Recent content by samsonmustang

Okay, I got my hands on an old DC motor and I used the battery out of an electric hand drill. - Connecting the battery to the field windings made the motor start spinning. Result. - Swapping the connections swapped the direction of the motor. Putting a diode in there ensured it would only turn...

Thanks, Jim. The only think I've really played with are little stepper motors, which won't do at all. I shall take all this on board.

Wow, thanks everyone for the helpful responses. I like the idea that I can change my torque up and down by adjusting the field current. Presumably I use a variable resistor for doing the adjustment - but wouldn't that be wasteful because the 'spare' current just goes into heating the resistor...

...I've just realized, motors and generators are mechanically the same thing, aren't they? So if I know what wattage I want out, I can just buy and motor and run it backwards. Right? Nidum: thanks. It may sound silly, but when you're this new to a subject, you don't even know what words you...

So I want to charge a battery from a pedal-powered dynamo, and use that to power my PC, my screen, and pretty much everything else in my home office. This whole thing is a little project to improve my own health while I'm working; I'm not here expecting to make major miracle savings on the...

Okay, thanks. I think I need more voltage than a little bike generator can give me - but not as much as the car one would provide. It seems that dynamos are generally made for a specific purpose - you can't just come up with a rating and buy them off the shelf from somewhere? (Makes me wonder...

Okay, that's brilliant. So that sounds like I can 'step' the difficulty up and down just by adding in more and more resistors? I don't suppose either of you gentlemen would be able to recommend a good place to buy a dynamo so I can have a play with this at home? (Google just shows me lots of...

Say I wanted to attach a dynamo up to some pedals or something - what factors would affect how hard the shaft would be to turn? Is it governed by the physical configuration of the dynamo (windings, etc)? Or is it the (electrical) load attached that matters - and how does that work? If I wanted...