Hi Alex, Thanks for your reply. I'm thinking about using bike hubs as well. I'm also getting a rivet tool. Thank you also for your informative videos. They are truly helpful. Vicki
Hey bro, that's really sharp. I fool around with recycable plastic and aluminum bottles and cans. But your giant windmills blew me away! I'm gonna give it a try, lyk how it turns out!
Vivalaleta Godfrey Exactly. I use high flange hubs when I find them, especially for the extra large 6’ pinwheels. Though some of those hubs can be challenging if the flanges are really canted inwards and thus the end isn’t very flat. But really... use what ya got.
That idea would work great, but adds a bit of complexity that I didn't want to address in this video. But I'd love to see some pics/video of it some day if you ever get it made. For my 4x big pinwheels that I made as public art, the mounts were fixed (did not rotate to the wind), although I could manually turn them to face whichever way I chose. That simplified construction and kept the budget reasonable. Plus, with as big as the pinwheels were, the size of the tail section necessary to keep them facing into the wind was going to be huge. Alternatively, I considered designing the pinwheels such that they were on the downwind side of a vertical axis, that way the pinwheels themselves were their own "tail". But that's a subject for another video one day. Good luck!
What if we fasten both the end on either side of Bycycle wheel hub in the spoke hole.. I mean put Bycycle hub in the middle and metal sheet at bothe end riveted..??
I tried that, thinking it would be more solid construction. But those thin corners that get folded in towards the center... that's where I had failures around those rivets. I found that if the sheet metal was thick (rigid) enough, that attaching to both sides was unnecessary.
Ahhh... yes, that's a whole different thing to try and get it to turn into the wind, and a bigger subject than I can describe here. But fellow UA-camr Kevin Caron has some videos you should check out on that very subject, including this one: ua-cam.com/video/tbc-gLk1IBE/v-deo.html Aside from some sort of bearing to allow the rotation, you will also need a tail with sufficient surface area to keep the pinwheel (or other kinetic art piece) pointed into the wind. Some of my other videos show examples of that, though I don't have any videos (yet) that describe exactly how to make that happen.
Thank you so much for sharing this, an excellent project. What spinning mechanism did you use for your larger installation? My wheel appears too large for the bicycle spindle. Thank you again.
stephen davies My larger pinwheels also use the bicycle hub for the spinning mechanism, just as I described. The main difference with the larger ones was that I used an additional layer of thicker aluminum to reinforce where the pinwheel center is riveted to the hub flange. But even my large (6ft across) pinwheels were just fine spinning, bolted to the support on just one end of a relatively thin front wheel axle. And like I showed in the video, once the pinwheel and hub parts are connected into one piece, I just attached the axle end on the back side of the pinwheel to some other structure to hold it up in the wind. But I didn’t spend any time talking about that structure... for the extra large ones I used custom made vertical steel supports that had a short horizontal section at the top to which the whole pinwheel was bolted via the axle. The short horizontal section ensured the pinwheel would spin free of the vertical part. Not sure if I explained that well enough. But thanks for the question.
@@ARodDMD Thank you so much for your prompt and incredibly helpful reply. I am incredibly appreciative of your time and expertise. Thank you once again.
Hi Alex, I've just started making pinwheels. Some out of sheet metal. So far, the largest is 22" square. I would like to add thrust ball bearings to hopefully make them spin easier but I don't know which type is best to use. Looking for some advice. Vicki :-)
Hmmm... I know a whole lot about bearings used in bicycles, but not much about other types of bearings. The great thing about using a bike hub for this pinwheel projects is that the bike hub already has simple & durable bearings around an axle that can handle the loads quite easily. Most bike wheels use simple cup-and-cone bearings that are great at handling lateral forces that the pinwheel will generate. With the thrust bearing, which i think is better for axial loads, you’ll need to create a housing to contain the bearing (or weld/rivet it to the bearing surface?), and something to be the axle. And since the pinwheel really doesn’t have much of an axial load on it at all (e.g. a load directed parallel and centered on the axle of the shaft), it’s probably not ideal for this use. But honestly, I’ve not worked with thrust bearings much. Good luck!
Thank you for this. Looking for a hub dynamo to do integrate into a pin wheel and use recycled offset printing aluminium sheets. Was wondering if it is a good idea to let the ⅔ cuts end in a small drilled hole to stop the metal from cracking. Question: what do you think delivers more power: pinwheel on hub dynamo or wrapped spokes on hubdynamo?
