When building this turbine we will be using some powertools.
If you are not used to working with powertools ask someone who knows how to use them.
After building this turbine you will still need you fingers so.
PLEASE BE CAREFULL !!!

Step 1: Tools and Parts

TOOLS
– Jigsaw and or band saw
– Hand saw
– Lathe
– Drill press or hand drill
– Drill bits
– Screwdriver
– Tab tool
– Ruler
– Pencil
– Compass
– Sanding paper
– Vise ( it makes work more easy)
– Wrenches
– 2 clamps

PARTS
– PVC pipe
– Waterproof wood “concrete form plywood is the best”( if you don’t have that you will have to protect it with a coating )
– 2 Bearings ( bottom one needs to be able to handle a load )
– Grease nipple
– Wire rod ( 2 sizes ) ( 1 big one and 4 small ones ) ( Stainless if possible )
– Bolts and washers ( 2 sizes ) ( Stainless if possible )
– A piece of 40 mm round aluminium ( Alloy ) ( it will hold the bottom bearing )
– 2 Angle irons
– 3 eye screws

Step 2: Let’s Get Started

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First thing you will do is measure your PVC pipe and cut it in 4 equal pieces. ( mine was 2 meters long so that was 50 cm a piece )
When you have done that you will cut it over the hole length.
Now you should have 8 pieces ( they should be exactly the same size! )

Step 3: Making the 2 Disks of the Turbine

Take 2 pieces of waterproof plywood ( 12 mm )
Measure in 2 directions to get the middle of the plate and mark that point.
Take your compass and make a circle of 40 cm diameter.
Grab your jigsaw and cut them out.

Step 4: Divide Your Circle in 8 Pieces

Here is a link i have found to do this job quickly and precise.
http://www.weborix.com/8.htm
You only have to do this on one plank.
In the next step i will explain why.

Step 5: Cutting the Slots for the Turbine Blades

The way i did it was to draw the lines on 2 of the planks and then mark all the bows that i had to cut.
This i would not do again! I think its better to mark only one.
The bows you draw like this: take one half pipe and hold it against one of the 8 lines you drawn before. Draw a line on the inside and the outside of the pipe. The one where you marked the bows on you put on top and then you clamp them together. When you cut them they will be exactly the same. I used a sawblade thats normally meant for cutting metal. That saw blade just a fraction thinner then the blades.
On the side of the 2 disks you make a marking that runs over both of them. This way when you are assembling the turbine the disks will line up perfectly.
What you also should do when there still clamped is drill the centerhole to the size of your big wire rod and the 4 holes for the small rods. Divide the 4 rods equally over your turbine as you can see on the picture below. Stay about 2 cm away from the bows. That way you can still place some washers on your rods without them touching the blades. Take the clamps of and mount the turbine blades and the 4 smaller rods as shown in the last picture. It needs to be a tight fit !

Step 6: Making the Center Wire Rod to Size

First you mount the top of the turbine just as you did the bottom in the step before.
Pay attention to the markings you made on the sides of the disks when they were still clamped.
This way the same cuts will be nicely on top of each other and the turbine will wobble less after its finished. You might want to use a hammer and a little piece of wood to not damage the blades or the disk when you hit it. Make sure the blades fit tight and the 4 little rods are in the right place. It was not a easy job. Good luck. hehe

Now we will fit the big wire rod with the necessary bolts and washers.
What were going to do now is mark where we will cut of the wire rod.
The first picture is a view from the bottom disk.
I put 2 bolts there and they will rest on the bottom bearing.
I left the wire longer there so i can connect a generator of some sort there.
The upper disk is the second picture and the rod will be cut shorter.
On that side we will only have a bearing to balance the turbine when its in place on its frame.

Step 7: Turning the Wire Rod Down to the Right Size

If you have a lathe this is a pretty straight forward job.
I made the rod 10 mm thick on both sides.
The pictures show the bottom side of the wire rod.
Make sure it fits nicely because this will determine how smooth your turbine will run.

Step 8: Making the Holder for the Bottom Bearing

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The bearing i used is made out of 3 parts as shown on the first picture.
This bearing is made to cope with vertical weight.
If you watch closely you will see that the 2 disks don’t have the same inner size hole.
The disk with the biggest hole ( the one on the right ) is the top part of the bearing where the turbine will rest on.
I cut the hole out on the lathe just the diameter of the bearing. Do this according to the size of the bearing you will use.
Don’t make the hole to deep!
Make sure that the top part of the bearing is just sticking out of the holder.
The reason for this is that the top ring will spin together with the turbine and would otherwise rub against the inside of the holder and would slow your turbine down and wear it out quickly.
You will also have to drill a hole through the bottom of the holder so the wire rod can fit through.
Make it slightly bigger then the size of the rod so ones its mounted it will not tough the sides.
You have seen that this bearing has no grease in it so we will have to install a grease nipple.
Use a thread cutting tool to do so.
First drill a hole according to the tread and the nipple size you will use. Mine was M6.
Use some cutting oil because your cutting in aluminium and otherwise it will get all rough on the inside. Run the cutting tool for about 1 turn and then run it back for half a turn. This way the metal is cut inside and you will not brake your tool. Use the 3 stages of cutting till you reach the right tread.

