The Almost Useless Machine
We all know, we should use more renewable energy. Here is my contribution. Use solar power if you want to cut 20mm wooden rods. And plan ahead because it may take a while.
This little machine uses a so called solar engine to drive the motor. This solar engine is able to collect tiny amounts of energy over time and stores it in large capacitors. When the voltage reaches a certain level, it opens up and uses all the stored energy at once to drive a motor. These engines were used to drive tiny BEAM-bots and were quite popular a while ago. A lot of information can be found at beam-wiki.org on how to build them and how they work.
Parts
- Mechanical parts are laser cut MDF (3 mm).
- Mini Metal Gear Motor, GM13a from Solarbotics
- Jigsaw blade
- Some M3 nuts and bolts
- Small bearings, 8x3mm
- All parts for a 1381-based solar engine
- Huge 10.000uC capacitors, low ESR, Reichelt
Operation
The machine works fine. That is … most of the time. Sometimes the solar engine locks up in the state where it dumps all the energy to the motor. It works like this:
- The two solar panels charge the capacitors until they reach ~2.85 V.
- The 1381 drives the transistor open and the motor starts turning
- The voltage drops until 1.1V, the motor stops turning
- Now there maybe a balance between the solar panels to provide enough current to hold the voltage and the motor on the other hand, not consuming enough.
In the video, there was bright sun light. With that, the machine runs quite well, even without having to pause to collect more sun light. In that condition, I’m quite sure, it would have worked without the solar engine.
To solve that, there are a couple of other solar engines on the BEAM wiki, that I can try, even if most of them were not designed for this high power use case. If someone has any tipps or hints, please add a comment below.
Links and Downloads
- 1381 powered solar engine
- The Almost Useless Machine, TAUM.dxf
- More pictures at Flickr
13 thoughts on “The Almost Useless Machine”
Great contraption!
You should offer it as a kit, I bet there are many people who would be interested (me included).
(Same for the 2 euro machine.)
LikeLike
Pingback: The Almost Useless Machine « adafruit industries blog
take a while, how long, even in full sun? looks like there’s very little pressure on the blade, might take months?
LikeLike
Yes, months at least. Especially in rainy Hamburg.
LikeLike
Pingback: MAKE | Solar-Powered Dowel Cutter
Brilliant! I have to build one… and thanks for the link to BEAM wiki, I didn’t even know this was a Thing.
LikeLike
hi from Frankfurt,
can you give a tipp how to create/construct this gears you use? i am a portal cnc newbie and would love to are able to create this by my own.
cool project ;)
regards
chriss
LikeLike
Hi Chriss,
I used this one www.thingiverse.com/thing:3575 and then extracted the outline with OpenSCAD and imported it into QCAD.
There is also a gear tool in inkscape that you may want to try.
Cheers,
Alex
LikeLike
I’d definitely buy this in a kit. You could test the waters by making a kickstarter project.
LikeLike
I’d buy it as a kit, or constructed. It would be the coolest gift for my dad.
LikeLike
Want this to go with my Ultimate Useless Machine: frivolousengineering.com/?page_id=750
LikeLike
Awesome just Awesome !!! Really cool display would love a kit of this this is just too great !!
keep up all your cool projects
LikeLike
So this could power what kind of water pump? :) Seriouslky, though, it might power an Archemedes’ Screw well enough to pump some water before it evaporates :)
LikeLike
Comments are closed.