My bigger pinwheels did tend to crack around those cuts over time. Never enough to be a problem, but after 3 years in the weather there was a lot of wear and tear. So yeah, a small rounded hole there would likely prevent that cracking. As to the power... the large pinwheels did catch a LOT of wind because of their diameter. And my guess is that the force turning the pinwheel was more than the with my bicycle wheel dynamos (with the spokes/foil blades). But the RPMs were lower for the pinwheels. So it’s a trade off... higher RPM with lower torque on the bicycle wheels, vs. lower RPM but higher torque with the pinwheel design. I never tried putting a dynamo hub in a pinwheel. It’s be an interesting experiment. I’m sure there’s some math out there that could estimate the differences, but there are a lot of variables. And since my projects are more done for art than for science, I never delved too deeply into the power side of it. Good luck!
Hello@@ARodDMD and thank you for your reply. I'll know more after trying. Results I'll post on my channel about wilderness guide perspectives and subarctic offgrid practicalities: ua-cam.com/video/QuDpmB4cQXg/v-deo.html
No, I keep the bearings in. Once I bolt the axle end to something solid, then the whole thing can spin on the existing bearings. If you took out the bearings you could mount some sort of fixed shaft through the hub and then use external bearings around that shaft, but that seems like extra work and cost. And even basic bicycle bearings are more than strong enough for this sort of thing (think of how much force a large adult is putting on the axle/bearings when it is on a bicycle). One of my extra large pinwheels spent 3+ years outside on a very thin 8mm axle with no significant issues.
What was it that you used to attach the pole to the pinwheel?
4 роки тому+1
Thanks for sharing ! I was searching for that without expecting to find how to do one actually ☺ I would love to know the specs of the metal sheet you used for the biggest ones like on Spinning Yarns. I'm thinking about doing a 2x2 meters pinwheel
Timothé Grière - here’s some details: The largest ones I made were based on 4’ (123cm) square pieces of aluminum, which yielded a pinwheel that was 172cm from tip to tip (the diagonal length of the original square). That aluminum was 1.7mm thick, and required an additional central reinforcing circular aluminum plate approximately 20cm in diameter and 3mm thick. If you start going much bigger in overall diameter (2m or more as you mentioned), then you’d want to use a particularly robust hub, something with a beefy axle and wide-diameter spoke flange. Good luck!
4 роки тому
Thank you so much for the details @@ARodDMD! I was thinking of a 2m diagonal but it might be too long. Maybe I'll reconsider for 4' square like you cause it seems already big enough 😊
My insurance agent lives next door and hw loves to find ways to raise my rates, can't imagine what he would think when he saw a super sized spinning razor blade in my yard
My local big-box hardware store sells mostly 25ga (0.018", or ~0.5mm) aluminum sheets, which is what I used for this video. For bigger diameter pinwheels, I needed thicker metal, and had to go to a specialty metal supply shop. Those were probably 2x as thick (maybe 18 or 16ga). Obviously thinner metal is easier to work with and lighter, but less durable, but thicker metal can get really hard to work with and is only necessary for the really massive pinwheels. My recommendation is to go as thin as you can without it being too flimsy. There are ways to add bends/creases to the metal to increase the stiffness of the pinwheel. I may discuss those points in a future video.
Sure... though don't expect this to generate a whole lot of power. I have another video (ua-cam.com/video/YW4d2dJYq5Q/v-deo.html) where I used a dynamo bicycle hub (i.e. a generator built into the bicycle hub instelf), to make a windmill that powers itself to light up. That hub is designed to generate only a few watts of power at 6V. It's not much. But depending upon the application, that could be plenty. And with the right wiring and other hardware, it could be used to charge USB devices or similar. If you were doing this for power generation, you would want the pinwheel to be able to rotate to always face the wind (thus you'd need a "tail" section to keep it pointed upwind). It adds some complexity, but is definitely do-able. My art is more about fun than function, but good luck!
It’s aluminum (thin steel would work too I suppose, but the light weight and stiffness of the aluminum makes it great for this). Check some of the other comments for details about the thickness of the sheet metal.
Too Funny! Liked your presentation, simple n to the point.
Good job Bud.
i like your style of video, it's just really to the point and you demonstrate what you're talking about, it's a good style.
Thanks for to teach, its amazing and beautiful your Work tha Metallurgy.
Unbelievable only 15k views? It should be more like 15 millions views. Amazing project subbed...!
That is fantastic. I dont work with steel much but damn i want to give that a go! Thanks for the inspiration.
thanks for sharing this beautiful idea.
Those are Awesome ! Love it.
Thanks! Just put up a few more of these recently. 1 in Monroe, GA, and 3 in Covington, GA: ua-cam.com/video/BDp94KN93C0/v-deo.html
Very nice, the way you share your craft. Thanks
These are cool. Thank you for sharing!
