Today we are making a quite powerful permanent magnet generator, out of a car alternator.
We add permanent magnets, we remove the rectifier, design some 3D printed parts and test it out
to see the maximum power.
I’ve been preparing this for some time because I really want to reproduce the experiment
from an old free energy video that I made a few months back.
For that I’ve already bought a huge and expensive induction motor, but I still need
the car alternator part.
I really want to prove that the free energy video is fake.
But we need to change the alternator to work with permanent magnets, have an AC output
instead of DC and maybe even increase the power and voltage.
This is still an experiment and I can’t really know the final results for sure, so
keep watching till the end to find out and see the entire process for designing a new
rotor, selecting the magnets, removing the rectifier and testing out the final power
of the generator.
So, let’s get started.
First of all, the car alternator.
You can check my previous video on how it works internally if you want more information.
But for today we need to change it.
But before we do that, a quick message from my sponsor.
Ok, so this alternator outputs DC voltage,
around 14V in this case and more than 100 amps of current.
It outputs DC because it already has a full bridge rectifier at the output made with these
diodes.
I’ve already opened it a few days ago and it was very hard, because it is a second hand
alternator and it was all rusty and almost glued together.
I had to cut the main shaft so we will need to make a new one, it was impossible for me
to save the shaft.
Anyway, for a normal one, you only have to remove 4 long screws and it will open.
This is the previous rotor.
As you can see it has no magnets but instead it has an electromagnet.
As you can see, when I apply power to the coil, it gets magnetized and acts as a magnet.
And these spikes act as magnetic field conductors, basically creating a north and south pattern,
just as a normal motor.
That’s because they are a lot more powerful so we could increase the power output for
the same rotation speed but also, they are more efficient.
Having to constantly power an electromagnet is not efficient at all.
So I’ve made a few measurements.
First of all, since I had to cut the old shaft, I will make another one using a 10mm threaded
rod.
That’s great because like that we will be able to add our own pulley and connect it
to the induction motor for the future experiment.
I cut the threaded rod to size, around 17cm long.
I now measure the bearing holes.
In my case I’ll use these kind of bearings because they are a lot cheaper.
But since it is a lot smaller, I design a small plastic collar to go around it.
The bearing fits inside and the entire part fits on the car alternator frame.
Now I could palace the shaft on these bearings.
Next I measure the space for the rotor.
Have in mind I will use these magnets.
These are 5 cm long, 1cm wide and 3mm thick.
The original rotor has 12 poles.
But I will use 24 magnets in pairs because I don’t have magnets that are that big.
In Blender I create the main shape of the rotor.
Then I create the magnet and multiply it by 24 separated 15 degrees on of each other.
I subtract that from the rotor cylinder.
Then I add the threaded rod hole and a few more holes for cooling and structure.
Now I have my rotor.
Actually I had to print it twice because the first one was almost touching the generator
walls.
Ok so the idea is to glue the magnets in place with super glue.
But that won’t be enough.
When this is spinning, the centrifugal force will be very high.
So, on top of the magnets I will add some sort of nylon wire, which is very strong and
will keep them in place for sure.
Get all the magnets and mark the south and north face.
Now we glue them on the plastic rotor one by one and don’t make my mistake of placing
them south north, south north.
Actually, I had to remove all the magnets and place them again in pairs of south south,
north north and so on.
I’m such a genius.
Anyway, the rotor can be made out of plastic because it shouldn’t get hot.
The part that heats up should be the part with the wires and not the rotor.
Comparing this generator with my 3D printed motor, it’s kind of the same but is an innrunner
and this time it should have a lot more power.
First of all, the 3D printed motor had the core made out of plastic so the magnetic field
was not properly directioned and had a lot of lesses.
This generator has very thick wire that could handle a lot of current and also, it has a
metal core between the weirs pointing and conducting the magnetic field a lot better.
Also, the core of the 3D printed brushless motor was getting hot and plastic could melt.
But in this case, the rotor will stay cold because it has the magnets and not the wires.
Now the 3D printed rotor has the magnets glued in place.
But to make sure they will stay in palace, I will apply a layer of very hard nylon wire.
I wind up the wire around it.
