CD turbine

 

Hi

Yesterday I managed to print a simple turbine hub which uses CDs as blades and ballast. It balances on a screw or pin and can catch updrafts to turn because the CDs are sloped downwards making the centre of gravity lower than the supporting pin. For a while I had been thinking of this as a way to add extra decoration to the lamps I'm making . The turbine could swirl around inside or on the lamp and reflect the light in a pleasant way.

 I'm very pleased with the way this turbine came out, and we currently have it in the lounge room, rotating when the heater is on. I plan on making a mkII version, this will use an m10 grub screw as a centre hub and have an option for mounting on scooter ball bearings. Here is the video, hope you enjoy it!

Compared to other things I make, this is way simpler, requiring only a 1/2 hour 3d print on my Cetus printer. Sofar no glue, no nothing required to keep the cd's in place.

Regards

Steve Nurse

Update August 13

Now the m10 grub screws have arrived in, and I have gone quite a bit further with this project, making me want to bolster the project with a few background photos.

Its possible that this Chinese Lantern flower

 

and small flower -inspired bowl had some influence on what I was doing, creating the pattern of overlapping cd's.

The cd assembly has optical qualities, creating 5 separate beams in the reflection, and

the downward slope of the cds makes a concave pattern, helping to focus the beams together.

Slightly less poetic, the bolts arrived!

This post is continued here .