June 7, 2019
Description
A novel wind spinner for the garden. This design requires a short length of 6mm shaft and two 6mm dia id 19mm dia od ball bearings. The mounting boss on the bottom of the swivel is sized to fit a 36mm bore fibreglass tube.
The spinner runs very fast and has provision for mounting small bells (or whatever) inside.
There are two sizes of main rotor and one small pointer rotor... and the video is of the smaller of the two main rotors. The pointer rotor should ideally be filled with lead weights set in epoxy resin to the point where it balances the main rotor as closely as possible. In the video you can hear a distinct clicking noise which is caused by the leading edge of the main rotor catching the mounting pole as it spins. That was a result of inadvertently gluing the main rotor too close to the swivel and would not normally happen. As well as glue (I used super glue) the main rotor has a 3mm hole near the top to allow you to use a split pin or small grub screws straight onto or through the steel shaft. Without it the high speed spinning might cause the plastic to deform thus loosening the rotor's grip on it.
When printing no supports are needed if you use a small enough layer height and a wide enough line width to minimise overghang issueas. I used 0.12 later hight and 0.8mm line width.
License:
Creative Commons - Attribution
Seafax
