Guess what! Today, my wife and I went garage sale shopping for some DC motors from treadmills, fans, and other random junk people were selling. Unfortunately, we didn’t have success at the initial garage sales themselves, too many people were selling clothes and furniture this time around… lame. However, I posted an ad looking to buy a DC motor from a treadmill (sources say they are high HP and low cost) and someone called immediately after and said he had not one, but TWO motors from treadmills in almost new condition he would sell! Well heck, for $10 each you can’t pass that up, especially since they were already ripped out of the treadmills.
When I went to meet him, he showed me the two 2HP motors. Man, were they just what I was looking for!! The nice part about these ones is they both have a flywheel to help the inertial of the motor once it’s going, but they are removable with set screws so I’ll have to test efficiency with and without them. With two motors, I’m going to have to build a larger turbine, but hey, at least I can connect the two generators and the tesla turbine together on a belt to have both generate electricity!
Remember, 1HP = 734w of electricity, so 4HP total would be 2936w, or 2.93kw of energy. That’s assuming full speed production, of course. Below are some pictures of the motors so you can see them in real life 🙂
Sorry this picture is so blurry, the camera couldn’t focus on the shiny metal label
The guy who sold these to me was super nice, offering to sell both to me for just $10! The nice part is that earlier today I sold the scrap laundry dryer (minus the motor, of course) for the $10 I bought it for. Let’s take a look at total project cost now:
- Clothes Dryer AC Motor – FREE (sold dryer for $10 and kept motor)
- 2x Treadmill DC Motors – $10
- Reflective Poster Board – $4.50
- Other materials for parabolic trough – FREE
- Total Cost so far = $14.50!!
Tesla Power!! 