Hi Alex,
Thanks for your reply. I'm thinking about using bike hubs as well. I'm also getting a rivet tool. Thank you also for your informative videos. They are truly helpful. Vicki
Hey bro, that's really sharp. I fool around with recycable plastic and aluminum bottles and cans. But your giant windmills blew me away! I'm gonna give it a try, lyk how it turns out!
Shaka Matt. Can you make some videos of making art with the bottles and cans? Mahalo~
those are cool man
High flange hubs will give you the same center hole but the rivets would be more spread out and stable.
Vivalaleta Godfrey Exactly. I use high flange hubs when I find them, especially for the extra large 6’ pinwheels. Though some of those hubs can be challenging if the flanges are really canted inwards and thus the end isn’t very flat. But really... use what ya got.
Nice project! I'd suspect you could also put one of these pinwheels onto a weather vane setup too. I think I might have to give that a try.
That idea would work great, but adds a bit of complexity that I didn't want to address in this video. But I'd love to see some pics/video of it some day if you ever get it made. For my 4x big pinwheels that I made as public art, the mounts were fixed (did not rotate to the wind), although I could manually turn them to face whichever way I chose. That simplified construction and kept the budget reasonable. Plus, with as big as the pinwheels were, the size of the tail section necessary to keep them facing into the wind was going to be huge. Alternatively, I considered designing the pinwheels such that they were on the downwind side of a vertical axis, that way the pinwheels themselves were their own "tail". But that's a subject for another video one day. Good luck!
Awesome project! Would galvanized be to heavy?
I like this! now if you have the blades on the pinwheels folded in the a different direction will it spin the other way around?
That's exactly right... essentially it is a mirrored version.
What if we fasten both the end on either side of Bycycle wheel hub in the spoke hole.. I mean put Bycycle hub in the middle and metal sheet at bothe end riveted..??
I tried that, thinking it would be more solid construction. But those thin corners that get folded in towards the center... that's where I had failures around those rivets. I found that if the sheet metal was thick (rigid) enough, that attaching to both sides was unnecessary.
great stuff, thanks for the inspiration , what if i needed it to turn /spin according to the wind direction?
Ahhh... yes, that's a whole different thing to try and get it to turn into the wind, and a bigger subject than I can describe here. But fellow UA-camr Kevin Caron has some videos you should check out on that very subject, including this one: ua-cam.com/video/tbc-gLk1IBE/v-deo.html
Aside from some sort of bearing to allow the rotation, you will also need a tail with sufficient surface area to keep the pinwheel (or other kinetic art piece) pointed into the wind. Some of my other videos show examples of that, though I don't have any videos (yet) that describe exactly how to make that happen.
I've made one of these - only smaller for my garden, I encountered a few issues, can you give me some tips/advice Dr ARod?
Thank you so much for sharing this, an excellent project. What spinning mechanism did you use for your larger installation? My wheel appears too large for the bicycle spindle. Thank you again.
stephen davies My larger pinwheels also use the bicycle hub for the spinning mechanism, just as I described. The main difference with the larger ones was that I used an additional layer of thicker aluminum to reinforce where the pinwheel center is riveted to the hub flange. But even my large (6ft across) pinwheels were just fine spinning, bolted to the support on just one end of a relatively thin front wheel axle. And like I showed in the video, once the pinwheel and hub parts are connected into one piece, I just attached the axle end on the back side of the pinwheel to some other structure to hold it up in the wind.
But I didn’t spend any time talking about that structure...
for the extra large ones I used custom made vertical steel supports that had a short horizontal section at the top to which the whole pinwheel was bolted via the axle. The short horizontal section ensured the pinwheel would spin free of the vertical part. Not sure if I explained that well enough. But thanks for the question.
@@ARodDMD Thank you so much for your prompt and incredibly helpful reply. I am incredibly appreciative of your time and expertise. Thank you once again.
Hi Alex, I've just started making pinwheels. Some out of sheet metal. So far, the largest is 22" square. I would like to add thrust ball bearings to hopefully make them spin easier but I don't know which type is best to use. Looking for some advice. Vicki :-)
Hmmm... I know a whole lot about bearings used in bicycles, but not much about other types of bearings. The great thing about using a bike hub for this pinwheel projects is that the bike hub already has simple & durable bearings around an axle that can handle the loads quite easily. Most bike wheels use simple cup-and-cone bearings that are great at handling lateral forces that the pinwheel will generate. With the thrust bearing, which i think is better for axial loads, you’ll need to create a housing to contain the bearing (or weld/rivet it to the bearing surface?), and something to be the axle. And since the pinwheel really doesn’t have much of an axial load on it at all (e.g. a load directed parallel and centered on the axle of the shaft), it’s probably not ideal for this use. But honestly, I’ve not worked with thrust bearings much.
Good luck!
