin. Is alote.
So you can do multiple test. ))))
And see people in joy your contents. . So keep doing more test.
)) make your channel help others world wide.
God bless my friend. Pray your getting better. Mick Australia 🇦🇺
Thank you my friend
😊
Ok my view the plate needs suits on both sides to remove the heat
Slits
Air or water flow over or around. God bless
Now your talking cooling a cpu computer. Need ad my friend.
I would recommend looking into computer liquid cooling. They are designed to be extremely efficient at moving heat away from one place to another with water channels. You probably can get a used one for quite cheap for experimenting.
Thanks for posting
smaller magnets over the same circumference would result in more magnetic flips
Focusing on "flips" is an erroneous path of inquiry. If you take a single magnet and run it past a bulk conductor it will experience heating proportional to the power it took to move that magnet. The same effect of eddy current heating occurs with exactly 0 flips. All that is required is that any given spotin the conductor experience a change in the magnetic flux over time.
@@AtlasReburdened Strictly speaking you are correct, but very misleading.
Consider for the sake of argument two arrangements: one has a single continuous magnet along the perimeter of the wheel (N up, S down), the other has the magnet divided into sectors that are alternating N up+S down / N down + S up.
The former will have no eddy current heating (the magnetic field is unchanging when the magnet spins); the latter will have a fair bit of eddy current heating.
For maximum eddy current heating you want the highest change in magnetic flux possible per unit time... and one of the simplest ways to accomplish that is to add more poles (until other effects start dominating, of course.)
Tim... let's take a look at radiators! You'll notice that they have a large surface area in order to heat up as much air as they can. I think that applies here too, even a simple setup could be much more efficient if you added several copper "fins" for the water to pass over, or perhaps a copper coil inside of the pipe. I think the reason copper has been working so well isn't necessarily because it is heated quickly by the magnets (I'll be honest, I don't know much about that), but because it is a very good conductor of heat. Best of luck with your project, it is fascinating!
I second this more surface area in contact with the water gives more heat transfer if you could somehow make a box with the plate you made and then added Fins or channels for the water to go through inside the box and then ran water through the box it may work better just like a radiator! I probably just reexplained a radiator if so I'm sorry but something to look up would be computer water cooling. It's basically what your trying to do here but on reverse (cooling instead of heating) but technically the technology still applies
What you don't understand is, thin copper will not produce as much heat, as the thicker copper does. The eddy currents are increased by increasing copper density, thereby imparting more heat into the water... This is what actually heats the water, not the copper itself...
@@kmspader2239 with magnetic induction, a solid block of copper with channels inside for water flow, would be far more efficient than any kind of pipe with fins, inside or out... It's not the metal producing the heat, it's the magnetic flux within the metal that is....
If you could hold it as close to the magnets as the copper or aluminum, steel would likely heat up much faster due to hysteresis and not just eddy current. That being said, you should stick to copper for this application. You are correct that this kind of setup is very forgiving for matching the load to the power source; you essentially have a water cooled magnetic torque converter here. You could probably imagine such a thing being used in an automatic transmission, except in this case the load isn't allowed to move at all, so things just heat up :-)
4:02 The drag you experiencing is work being done: speed multiplied by torque. The more torque, the more energy is converted to heat (through eddy currents)
Exactly - but where is the sweet spot?
@@wayoutwest-workshopstuff6299 The sweet spot depends on the geometry of the windmill blades rather than the heater itself. The mechanical load should be such that the windmill speeds operates in the best efficiency range. And this also depends on the current wind speed.
Long story short: For maximum energy output, you would need a controller. (In the old times this was done manually). I would design it to have as much drag to almost stall the mill at full wind speed and then release the torque to find the sweet spot.
(This problem is not unique to windmills. Solar has to deal with the exact same difficulty. Trading current versus voltage. Controllers that can handle this are called MPPT which stands for maximum power point tracking.)
@@PermireFabrica Thanks!
Tim, I'm case nobody else has raised this: For a greater (effective) rotation speed, have you considered making multiple heating plates then having them contra-rotate over the magnets?
Ah yes, the flying magnet issue. When I built a pancake generator for a wind turbine, all the magnets were glued down with Araldite and the whole disc was embedded in clear resin. there was even a ring of wire rope embedded outside the magnets and in the resin! Flying magnets are a real thing. Who knew?
To get the magnetic field to flip faster, you should try making a larger wheel that way you can have more magnets. It can go the same RPM and have more magnets travel past the plate at a higher rate due to leverage. It's kinda like how they arrange songs on a record where the louder songs are towards the edge and the softer ones are towards the center. It's all at 33 1/3 RPM but the outer edge is able to have the groove hitting the stylus faster than towards the middle and as-such is able to have more information fed to the stylus meaning it can have better sound quality and better frequency response.
This is a very cool idea if you can get "free" rotational energy from wind or something. If the magnets do get hot they will demagnetise. They have to get pretty hot for that to happen but they will get hot eventually if you run this thing for hours and hours and you don't draw enough heat away from the heating plate.
Very informative videos Tim. Enjoy them very much.
Tim
Best egg sandwich ever!
Lovely to see you
the more electrical conductivity the material has, the better it will work, I think. This is why motors use copper windings, and if cost is not an object, silver wire is used (silver conducts electricity better than copper. yes it does.) You will never ever completely stop the magnet disk with magnetic interaction alone, because as the magnets slow down, their ability to induce a current in the metal goes away, which creates less resistance on the movement of the magnets. This is a type of brake that can never ever lock up, and magnetic brakes using this exact principle are used on F1 race cars.
