This actually gives people a very easy way of physically feeling how much power it takes to run different types of circuits, I think it would be a cool idea for a science fair or something

Once the supercaps are charged you can use them to start a car with a flat battery. This way you can (hand) crank start a modern car engine!

It's amazing how 4 chapters worth of topics of physics electronics have been covered in a single generator building video

Seeing something like this in action really makes understanding electricity way easier than just some formulas

You should move to active rectifier instead of passive diode one. At these low voltages, you lose most of your power in the diodes at the moment. For ultra low drop diodes you will lose 0.2V per Diode which is around 10% for your voltages, for classic diodes (which you seem to be using) its 0.7V per diode resulting in quite a bit of wasted energy.

Its super cool how electrical resistance turns to physical resistance with this thing. Would be a great learning tool for kids!

I have an old Singer sewing machine stand that I've always wanted to repurpose as a manual charging desk; now I've got all the R&D already done thanks to you! Awesome job, thanks a lot

Favorite content creator on UKposts. I’m a total electronics novice and feel like I come away with a much better intuition from your videos than I would from other types of learning. Definitely want to print this one!

Absolutely LOVE this project Tim ! Attach a propellor, and you have a windmill, add a battery, and you go offgrid camping with full 12V electricity available. Measure available Kw output and explain calculations for windings, batteries, magnets and such, and there's a scientific story to be told too. This could take you in every direction you'd please 🙂

Hand cranks get hard after some time but a foot pedal like those on sewing machines is significantly easier to turn for a long time.

You have been the only person to ever successfully explain a rectifier to me. Thank you

"Don't know if I could spin it for an hour and 13 minutes" Just 3D print a small water-wheel, attach it to the handcrank, and mount the generator by a river.

Yes, I agree, you need a passive diode and definitely hook a super capacitor to it. Charge it for a few minutes and then it will charge your phone. That way you don't have to keep cranking continuously. Awesome project is always.😊

This was fascinating. When it comes down to it, a generator/motor isn't that complicated. Always good to see that demonstrated.

I'd love to see a series of iteration upon this just like your planes - where you try and design better and better generators, finding what works best/worst and create the most powerful hand powered generator you can while keeping it reasonably easy to use and maintain.

That is so interesting to hear you say how much physical resistance it creates with a load. I want to try printing one of these now. Thanks for sharing!

Hand crank rail gun time? It only makes sense. The fallout 3 fans require it.

Potential upgrades, have a steel plate on either end of the rotor so the magnets have a low reluctance path and you'd have more magnetic flux. (or the same with less magnets) Also a freewheeling clutch thing for if you stop cranking and the rotor can spin freely.

My daughter was just asking a few days ago about how electricity is made. This should be clear enough way to show and tell. Might even print a project for us to build out of this. Thanks for providing the link to the files.

Your explanation of a full bridge rectifier is the first one that I was able to understand! Thanks

Fantastic stuff Tim, this kind of tangible, real world, but simple project seems like a great way to get people into electronics

Cool video Tom, maybe you could make a stationary bike where the wheel charges through the same method, would be a lot less tiring than hand cranking

So interesting to see how you apply what you've learned in the past to new projects. Thanks for the 3D files, this will be a fun (and useful) project.

We need you to read through the comments and either tear them apart or use them to greatly improve the design. This is probably the most interesting project I've seen in a while on any channel. It's doable for the average person and super useful if they end up stranded somewhere without power.

Cool project, if I may add a safety concern is that you'd really prefer to use *female* XT60 connector on your generator. As is, the pins can be shorted easily by anything conductive, and that's why power sources should have female terminals - look at your batteries with the same XT60 plug, or even electrical sockets in the wall. Probably not an issue for this one, but it's a good habit to have 👍

Hey Tim, been watching you for over half a decade. Your generator came out beautifully. It looks amazing, seems to operate smoothly and work eficiently enough for it to have some practical use. It's great to see you do more electronics as well! Something I struggled with in electronics was understanding voltage and current and it's relation to watts and using the "correct" terms that other electrically experienced people will understand. I'd like to share a concept that works for me. Power = RPM x Torque Power = Voltage x Current I see RPM as Voltage, current as torque. When I look at the charged storage in your generator I imagine a metal flywheel spinning relatively slowly (low voltage) but with a lot of mass (available current). When that flywheel is charged, your brain may not think "what do I do with all this speed" (or volts), you may think of it in terms of power instead.