Step 9: Making a Frame Around Your Turbine

First you get two pieces of wood that are exactly the same length.
Make sure they are wide enough so you can make a strong structure.
Look for the center of both of them and make a hole the size of the bearing holder for the bottom one and the size of the top bearing for the top one.
I was lucky i had a big drill to do so. If not take your biggest drill bit and drill it out and then cut the rest out with a round axe.
For the bottom one you have to drill the center of the hole trough with a drill one size bigger then the size of the big wire rod that will fit into the bearing. For the bottom one you will have to cut out a little slot so the nipple can fit inside and that you have enough space to put in the grease pump. You can see what it should look like on the pictures.
Take two more straight pieces of wood for the sides. ( I had some plywood so i used that )
Take the bottom piece with the bearing holder inside and put it on a flat surface.
Use one of the side pieces and screw it on there. First drill some holes in the side so the screws will go in better. Make sure its perfectly square. ( 90 degree angle )
Do the same thing for the other side.
Now take your turbine thats completely assembled and lower it into the bottom bearing.
Now you take the top piece and slide the bearing over the big rod. Measure on both sides of the turbine and make sure you measure the same distance, that way your frame will be perfectly square.
The movie shows how well it spins. ( by hand of course )

Step 10: Building the Support for the Turbine

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This stuff i did not really measure.
I made sure that everything was in perfect line with the axle of the turbine.
Just build it as you can see from the pictures.
Just make sure its strong cause there will be a lot of power on it.
I did not connect any generator yet.
Had no idea what connect to it.
I was thinking of a otherpower generator. ( coils and neo magnets )
Idea’s are welcome
I hope you enjoyed building this turbine.
Keep me informed on your building

Step 11:

As you can see on the little movies i connected some ropes to the turbine to hold it stable.
I used some old pins from a tent to connect the ropes to the ground and at the side of the turbine i used 3 eye screws. Works good.
When you put up your turbine make sure to have someone that can hold the turbine while you connect the wires to the ground.

How to Build an Archimedes Screw

Posted on 01/02/2020 by Cornay

We are Team Shark, a group of Product Design Engineering students and as part of our uni course we’ve been given the challenge to design and build a water pump. The task is to design and manufacture a pump that could lift 5 litres of water up a height of 600mm in a time of 5 minutes or less. We’ve decided to make an Archimedes Screw and here’s how we’re getting on.

Step 1: Materials/ Tools Needed

Materials:
Wood
Wooden dowel (27mm Diameter)
1mm thick sheet steel
1.5m steel rod (19mm Outer Diameter)
1.25m plastic downpipe (65mm Inner Diameter)
Bracket for downpipe
Gearbox (We used one out of a cheap drill)
24V Motor

Tools:
Wood lathe
Metal lathe
Band saw
Sander
Plasma cutter
Bench Grinder
Angle Grinder
Handheld drill
Gas Welder
CNC Machine
Bench Vice
G-Clamps
Solidworks software

Step 2: Calculations

Before we could begin to manufacture the screw, we had to do calculations for the optimum angle of the screw to sit at and for the pitch of the blades. For this we referred to ‘The Turn of the Screw: Optimal Design of an Archimedes Screw’ by Chris Rorres.
Our results gave us 40 blades with a pitch of 30mm and we kept our angle flexible at this stage.

Step 3: Making Templates

In order to make the screw more efficient, we wanted all of the blades to be of equal size and pitch. To make the blades of equal size we simply cut a template out of wood by turning a cylinder of wood on a wood lathe, slicing it into discs then drilling through the centre.

For the pitch we created a template using a CNC machine. We know that a lot of people don’t have access to a CNC machine so the discs can also just be bent into shape during the welding process using a hammer.

Step 4: Making the Discs

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Cutting
Each disk is cut out of a sheet of steel using a plasma cutter. The template [made in Step 3] is clamped to the sheet of steel then the plasma cutter is run round the template cutting the disk.

Grinding
The edges of the discs are then ground to the right size using a bench grinder [our discs were 64mm diameter]. This also removes the burr left by the plasma cutter. The surface of the discs are also ground down using an angle grinder to remove any burr from the surface and improve the aesthetic.

Bending
Each disc is then clamped in the CNC template [made in Step 3] in the bench vice to bend it to the correct pitch.