Thank you for this. Looking for a hub dynamo to do integrate into a pin wheel and use recycled offset printing aluminium sheets. Was wondering if it is a good idea to let the ⅔ cuts end in a small drilled hole to stop the metal from cracking.
Question: what do you think delivers more power: pinwheel on hub dynamo or wrapped spokes on hubdynamo?
My bigger pinwheels did tend to crack around those cuts over time. Never enough to be a problem, but after 3 years in the weather there was a lot of wear and tear. So yeah, a small rounded hole there would likely prevent that cracking.
As to the power... the large pinwheels did catch a LOT of wind because of their diameter. And my guess is that the force turning the pinwheel was more than the with my bicycle wheel dynamos (with the spokes/foil blades). But the RPMs were lower for the pinwheels. So it’s a trade off... higher RPM with lower torque on the bicycle wheels, vs. lower RPM but higher torque with the pinwheel design.
I never tried putting a dynamo hub in a pinwheel. It’s be an interesting experiment. I’m sure there’s some math out there that could estimate the differences, but there are a lot of variables. And since my projects are more done for art than for science, I never delved too deeply into the power side of it.
Good luck!
Hello@@ARodDMD and thank you for your reply. I'll know more after trying. Results I'll post on my channel about wilderness guide perspectives and subarctic offgrid practicalities:
ua-cam.com/video/QuDpmB4cQXg/v-deo.html
Do you take the bearings out of your hubs? I’ve seen some makers of windmills taking them out. Just curious on your thoughts.
No, I keep the bearings in. Once I bolt the axle end to something solid, then the whole thing can spin on the existing bearings. If you took out the bearings you could mount some sort of fixed shaft through the hub and then use external bearings around that shaft, but that seems like extra work and cost. And even basic bicycle bearings are more than strong enough for this sort of thing (think of how much force a large adult is putting on the axle/bearings when it is on a bicycle). One of my extra large pinwheels spent 3+ years outside on a very thin 8mm axle with no significant issues.
What was it that you used to attach the pole to the pinwheel?
Thanks for sharing ! I was searching for that without expecting to find how to do one actually ☺ I would love to know the specs of the metal sheet you used for the biggest ones like on Spinning Yarns. I'm thinking about doing a 2x2 meters pinwheel
Timothé Grière - here’s some details: The largest ones I made were based on 4’ (123cm) square pieces of aluminum, which yielded a pinwheel that was 172cm from tip to tip (the diagonal length of the original square). That aluminum was 1.7mm thick, and required an additional central reinforcing circular aluminum plate approximately 20cm in diameter and 3mm thick. If you start going much bigger in overall diameter (2m or more as you mentioned), then you’d want to use a particularly robust hub, something with a beefy axle and wide-diameter spoke flange. Good luck!
Thank you so much for the details @@ARodDMD! I was thinking of a 2m diagonal but it might be too long. Maybe I'll reconsider for 4' square like you cause it seems already big enough 😊
My insurance agent lives next door and hw loves to find ways to raise my rates, can't imagine what he would think when he saw a super sized spinning razor blade in my yard
what gauge aluminum you would recommend for a 2x2' sheet? Thanks for sharing.
My local big-box hardware store sells mostly 25ga (0.018", or ~0.5mm) aluminum sheets, which is what I used for this video. For bigger diameter pinwheels, I needed thicker metal, and had to go to a specialty metal supply shop. Those were probably 2x as thick (maybe 18 or 16ga). Obviously thinner metal is easier to work with and lighter, but less durable, but thicker metal can get really hard to work with and is only necessary for the really massive pinwheels. My recommendation is to go as thin as you can without it being too flimsy. There are ways to add bends/creases to the metal to increase the stiffness of the pinwheel. I may discuss those points in a future video.
Can I attach this to mini generator?
Sure... though don't expect this to generate a whole lot of power. I have another video (ua-cam.com/video/YW4d2dJYq5Q/v-deo.html) where I used a dynamo bicycle hub (i.e. a generator built into the bicycle hub instelf), to make a windmill that powers itself to light up. That hub is designed to generate only a few watts of power at 6V. It's not much. But depending upon the application, that could be plenty. And with the right wiring and other hardware, it could be used to charge USB devices or similar. If you were doing this for power generation, you would want the pinwheel to be able to rotate to always face the wind (thus you'd need a "tail" section to keep it pointed upwind). It adds some complexity, but is definitely do-able. My art is more about fun than function, but good luck!
@@ARodDMD okay, I'll try to attach with bldc 24v 5A, thanks
What steel is this pinwheel made of?
It’s aluminum (thin steel would work too I suppose, but the light weight and stiffness of the aluminum makes it great for this). Check some of the other comments for details about the thickness of the sheet metal.