How incredibly generous of you! Looks like a really nice design, thanks for sharing.

Thanks Tom for sharing a beautiful project... 👍👍

After watching many electroboom videos I never could understand what a full bridge rectifier was, but your video made it seem so simple. I love electronics but can't wrap my head around them a lot. Thanks for the video!

hey tom! i built something like this just the other day, using a nema34 stepper motor. stepper motors are great for low rpm high voltage generators as that is how they're designed to operate

Next thing to do would be to get a bicycle, add a stand on both sides so you can pedal with the back wheel in the air, and then connect it to the pedals. Or maybe even make a custom bicycle pedal assembly to be able to charge a phone while cycling, regardless of whether stationary or not.

This is brilliant. From some experience with hand cranked tools, having a little more weight to offset the crank handle can help smoothen the power input from your hands and help with the overall balance of the whole apparatus.

I think you can increase the efficiency by changing the coil design. As far as I know the part off the coil that is perpendicular to the changing magnetic field contributes the most to the output. The rest is just added resistance. Also you can increase the power of the magnetic field by adding a backing metal or hallbach configuration of the magnets.

Great project. You could add a flywheel with a free hub so when you are not rotating the generator the flywheel could spin it for a while.

I'm a big fan of the pedal-type generators. Those are something I could see actually being useful in an emergency. They're a bit bigger, but if you lose power, it's easier to charge up a battery bank with your legs.

Thanks, from Switzerland for this video. Clear and easy to understand. I try to build this modell with my 3D printer.

Another idea for improvement is to put 2 thick steel discs on the outside of your magnetic rotors. I believe this would increase the magnetic field by containing it within the steel discs. Also this could somewhat increase the fly-wheel effect. Maybe the coils also could be wound around (or in-between) the steel cores to even better direct and improve the magnetic field.

A nice piece of work! It would be great if you show us the actual usable peak current output off this generator.

The air core hand crank generator is very wonderful. Thank you for sharing with the audience

Ive been on youtube since 2005, and this was probably coolest video ive ever seen.

If you wanna increase efficiency a bit you could wire your coils for a full wave rectifier instead of a full bride. A full wave has half the diodes and thus lower voltage loss. It does require more wire tho

That was fun. Would have been interesting to see how many amps it could generate and calculate the power.

Brilliant! It is a compact and elegant piece of equipment. That being said just a few minor design tweaks and you’re golden. 1. Broaden the base of it. That way screw holes can be integrated into it so as to be mountable. 2A. Alter the cranking part. Like having it so two hands can be use. 2B. Or Keep the two crank design so the hand cranks can be swapped out for foot pedals. 2C. You could even change it up so it can be rigged up so the stator can be cranked by a gravity battery. Suspend some weight in the air and connect that weight to the generator by s long cable.

You're inspiring me to take this design and change the gearing slightly. It works good and is easy to follow what you are doing, but I feel that there's a more efficient way to do it, albeit much more confusing to explain over a 12 minute video. Looks awesome! Can't wait to play with the design and learn from it. :D

Use the capacitor bank to a step down converter to charge a phone etc then once you charge the bank you won't need to keep cranking the handle. Mine powers LEDs for upto 45 minutes after 10 minutes of cranking. Thanks for sharing. Yours gives more power output than mine. 👍🇬🇧

Would love to see future iterations of this project perhaps on a bike

Totally awesome. Alot of kids can learn how generator works.

