update: first transformer wound

Last night I wound my first of two transformers for use in my home-built welder.  For the amount of time it took to recover a transformer from a microwave, purchase 10 gauge wire, pound out the secondary coil and replace it with the 10-gauge wire, I'm going to try and purchase the appropriate transformer for the next one.  My wiring job sucks and I'm definitely going to avoid doing that again!

I need a total of 40 volts to make this welder work- 20 V per transformer.  I hope I can find one that's perfect out of the box!


In other news, I made my first wafer of recycled plastic.  I used a hacksaw to cut a rectangle shape.  An initial look over the rectangle plate highlights some major issues.  This was made from plastic bags from the grocery store that I melted down in Crisco.  Initially I had melted it in water to form lumps of hard plastic, but when the sample I was preparing caught on fire in my kitchen I decided that using crisco would be a better idea.  It works pretty well, except that the plastic produced is covered in oily residue.

I suppose what needs to happen now is that I need to learn if it's possible to temper the existing plastic mold to get something harder.  But while I'm doing that I'm going to need to work out how to make the same thing with water without catching fire- the reason for that is that in lumpy form, the water-melted plastic seemed much harder than this stuff.  Perhaps a composite of the two will work out nicely.

The next thing I'll need to do is figure out how to mold multiple blanks into perfect copies of 3-d formed fan blades with proper fan shape.  Once I can do that, then I'll be able to install onto an axle, and for the main fan, I'll need to figure out a way to make the fan blades variable-pitch (although that's a much later and less important task).

To reiterate:
1) temper plastic mold
2) form fan blades
3) install onto axle
4) develop and install measurement apparatus
5) Convert all plastic to high temperature metals

Step 4 is the whole reason behind prototyping everything in plastic in the first place.  I hope to gain valuable fabrication experience with this process, and nail down the parts needed to get the device working as I get into step 5- working with metals.

Since I am limited in my workshop capabilities, melting down  bunch of plastic garbage bags to develop a breadboard seems like the cheapest solution, especially since 80% of the thrust is developed from the main fan in a turbofan engine, it seems like a good idea to find out how to reproduce the best parts of the best engines in the world today.

The F-15 ditches the stators in the medium and high pressure compression portions in favor of counter-rotating blades.  They also use variable-pitch blades to optimize airflow.  The engine used in the 747 also uses variable-pitch fan blades.   It seems as though that's what needs to happen in order to maximize the cold-air flow.

Once this done, then I can begin prototyping a turbofan, high-compression chamber, and begin work on the combustion chamber.  The problem with most home-builds is that the combustion chamber and the areas downstream get too hot and don't generate enough thrust to be anything but gas-guzzlers and incredibly loud. Apparently this is very, VERY far down the road as I must first complete a "working" breadboard with all the pieces worked out before I begin purchasing and fabricating parts from metal.