HOW TO: WindWheel. Cheap & easy yard art project with a bicycle wheel at home
Вставка
- Опубліковано 23 тра 2020
- How to turn an old bicycle wheel into a simple piece of wind-driven kinetic art.
Stuck at home and need a quarantine project? This one is easy enough to do with the kids, too!
Music: Bensound.com - Розваги
Excelente trabajo y útil 🌵🇺🇾
GENIO !!!!
Just a bit of help if you don't mind. The next time you make one of these try to make the water bottle scoops more like a scoop you use for ice in a hotel, this will give you more space to connect it to the wheel and can make it more stable.
This looks like a great way to keep my kids busy for a while. Thanks for the video A Rod. Looks like life is treating you well
Thanks! Glad to hear from you. Life is good. A lot grayer, a lot heavier... but still a daily bike commuter.
You have a really developed a cool foundation to work with. I wont use the duck tape, but I will use a smaller wheel -- either a 24" or 20". I will head over to the dollar store and look at flour/sugar scoops. If I space them right I will drill holes on the rim then fasten with small screws. The bearings on the rim will allow this to run forever.
That sounds great! Any scoop will do... cans, measuring cups, etc. And yeah, screws or rivets would be super easy and durable. Just keep it all balanced well, and it will work. But bear in mind, with a smaller the wheel, the physics start working against you a little:
The lever arm gets shorter, but the mass, friction, and scoop size stay the same, so it takes more work for the wind to get the same rotation out of the wheel. In my experience, smaller wheels still spin, but it may take a bigger gust to get it going, or it may just get blown around before it gets spinning. Adding a weight near/under the center (but not rotating with the wheel, can help). Also, keeping the scoops light yields better movement in light winds, and good speeds in strong winds. Heavy scoops definitely slow down the movement in light winds and can be harder to start. But the added momentum tends to keep it spinning well through changing winds. And in strong winds, heavy scoops are kind of amazing to watch (as long as it's balanced). But that's all part of the fun of it... trying things and seeing what works. Good luck!
Hot glue gun would stick things down and look tidier IMO, Plus it's waterproof and less bulky.
真的很美麗....
Do you think zip ties would work to hold the bottle tops on ? I made one like this one but made from sheet metal cones that i made. love your work thank you for your videos.
rjtuhuh1 I bet zip ties would work great! (and would look better than the tape). Of course there are lots of ways to something similar. I just wanted to show one simple method here.
@@ARodDMD Yup Great ty...
Thank you for all your help and your quick response time.
would it spin if you used the metallic tape like you did for the horizontal spinners you make?
Yeah, metallic tape works fine too. There's lots of ways this could be done, and no one way is correct. The point of this build was to just make something cheaply with common household items and without the need for special fasteners. Some people have suggested just hot glue, but even bolts and rivets could work, especially if using metal cans for the scoops.
How do you hang them. I made two like yours but put them on pipes and they dont spin in the wind but spin easily by hand
Most importantly, the axle bearings need to be relatively loose to allow the light wind pressure to overcome the static friction in the bearings. On some bike wheels that bearing tension can be adjusted with the use of special tools called cone-wrenches. I'm sure there are UA-cam tutorials on using cone wrenches to adjust axle bearings. You want the bearings way looser than you would normally have it for use on an actual bicycle. Many high-end wheels with cartridge bearings can not have their bearing tension adjusted looser, and thus for this application the cheaper the wheel the better. As for other recommendations, I suggest you hang the wheel with something that won't spin (i.e. a coat hanger wire or something similar), and do not use a string. A string will get too much windup and may not let the bearings turn. If you do use a string, a shorter one will keep windup to a minimum. Another trick is to add weight hanging underneath the center of the wheel (I like using 1.25 or 2.5lb small dumbell weights). That additional non-spinning weight adds some static inertia that encourages the wind to spin the wheel instead just pushing the wheel sideways in the wind. Good luck!
@@ARodDMD cool thank you for answering my questions. I have one more though. How do you attach the coat hanger.
@@joanrule8152 If you look closely at the final 20s or so of the video, especially right 6:29, you'll see I'm holding it from what's called the "quick-release skewer" that goes through the HOLLOW axle. I then hung that from a small stiff wire (and I also attached a string despite my previous recommendation) to that piece to hang it from. But, if you used a bicycle wheel with a SOLID axle then you won't have the luxury of using a quick-release skewer. In that case you have to get creative to attach something to the axle to hang it from. In the past I've used a threaded nut turned onto the end of the axle to secure a strong string to it, and for others I've simply drilled a hole through the axle and then put a coat hanger through that.
(FYI, despite my previous recommendation, using a string is fine, it just tends to windup a lot which can interfere with the smooth spinning).
well..because you didn't clean up the bearings, and remove ALL the grease, clean out the race and hub and the OIL the bearings...the wheel doesn't turn very freely and winds up the sring instead,,whinc will impart an opposite force on the wnd spinner..with clean, oiled bearings,
you won't be fighting the string and hence it toy will spin easier, truer and will turn in lower wind speeds and turn smoother in higher wind speeds..
Anything else?
Yes, Cleaning and repacking the bearings always helps. And oil instead of grease can help things spin more freely because of the lower viscosity of the oil. But I find that’s not necessary most of the time, and oil will wash out from the weather far sooner than grease will.
With standard cup-and-cone bearings, what helps the most is making sure the bearings are just a tiny bit loose.
String windup can be a real problem if the bearings are not silky smooth. That can be countered by hanging the wheel with something more rigid (or using the axle or quick release to directly attach it to something rigid... there’s no string-windup if there is no string).
Sometimes I add more weight directly under the wheel and attached to the axle (a 2.5lb/5.5kg from a weight-lifting set for example). The weight helps in several ways... the centered extra mass resists the sideways push of the wind, making sure more wind energy is put into spinning the wheel while also keeping the whole thing from swaying too much. Also, the extra mass can resist string windup a little since there’s more static inertia in the string/axle part.
Thanks for your comments!
The duck tape will weather and come off and look like crap
Yup. Cheap and simple. That’s kind of the idea. My goal was to make this project be the simplest and cheapest version that it could be, and accessible to the widest group of people.
If you want to make a more durable version, go right ahead. If you do, please share your video.
The wheel from this video is still working two years later in my backyard without any maintenance.
Maybe use cable ties instead of tape?
sure! cable ties, epoxy, hot glue, rivets, bolts, screws... whatever works. Lots of options. Just keep things balanced, and it'll generally work great.
I'll pass on this ugly wind spinner! Oh an by the way that is not how you balance a wheel, next time use a lawnmower blade balancer
Wait... your suggestion seems like extra work. Would you remove the axle and bearings from the hub of this wheel to then attach it to spindle of the lawnmower blade balancer? I don't see why you'd do that extra work when the wheel is already on an axle with bearings. Just clamp the axle parallel to the ground, and let the wheel settle to it's low/heavy spot, and adjust accordingly by adding weights to the opposite side. It could not be easier.
@@ARodDMD You obviously have never used a mower blade balancer, your method will never get it right
Well, maybe not perfect, but it gets it right enough. We’re not talking about spinning a heavy lawn-mower blade at thousands of RPM, instead we just need to try and keep this simple wind-toy level, and this method is more than adequate. That particular piece has been spinning for years out in my backyard, with zero maintenance, so yeah… balanced well enough. Even for my heavier pieces, this method works great.
@@markolsen7438 Is there a video you can point me to to show me your method?