Tom, the only real way to know how much your generator produces is to get a maximum power point tracker and a suitable load for it. The load impedance must match perfectly the impedance of your generator, at which point you measure the power dissipated on the load, and that's your generator rating, for a certain RPM of the generator. Would be cool if in the next video you would do that, because I'm quite curious how much a hand cranked generator will make.

I would add a clutch and flywheel to smooth out the cranking effort. And some Caps so you can crank around 15v to store that up. Cutting the cranking time by 2/3.

Absolutely loved this video. I love the way you explain things for my simple mind to absorb 🥴👌. I've learned a lot from this. Thank you 🙏

In my high school electronics class we had a really nice crank dynamo. We used to compete to hold it by the outputs and see how fast we could turn the crank before we dropped it. The gearing was strong, so I don't think anyone even got past about 50 rpm.

Hi Tim. I left you a message here several hours ago- and it disappeared. As a 55 year old Physicist, Scientist and Engineer who who has spent much of his life teaching and mentoring groups and individuals in various technical matters, it is sad to see someone run away from an opportunity to learn something helpful to their endeavors. As mentioned previously, you have done a great job on various mechanical aspects of this generator. Well done. I have built similar generators and your voltage measurements are very (like factor of 10 or more) low for such a device. This is a result of two primary factors- 1) Low flux density due to large air gaps, relatively thin magnets, and no focusing of the field lines. 2) Incorrect geometry of the coils related to the magnetic field lines generated by the magnets. When you mention HOW voltage is generated, you imply a "Reverse Lorentz Force Law" is at play- you show how the poles of the magnets align with each side of the coil, and that as those coil sides pass through the magnetic poles, a voltage is produced. That is not how an axial generator works, and the proof is in your generator. The poles of the magnet are reversed for each side of the coil, and SO IS THE DIRECTION OF THE CURRENT FLOW in the coil. If the Physics were as you say, your generator would generate little to no voltage as each magnet pair would be working against the other to produce voltage. The Lorentz Force Law is not something that works in reverse. If it were, essentially all motors would work great as generators- but in practice, the average motor makes a lousy generator. Voltage/Current/Power in a generator is created via Faraday's Law of Induction- it is the rate of change of the magnetic flux through the CENTER of the coil that counts..... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday%27s_law_of_induction

You didn't show the schematic for your series+parallel arrangement of the coils. The output of each coil will be AC, but at different phases from one another. If you have several out of phase coils in parallel, a lot of wasted current will be running between each coil and the mathematical sum of the voltages will go to the "output" of the group. You will generate (example) 10 kW of power but only be able to make use of 3kW. This will heat up the coils more than you probably expect and you'll have to derate the current capacity of the wires. A way to fix this is if you have a fullwave bridge on each coil, and you can combine the bridge output in series and/or parallel to your liking to get a more efficient generator. [There are other ways too.]

Brilliant! Great project

I had nothing to do with electronics so far in my life, so this was super fun to watch!

You have to balance the thickness of the wires you are using, with the number of turns and the wire resistance to maximize the output POWER, which should be the goal here. Then if you need more voltage you can use a boost converter circuit.

8:34 there’s a calibration pot/screw on the back of the blue led volt meter to dial in the voltage readout

Man! This is an incredible project! I watched the video with excitement until the end. Keep on doin' it! Love from Turkey.

ive seen like 4 other youtube channels do this same project......and im gonna watch every time

Very cool. I do wonder if it would be more effective to make the crank a bit shorter to raise the overall rpm of the large gear, though, I don't have this thing in hand, so maybe I am imagining it in a very different way and it would just be less practical as you would technically be exerting more energy to rotate the crank.

Legal. Seria interessante para esse mesmo projeto, comparar a eficiência para diferentes quantidades de fases, tais como 3, 5, 7 e... 11 fases. Será que tri-fásico continua a ser o mínimo para um sistema eficiente?

Excellent video. I am going to make one when I return from a trip. Thank you for this

You're amazing thank you! I want to print this so my son and I can learn how different sized coils, gear ratios, wire gauge, magnet placement and number of magnets affect the output.