Thank you - yes, that makes sense
some notes on convective circulation, pipe diameter will help for drag but also column height.. the effect will be stronger if there is a long column of very hot water and a long column of very cold water
the heater should be near to the bottom of the column so that the column of heated water can be taller, though perhaps not too near the bottom that it might reverse flow, and whatever heat exchanger is used to move heat indoors should be designed so that the water is cooled high in the column so that the cold column is as tall as possible, like for example using a wall-height radiator design rather than one that sits low to the floor
oh and regarding design considerations of the magnet wheel, youre correct that the exact design doesnt matter much for efficiency because there will be a 1:1 relationship between the amount of magnetic drag and the amount of heat produced, but like you said you can get that sweet spot of the right amount of drag to happen sooner, essentially tuning the rpm-torque response of the magnet wheel, which means you could tune the wheel such that mechanical gearing is not necessary.. your design goal should be that the wheel reaches drag equilibrium near the rpm where your windmill is most efficient, like for example so that the windmill turns nearly as fast as it can but not so fast that the governor mechanism kicks in..
really ideally the governor mechanism would somehow throttle the induction heater so that the windmill is slowed down by harvesting more energy from it rather than slowed by wasting its energy with the blades, but that would be much too complicated to implement
Making a magnet carrier that can stand higher speeds is an interesting challenge. Maybe a bicycle wheel can be used if one can be sources with a large enough diameter?
Since your magnets are disk shaped, cutting slots into the rim of a bike wheel slightly shorter than the diameter of the magnets would allow slotting them in from the inside without the risk of them flying away outwards when it spins. Ring shaped wooden plates either side of the magnets (clamping onto them by bolts with nuts) could be used to keep them aligned and to prevent them from falling out when not in use but they wouldn't take any of the radial load.
Problem is on ordinary bike wheels the spokes will get in the way of both the magnets and potentially alignment plates so it might not work as well as I'm thinking...
Maybe enough of the spokes can be removed to fit the magnets and alignment plates be placed over the portion of the magnets that stick through the rim? Removing spokes might weaken the wheel too much to hold the magnets at speed though...
Interesting challenge indeed.
I look forward to see what you could up with next
good job on the retainer plate, that stuck out to me as a really important improvement from your earlier version.. looks good. it occurs to me that an improvement might consider the size of wheel (and number of magnets as a result). if you had a much smaller wheel with half the magnets. I should think that magnetic drag would be the force you need wind (or your drill press) to overcome. with some gearing to vary the speed and torque.. you could perhaps so much the same with less magnets (they just go twice as fast.. half the magnets but with double the RPM. so the main reason to make it bigger past a basic level would be I think to gain surface area of magnets and perhaps to have multiple heating plates with radiators.. but... this might be an opportunity. to creat your variability in how much heat you gather but engaging say heating plate modules 1... or 1 and 2, or 1, 2, 3.. or more... just one more idea. its possible to generate electricity in a similar setup with a minimum of changes.. you could have heating plates and an electricity generating module... good for powering a simple controller and even a pump perhaps.
I don't have any practical experience with magnetic induction to back this up, but I suspect you'd be better off bending a copper pipe into a curve to follow the magnets, and then maybe flattening it out a bit to get more of the copper closer to the magnets, rather than using a plate soldered to the pipe. And then once you have the wind power set up you can adjust the length of pipe to match the power it generates. (I imagine you know that copper work hardens with bending but can be softened again by annealing.)
But it'd be worth an experiment to compare! Easy for me to say since I don't have to do the work. ;) You'd definitely want a way to fix the pipe/plate in place for the test rather than holding.
I reckon a circle of pipe above the magnets would be your best bet.
No chance of the drag stopping the rotation because the drag is proportion to rotational velocity, as it slows down, drag due to opposing magnetic fields decreases and it should find it's own optimal speed depending on the power available.
Of course! I missed that one. Thanks.
Nice sandwich made in a very entertaining way
how about a raceway around the circumference of the disc on either side of the magnets, so you could use ball bearings, nylon ones?, or little wheels under the frying pan / pipe or whatever you are trying to heat. That could allow you to keep the item the right distance from the top of the magnets and provide a steadier way to hold it perhaps?
I can see it now. The windmill provides pressurised steam. That in turn is used to power a compressed steam train.
To de- magnetise iron, you cycle the magnetic field and reduce the field while doing so. So you created the perfect de- magnetizer when slowly removing something made of iron from your disk.
That was a lovely fresh egg.
What you call "drag" is exactly what you need to capture the mechanical power into heat. It shows that mechanical work is being done. Without that "drag", you're not capturing any of the mechanical power, and all the energy is lost to friction in your spinning mechanism. So, you want to maximise that "drag" by making the air gap as small as possible.
Well, it should still turn, right? Maximize it and there is no movement... 😜
@@IvoTichelaar The amount of resistance you can push through depends on the motor. So the more resistance the motor can overcome the better. More resistance with a bigger motor would be hotter.
@@IvoTichelaar That's not a physical possibility. If it's not moving, it can't do mechanical work, and so there can be no drag.
I think circulation will work better with heat source at the bottom of your loop. Instead of towards the top. The temperature difference will be greater. At the moment you’re heating hot water towards the top which is where hot water wants to be.
I failed this test. But I’m still mesmerized
I 100% admit my ignorance of how either magnets or induction heating work. Thank you for building this interesting gadget.
Build a mounting for the metal plate so you can lower it and drag does not become a wristbreaker, I would think a copper pipe bent in a circle over the magnets connected to a water supply that circulates the water would be a seriously impressive experiment. Get the water to 80degrees and circulate it through a radiator. Voila heating free if it is connected to a windmill. Or cheap heating if it is run by a 500watt motor that is strong enough to power the disc through the drag. I am surprised with the drag being so strong using copper, maybe another material would be more effective, less drag.