Step 5: Welding & Refining the Screw

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We then welded each disc to the central pole using a gas welder, we found from making prototypes that the gas welder gave a much cleaner finish than arc welding. This created the blades of the screw.

The welding caused the central pole to warp slightly so we had to manually bend the pole back so that it was as straight as possible. This took some time! We made supports for the screw to sit in so that it was held at one level and span it using a drill to see where the warping was, we then had to bend it by hand.

Also at this stage when we tried fitting the screw in the downpipe it was too tight a fit so we had to grind down some of the blades using an angle grinder. To find out which blades needed grinding we forced the screw in the pipe and ran it off the drill, this made the screw cut the inside of the pipe and when we pulled the screw out, the blades that had lots of plastic on them, and therefore had been cutting into the pipe most, were the ones that needed ground down.

Step 6: Sealing the Screw

Traditionally an Archimedes Screw would rotate inside the pipe while the pipe stayed stationary. However we decided, after a lot of testing, with our pump it would be more efficient if the screw was sealed inside the pipe and the pipe rotated along with it so really now it is a variation on the coil pump.

The screw fits tightly into the pipe anyway but in order to make it sealed we first had to run silicon sealant [any bathroom sealant should work, we used multipurpose silicone sealant from the pound shop] round the central pole so that there were no gaps between it and the blades. We then put a generous line of sealant round the outsides of the blades and then forced the screw into the pipe and left it to dry over the weekend [we recommend leaving it for at least 24 hours]. This sealed the screw to the pipe and this way hopefully no water will run back down the pipe like it would in a traditional Archimedes Screw.

Step 7: Testing, Testing, 1 2 3…

This step is really ongoing throughout the whole build. We found it was essential to keep testing our screw to see if it would draw up water and early on we had some pretty impressive results. Above is a video of our first prototype working whilst being ran off the hand drill.

Step 8: Making the Frame

The frame is a very simple ‘L’ shaped frame made from wood. We wanted to make it so that we could adjust the angle that the pipe sits at whilst its in the frame. To do this we made a simple square frame that would slot into notches on the sides of the tank we’ll be using. At the front of the frame are 3 notches on either side, a dowel with a bracket attached sits in a set of the notches and this can be moved, each set of notches giving a different angle.
Two ‘legs’ come down from the back end of the square frame and this had two sets of hooks on it in which another dowel with another bracket sits in and this can alter the angle further. The screw is held in place on the frame by a simple collar that sits over the bottom with a plate on the end that the end of the screw rests against and there is also another collar that sits before the first bracket and stops the pipe from slipping down any further holding it in place.

Frame_Render.psd

Step 9: Gearing the Motor

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At the end of this project we have a competition to see which team can move the water most efficiently and in order to regulate the pumps all the teams were given the same motor [24V]. Now this motor produces 0.1Nm of torque and the drill we were using to test our screw produces 40Nm of torque so we faced quite a challenge to get our motor to produce enough torque to turn the screw.

We decided the best way to do it was to buy a cheap drill and salvage the gearbox from it. We then attached it to the motor and we estimated this increased the torque to about 20Nm. However once we’d done this we realised that by increasing the torque so much, we’d decreased the speed by too much and the screw was now going too slowly to pull up any water so we had to introduce another gear box, this time gearing it back up slightly.

We also greased up the gearbox from the drill to make it run more smoothly.

Step 10: Housing the Motor

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We had to find a way of holding the motor safely above the screw and it also had to be held in such a way that it couldn’t rotate. To house the motor we used the casing from the cheap drill as it was already the correct size so fitted perfectly over the motor and chuck. We cut the drill handle off and sanded down the rough edges to get the right shape.

We decided, as we are Team Shark, as a bit of fun, to make the motor housing look like a shark so we first spray painted the casing white and then shaded a blue grey colour over the top. We added an MDF fin and voila – shark. As I said, this is just a bit of fun and it passed the time while we were waiting to get things done in the workshop.

The motor is stopped from rotating as it is screwed to the back plate of the holder and the holder will be securely attached to the frame.

Step 11: Funnel

When we did the test runs of the screw, we found that when the water was exiting the pipe a lot of it was running back down the outside of the pipe and because it was still spinning when it exited it tended to splash everywhere. So we decided to create a funnel to channel the water into the exit bucket.

Firstly we vaccuum formed over a hemisphere to create a bowl type shape. Then we drilled and filed out a hole that fit tightly over the end of the pipe. Finally we heated up the plastic again using a heat gun and bent it into the shape of a spout.

Step 12: Putting It All Together

Sadly we couldnt get the final screw to run off of our motor but it would work fine with a more powerful motor or off of a drill like the one we’ve used for testing throughout the whole project. Heres the final screw working off of the drill.

https://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Build-an-Archimedes-Screw/