FULL BRIDGE RECTIFIER

They should have one of these in every school's science class. When kids understand how much effort it takes to power something, they might appreciate how energy dense fossil fuels are.

Neat work and detailed, thanks for sharing.

Love your work!

You could try lighting up a 220v LED lightbulb. Depending on the driver being used they shouldn't mind being run on DC, and unless they use a capacitor dropper they should work on a large range of voltages. By the way, have you considered adding multiple stacks of coils and magnet disks?

Would be interesting to see if you can engineer it for using leg muscles instead of hand. Hooking it to your shoe and hanging it from your belt would allow you to use the far larger muscles in your leg. Charging at battery bank at 12V and 5A could be done in a few minutes but would give a whole days mobile phone charge.

As someone who likes to fidget, this is pretty neat but also has a function that i can use to power or charge something. Also how simple generators really are.

lovely video. I really enjoyed the content. gives me a good personal connection to power generaion.

0 electricity blender

I had this idea that I don't have the time to do but always wished to do. Instead of using an handcrank generator, what if you use a Stirling Engine that powers the Generator? It shouldn't be too big and it could provide passive power if you say make some tea or something.

Very cool. I wanted to build something like this as a kid and turn local muskrat dam into a hydro electric one.

Great video, just use a Delon bridge circuit at the output. That circuit doubles the alternating voltage and rectifies it to DC in one turn for your purpose with only 2 diodes and 2 capacitors. Giving you a higher output range and also enough voltage when cranking with slow speed, afterwards stepping down to 5V USB e.g. as you show.

You should have put coils on both sides of the magnet array

One thing i noticed among all DIY generators videos is no matter how nicely looking the generator is made it always fails in the magnetic circuit part thus the generator will always run with an abysmal efficiency

Thank you for your service to your fellow humanity, keep it up!

I like this build. As for not wanting to crank the generator for more than a few minutes at a time, you could solve that by converting it into a pedal crank and use your legs/feet instead.

Very nice design. I don't know if you've seen Robert Murray Smith's channel, but he uses serpentine coils which seem like a lot less work to make, to me. :)

I feel like the maker community is going down a very predictable path, and I'm finally starting to catch up. About 10 minutes before this vid popped up for me, I was wondering if this exact thing would be possible. Every time I think "I wonder if this is possible", I discover it was already done quite some time ago. I'm only 6 days late for this one, and it's the first time I've seen your channel. If I'm correct.... are we really about to be printing clean energy with 3d printers? I'm stoked.

I know it's not producing a lot of power but I feel like something like this should be in every household.

Hi Tom, how about a bicycle pedal powered generator that supports USB-C PD? I could imagine charging a large Powerbank or maybe a laptop directly while sitting on a chair and using your legs. Could be a nice gadget for camping or survival stuff or so.

yes, it's a hand crank generator. They've been around since the late 1950's. Not practical at all for charging a smartphone

loved this video, really appreciate your work, thank you

Hello, great job and a very well-made and objective film. Fantastic attention to detail. Way to go!

Really cool! Nice to watch a practical application of my A-Level Physics content, executed really well too!

my favorite engineer :)

Great initiative and very easily described... Thank you..

As a South African, this + a hamster is gonna help a lot. Thank you

Great project!

Excellent and looks very beautifull!

Nicely done!

This morning on my way to work, I thought "it's a long time Tom did not post a video". I love those coincidences.

outstanding Mr Tom

Very cool! Thanks for such a great video!

Missed opportunity to leverage gear ratios to speed up the magent even faster awesome project thank you sir

Fantastic...A Good way to generate a power

It should be possible to get a glow out of a household AC filament bulb using this setup. We had something very similar in GCSE science about 35 years ago. It really drove home the equivalence of difference energy types to actually feel with your own hands how much harder the crank was to turn when the light was switched on. Not sure PLA would take the forces needed though.

awesome project, thanks