Preparations

[Hasbinbad]

Originally Posted by Uthgaard [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

You can make a crank generator from a sufficiently cheap reversible drill if gas power isn't available.

This is exactly what I'm after. I understand magnets and copper wire and all that, but only on a very cursory level. Can you describe specifics, or do you know of resources that lay this out?

[Uthgaard]

Electromagnetism at its most basic level. You can think of electrcity and magnetism as antiperpendicular wave forms that run at 90 angles to each other.

Where electricity flows, so does magnetism. The opposite is also true. The drill works because it has a large magnet, and cheap drills don't usually have advanced circuitry to prevent current from flowing backward if the drill is rotated creating current, instead of current rotating the drill.

You can get these for about $10-$20. The types that run off of a single battery unit or only have a power cord are the easiest to make. Run wires from battery terminals or split the wires to whatever you want to power. Getting one of these is usually easier than trying to create a device, but you can by coiling a wire around a magnet.

It's ideal to store it in some rechargable battery, since it's unlikely to create a constant or sufficient voltage by hand. Chemical sources of power might be less crude and more reliable, but harder to replenish.

Also another way to get pure water is through acid-base neutralization. You'll wind up with some type of salt to filter out, but any acid and any base neutralize into pure water. Hydrochloric acid (a strong acid) and sodium hydroxide (lye) combine to form a solution of table salt in pure water.

[Hasbinbad]

Totally. I've just never seen a crank generator sold (haven't been looking), and while I know the concept, I probably couldn't manufacture one that worked worth a shit without a diagram..
Et viola! http://www.creative-science.org.uk/gen1.html
What about LED technology? Does anyone here have any experience with making simple LEDs?

[Uthgaard]

A crank generator is probably the simplest thing to create. The most complicated part would be deciding what kind of battery setup could accommodate that blends what you can afford with performance attributes.

Anything that creates a difference in electric potentials creates a voltage, you can think of it like water pressure. Rechargable batteries restore some of that charge. Practically, batteries in this situation would perform best when they aren't at a full charge. Most of the time spent charging a battery is when the battery is almost full. It takes less than half as much energy to charge a battery to 75% than it does to charge it the last 25%, so it's a lot like a concentration gradient made up of ions instead of solute.

The tricky part comes with spending the energy. You could create a battery pack out of batteries connected in series to charge them, and then just remove batteries to match the voltage requirements of whatever you're trying to power, but that's impractical for all but a few examples. Realistically you'd just need a device between the power supply and its final output that can regulate the voltage and current so that your device a) has enough to function and b) doesn't fry it. It's often a pretty thin line to walk.

You aren't likely to manufacture an LED. Diodes are essentially miniaturized vacuum tubes. You would have a lot of difficulty (read, basically impossible to DIY) growing the crystals to the required specs and without flaws, or to create the diode even if you did. On the other hand, they're really cheap since the manufacture is simple on the large scale in a specialized facility. Better off buying what you need.

[Uthgaard]

Also I just looked at that diagram. That's interesting but defeats the purpose of what I was explaining, since that requires a power source. What I was talking about was rotating the actual drill bit manually, creating a current inside the drill's circuitry and can be drawn from its battery terminals.

[Hasbinbad]

Well you could easily attach the piece on the power drill to .. the axle on a bike? a pressure/spinner thing on the sole of a shoe? ..etc..
Find force where it exists already and then adapt it to rotational motion.

[Hasbinbad]

well tell us something we don't already know..

[Hasbinbad]

Well tell us what you would add to the conversation.

Or are you just here to troll?

..don't really answer that, I wasn't really asking..

[Uthgaard]

Some people consider an education important, or have had jobs that involve some of the stuff outlined here, and actually have knowledge of their own to draw from without having to look up every little detail.

It helps when you go to apply concepts to understand them, and it sure beats having nothing interesting to say and bitterly lashing out at those who did.[You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Anyway, yeah, the axle concept is the general idea. Or you could get an allen wrench or anything L shaped and screw it into the chuck and turn it by hand. That's actually related to the reason that AC current is shaped like a wave form. If you take a circular motion, and you plot it over time, you get a wave (oscillating voltages being measured as they go through a fixed point).

[Hasbinbad]

See I would like to see 4 (one on each side of each axle) mini generators on every bike.. Powering rechargeable batteries over distance traveled..

Now my question is, since that is possible, how do we turn it into reality? 4 storebought crank generators is the best way? DIY?