I also apply a layer of two element epoxy on top of the wire using a brush so it will
stay compact and the rotor is done.
Let the resin dry a little and then I also add some tape on top just to seal it well.
Make sure it could still fit inside of the alternator without touching the walls.
Now get the 10mm threaded rod.
I place a screw nut and a washer and on top I add the rotor.
Leave around 1cm of the rod out.
On the other side I add two more screw nut and I tight both of them, so the shaft stays
fixed on the rotor.
I add two more nuts as a spacer and that's it.
I fit the rotor iside of the generator on top of the previously added bearing.
I add the top bearing.
Then I close the case.
Add the screws and tight them.
Make sure the rotor could still rotate and there is no friction.
Looks like the generator is ready.
But remember, if we want an AC generator we need to remove the diode bridge.
Get a few screws out, separate the wires from the diodes and remove the rectifier part.
This is the full bridge rectifier and I will save it for later in case I want to make a
DC generator.
Ok so we will have 6 wires output because we have 3 coils inside.
We could connect them in a star or a delta configuration.
I will connect them in a delta connection.
So we merge the coils in series and the 3 connections will be the output.
I add long wires as well.
And the generator is done.
Now let’s test it a little bit.
I don’t have a proper testing setup but I’ll do my best.
First of all, let’s measure the voltage.
I will connect a multimeter at one phase of the output and put it in voltage mode for
AC.
I rotate the generator using a drill and measure the voltage without any load at the output.
I also try to measure the speed for later calculations.
I was expecting a bit more but the maximum voltage I got on my multimeter in AC mode
is around 8V so a 15V peak to peak average per one phase.
So, I don’t know how the people from the fake energy video are getting 220V AC.
I’m using better and bigger magnets and only get 15V peak to peak.
Anyway, I want to test the current output as well.
My multimeter could measure an average of AC current but it could only go up to 10 amps.
This generator could easily overpass that value you can see here.
That’s why I will use a current clamp.
I set it to 1mV for each 100mA of current.
I first short circuit a phase of the generator and add the clamp.
I measure the maximum current peak.
As you can see we get a peak to peak value of 1.28V, so we divide it by two and using
the clamp scale, that equals to a current peak of 64 amps for each phase and we have
3 phases.
That’s quite a high current value.
And yes I know that this is current peak and not average.
My multimeter could measure current average but only up to 10A so I can’t measure the
average with my current clamp because I don’t have a clamp multimeter.
We can’t measure voltage over a short circuit so I add a small load made out of 3 resistors
of 1 ohms.
I connect the current clamp but also an oscilloscope probe so we get current and voltage.
We get a peak to peak of 16.1V for voltage and 490mV for current and if we do the math,
those are peaks of 200W for each phase.
So the power output is quite high even if the voltage is below 20V.
I know this is not average AC measurement for all 3 phases but for that you need a complicated
setup with 3 different loads and be able to measure AC current average as my multimeter,
but I can’t do that for values above 10A.
Also, the formula for measuring AC power gets quite complicated.
Anyway, knowing that we have peaks of 200W for each phase is enough for me.
Now let’s see if we can rotate the induction motor.
This is a 1 phase motor, the same as they are using in the fake free energy video.
So we will only connect 1 phase from our generator.
This motor has 3 connections inside but that’s because it needs two huge running capacitors.
To change the rotation direction we need to connect them like this.
I connect the generator to the motor and start generating power with my drill.
As you can see, it doesn’t have power to startup the motor.
That’s because these induction motors need high voltage to jump start the rotation.
That’s another indication that the free energy video is fake.
By the way, this generator could now function as a very powerful brushless motor.
I connect it to a powerful ESC, a 12V battery and a radio receiver.
As you can see, It acts as a powerful brushless motor.
So maybe we could use this for an electric KART, right?
If you want to use this as a DC generator just k eep the full bridge rectifier connected
and add a big capacitor at the output.
That will give you DC voltage and the value will change according to the rotation speed.
That would be great connected to a wind turbine or a water turbine and supply your home appliances.
You have more information on electronoobs.com so check that out.
You can also download my 3D files and get the part list for the bearings and magnets.
Thanks again and see you later guys.