Fisher & Paykel Smart Drive motors 

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Sales have been good.  I only have about twelve of these F&P Smart Drive motors left.  When they're gone that's it, unless I can find another source since shipping from New Zealand is now too high. This Fisher & Paykel Smart Drive Permanent Magnet motor is comprised of a hub, stator, main shaft, two bearings and a bearing holder.  The Stator is stationary and comprised of 42 wound coils.  The ends of the windings are easily accessible for re-wiring.  Since this doesn't have brushes, when the hub is spun it actually becomes an alternator producing AC current.  Also included is a Smart Drive Reconnection Manual. This black and white second edition of the manual is over 70 pages in length, it includes a full index and Smart Drive applications for wind, hydro and engines. The manual covers the EcoInnovation method of decogging Smart Drives for wind turbine applications, it also covers rectification and a revised and simplified reconnection method, which is photograph based. Full sets of test results for the 18 Smart Drive options on 12/24/48 volt battery systems are included, these took many hundreds of hours of testing to complete.  If you have an interest in Smart Drives this is an invaluable resource.  

I've gone ahead and made a page showing how I re-wired my F&P unit.  Click on the picture to the left to go there.  Or here www.watchtv.net/~rburmeister/smart wiring.html.  I thought this might help people to see just how easy (and FUN) these units are to work on.  

The welded pivot assembly and mating parts shown to the left are my design.   I designed this pivot to utilize an antenna thrust bearing as the pivot bearing.  This Yaesu GS-050 bearing is available thru www.gigaparts.com.  Since there was some desire to use two F&P motors ganged together, I designed this universal mount to accept one or two motors.  The mount can also be turned over and mounted to a stationary motor or hydro source.          

Only three of these are left.  Buy now if you want one.  It will be some time before I get around to designing and building a different one.

 Here is a picture of the Yaesu GS-050 thrust bearing.  One of my Ham Radio friends turned me on to these.  This bearing is heavy duty designed to allow a large Ham radio antenna to rotate.  The clamping bolts allow it to be mounted on a mast from 1-1/4" to 2 inch in diameter.  I would recommend marking the mast where the screws contact it, and then drill a hole or grind a pocket where the screws go, to lock it in place.  Again, these are available from several different sources.  Search the web and find a good price.

This is one of my finished prototypes.  Here you can see the thrust bearing, bridge rectifier, and spring dampened furling pivot.           

I've got another prototype mounted on my windmill tower, ready to generate power.  Now all I need is a little wind.