Archives for posts with tag: prototype

We decided to a build a prototyping windmill in Kadiyali, Amreli district (400 km below Ahmedabad). Building the new tail on friday, shipping it the same night to Rajula. Emma and I took the nigh-bus to Amreli. Arriving there at 4 AM, we got a little bit of sleep but at 10 AM we were of to the installation of the new windmill with its new tail.

We worked on a new tail that would enable the windmill to stop automatically with high wind velocities. In this way the windmill won’t get damaged and the farmer can let it run for 24/7 without constantly checking it. The automatic breaking system is called a furling tail. To test if the furling principle works at the right wind velocity it should be tested in a windtunnel, however windtunnels are scarce in India and very expensive. That’s why we tested the tail on the back of a driving truck and thus creating our own low-cost windmill. The first furling tail was build by the fabricator of the windmill and had the right angle and dimensions but during testing we found out it was too heavy. The next day we build a new tail from aluminum.  During building we got help from the guys of GIAN (Javed, Amit and Nirmish) and the workers of the fabricators. It was hard to find an empty and good road for testing on the truck, therefor we chose to test the aluminum tail at location in Amreli.

Time to abandon our laptops and actually build something! We started making prototypes of some of our concept ideas. One of the prototypes is about a new design for the tail of the windmill, which is being build in the factory. Next week we will try it on the actual windmill. Next to this we build (scale) models of the windmill to test a new manual breaking system. This is done in the workshop of the Venture Studio, where all the tools are brand new and we actually had the pleasure of unpacking them.