This chapter will describe how we build the 'frame' for the wind turbine.

This involves a fair bit of metal work. To do this you'll need to have the
ability to cut/grind and weld steel. If you're new to this type of work it
might pay to practice your skills on some scraps. The tolerances with this
are not terribly, again - the design is very forgiving. But some of the welds
are critical so you need to be a bit careful. Also keep in mind the dangers
of metal work. This is the most dangerous work you'll do to build the wind
turbine. Metal is often sharp when you cut it. Grinding can be fairly
dangerous - lots of shards flying around and I've seen grind stones explode
before, so be sure to wear a face shield. Cutting with a torch or welding
has it's obvious hazards (molten hot steel and sparks flying). Just follow
proper safety proceedures and odds are you'll live through it.

Materials List

1/4" thick steel plate, 15" square (stator bracket, tail bracket, disk to
support the back of the spindle)

1" sched 40 pipe, 6' long (tail boom, tail pivot)

1.25" sched 40 pipe, 9" long (tail bearing)

2" sched 40 pipe, 4" long (to attach alternator to yaw bearing)

2.5" sched 40 pipe, 12" long (yaw bearing) 3" sched 40 pipe, 3.625" long
(pipe to support wheel spindle and stator bracket) 1.25" x 1/4" bar stock, 5'
6" long (tail boom gusset, tail vane bracket)
Pictured above are all the parts you'll need to make (or have made) before
you start. Not pictured above are the parts of the tail itself which we can
discuss later, because it is a seperate part.

1 - Stator bracket. The stator bracket is cut from 1/4" thick steel plate. It
serves to support the front of the wheel spindle (on which the main wheel
hub/bearings go) and it supports the stator. To lay it out, find center and
draw two circles. The inner circle is 4" diameter, the outer circle is 15"
diameter. Lay out 3 'spokes' 120 deg apart. The spokes are 1.5" wide at the
outer diameter and 2" wide where they meet the inner 4" dia circle.
Centered on each spoke at 13.75" diameter is a 1/2" hole (these accept the
studs that will mount the stator). In the center of the bracket is a 1.25"
diameter hole. This fits the wheel spindle. You can cut this out with a
torch, or a plasma cutter easily. If those tools are not available, you can
simplify the design keeping in mind that the critical measurements are the
locations of the 1/2" and 1.25" holes. Some folks will make the inside 4"
dia circle with a hole saw and then make the spokes with bar stock. While
it doesn't look quite as neat, it works just as well. The spokes should be
fairly rigid so if you do use bar stock use at least 1.5" x 1/4", any thinner
might bend under the torque that the stator will impose upon it.

2 - Yaw bearing cap. The yaw bearing cap is simply a disk of 1/4" steel
with a 3/4" dia hole drilled in its center. It will be welded to the top of the
yaw bearing and the hole will accept the cord from the alternator which
will run down the center of the tower. When making the magnet rotors you
cut a 2.75" diameter hole in their center. Use the scrap from one of the
magnet rotors for this - it's the perfect diameter, all you need to do is drill
 the hole in the center.

3 - Spindle, part #BT-88. This is the spindle that our wheel hub (Dexter
part #81-9A) fits. It's probably the most common spindle in use for 1000
pound trailer axels and it's widely available. There are other slightly
cheaper spindle/hub setups but I prefer this one. It's the best choice
because it's widely availabe and it's machined on both sides which makes
life much easier for us. You can certainly modify the design to accept
other brands of spindle/hub assemblies but I think it's easier to stick with
the Dexter parts here. Check out the appendix for suppliers.

4 - This is the 3" dia sched 40 pipe that supports all the parts of the
alternator. It's 3.625" long and we cut a 2.5" hole in it with a hole saw.

The hole can be cut on center, but I prefer to cut it slightly off center.
Cutting it towards one side allows us to push the whole alternator foward
in relation to the yaw bearing slightly and gives us a bit more clearance
between the stator bracket and the yaw bearing. It also gives us slightly
more clearance between the blades and the tower. Use a good high quality
bi-metal hole saw. Be sure to run the drill press at it's lowest possible
speed and use plenty of cutting oil.

5 - Rear spindle support. This disk is just under 3" in diameter (cut it out
with a torch, or a 3" hole saw) and it has a 1.25" diameter hole in the
center which fits around the back of the wheel spindle. The stator bracket
supports the spindle in the front, this disk supports it in the rear.

6 - Connects alternator to yaw bearing. This is cut from 2" diameter pipe.
 One end is coped with a hole saw so that it can be welded to the yaw
bearing, the other end is left flat, and fits into the 3" pipe which has a 2.5"
hole cut to accept it (part #4).

When we cope this part with a hole saw the distance from the center of the
hole saw to the other end of the part should be 3.25". We usually use a
2.5" diameter hole saw to cope this, and then we need to touch it up a bit
with a grinder so that it fits nicely against the yaw bearing.

7 - Yaw Bearing. This is the part that slips over the tower top. It's 12" long,
made from 2.5" sched. 40 pipe. This is the part that will fit over the tower
top.

8 - Tail bracket. This will sit between the yaw bearing and the tail pivot
(the pipe that the tail will hang, and pivit on when the machine furls). It's
also cut from 1/4" steel plate. It's 3.5" tall, 1" wide at the bottom and
2.125" wide at the top.

9 - Tail pivot. This gets attached to the tail bracket and the tail will slip
over it and 'hang' on this part. In high winds, the tail will pivot on this pipe.

Once all the pieces are cut out you begin welding the machine together.
The first step is to build the part that supports the alternator. Once that's
finished you attach the tail bracket to the tail pivot, and then you weld both
those parts to the yaw bearing.
Start by gathering the [parts pictured, the wheel spindle, the stator bracket,
the 3" dia pipe with the hole in its side and the 3" disk with the 1.25" hole
in its center.

I like to use an old 3 jaw lathe chuck for this, but if that's unavailable a
decent sized vice should work fine. You need to clamp the wheel spindle
so that the machined part is facing down, and put the stator bracket around
it as shown in the picture. 6.625" of the wheel spindle should be sticking
 up from the surface of the stator bracket. The stator bracket may not be
perfectly flat but get things as close to square as possible (so that the angle
between the stator bracket and the spindle is always 90 degrees). Tack
weld the spindle to the stator bracket in 3 or 4 small spots on different
sides. This will hold it in position nicely so that you can really weld it
there. If you don't tack weld it first and just start welding around the circle
it will be pulled out of square as your welding because weld's shrink as
they cool.

After you've tack welded the spindle to the stator bracket go ahead and
weld it there.
 Now center the 3" pipe on the stator bracket. The height of the spindle
should be the same as that of the pipe. The 3" pipe has the 2.5" diameter
hole you cut in one side. If you cut the hole off center (more towards one
side then the other) then put the pipe on the stator bracket so that the hole
is most distant from the stator bracket. If you cut the hole on center it
obviously doesn't matter. Where the 2.5" diameter hole points with regard
to the spokes on the stator bracket is not terribly important, but we usually
like to put it opposite one of the spokes. This way when the wind turbine is
together, we'll have 1 of the spokes coming out from the stator bracket
pointing exactly away from the yaw bearing... it just looks a bit neater I
think and it makes the machine less fragile if we have to ship it
somewhere, but it doesn't affect the workability of the wind turbine. Don't
weld the 3" pipe to the stator bracket yet...
 Now take the 3" diameter disk with the 1.25" hole in it, and position it
inside the 3" pipe. It should fit around the back of the wheel spindle and
inside the 3" pipe as shown in the picture. A magnet serves nicely to hold
it there before you tack weld it.

Once everything looks good and centered go ahead and tack weld
everything together. (3" pipe tack welded to stator bracket, 3" disk tack
 welded to 3" pipe and wheel spindle)

Then weld it all together for good as shown in the picture.

It's not necessary but it'll look much nicer if you take the time to grind
your welds down and smooth things out. Now is the time for this, once we
weld this part to the yaw bearing you'll not be able to get at some of the
 welds very well with a grinder.

Now we'll weld the assembly that we just finised to the yaw bearing. There
are a couple of weird angles involved here and the distance between the
yaw bearing and the wheel spindle is fairly critical. We've built a jig to
make assembly of a wind turbine quite easy and if you plan on building
more than one machine such a jig may pay off. But it's fairly easy to do
without one. Start by putting the spindle/stator bracket assembly that you
just finished on top of a 1/2" thick shim (a piece of wood or 1/2" thick
steel or whatever...).
 The yaw bearing is 12" long. Mark the center of it at 6".

Pictured above is the layout and were looking at it from the bottom of the
wind turbine. You can see how the 1/2" shim under the spindle/stator
bracket assembly pushes the alternator foward a bit. If you can imagine a
vertical line through the center of the yaw bearing (the 12" x 2.5" pipe)
parallel to the spindle, there should be 5" between it and the center of the
spindle. In other words... when we're finished the center of the alternator
 will be 5" to one side from the center of the tower.

Looking at the same thing from the side. We've put a 3/4" shim under the
top of the yaw bearing. When finished, this will cause the alternator to be
tipped back about 5 degress so that the wind turbine blades are tipped back
and have nice safe clearance between their tips and the tower.

Tack weld this all together. Inspect it to make sure the offset between the
spindle and the yaw bearing is correct, and that all the angles are correct. If
all looks good then weld it together.

Get the tail pivot bracket and the tail pivot (parts 8 and 9 as shown in the
previous picture). Mark the center of the tail pivot (4.5") and position the
bracket so that it's top (the 2.125" wide part) is at the half way mark on the
tail pivot. Tack weld it at the top and bottom and then quickly on each side
as shown in the picture above.
 Looking down at it from the top it should look like the picture. If
everything looks right, then weld it. This needs to be a good weld with
good penetration because the tail hangs on this part.

Take the main part of the wind turbine and put it in a vice so that it's tipped
at 45 degrees as shown in the picture.
 Put the tail bracket and pivot on top so that it's pointing straight up, and
tack weld it there. Again, inspect it - make sure everything is straight and
square and if it's all good then weld it there. This is probably the most
critical weld on the machine. The tail can slam around on the tail pivot in
high winds and all this weld takes all the abuse. This needs to be a high
quality weld with good penetration or you risk having the tail fall off
which can be disastrous especially if it hits the blades. We've never had
this happen but I always worry about it. If you weld this well there should
be no problem.
Now you can weld the yaw bearing cap to the top of the yaw bearing as
shown in the picture.

Pictured above is how your machine should look from the top.
Shown in the picture above is the same machine veiwed from the side. All
thats left is to build the tail.

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