Hello to all, Has anyone seen this on any lay out. It is a willmill that was used extensively in the midwestern states to pump water on farms. Some were called AREO MOTOR,I have seen only one on a layout and it was functional,turning fan wheel. This was probably a handcrafted by somebody, didn't get to get a real close look to see how this was done. Have looked high and low at all types of model windmills and not one a functional.. Food for thought for all, Don
Don, I have one I got at an estate sale that is a plastic kit. There are two ways I know of that they have been made to rotate the fan. One used a tiny "V" belt pulley with sewing thread running through a small hole in the base to a reduction geared motor under the table. The other one has a very small coil spring on the rear end of the fan shaft. There was a 1/16" diameter shaft soldered to the spring that ran down through a hole through the table and was rotated by a reduction geared motor also mounted under the table. The coil spring was bent 90 degrees, so acted like bevel gears would. The plastic kit fan is too heavy to rotate from merely blowing on it. However, if a light weight fan were made from aluminum foil, mounted on a straight pin, it would probably rotate if an ossilating fan were to blow across it occasionally, and would look more real also. Be sure to slip an indian bead onto the pin between the fan and the tower like we did on our model airplanes. Grandpa's didn't run all the time. Food for thought.
Watash, Thought more today on the windmill subject and with your imput have devised a plan to try a prototype, I have recently aquired a windmill kit in 40' HO and today I dug through some of my stored junk and found a motorgear, removed the motor and can control rpm by DC, gear box is geared for a 24 hour time frame so is REALLY to slow,Will try your plan and see how this works.thanks for the ideas. Don
Don, the one that was wind driven: He had a barn with the rear of the barn facing away from where visitors could see. He had mounted a cheap 12v motor inside the barn with a 3" dia airplane propeller on the motor shaft. The doors and windows were all open in the barn. He had mounted the windmill out behind the barn with a horse tank beside it. The air from the barn was enough to blow the windmill fan at 75 rpm which was average speed. Sneaky. Remember they had adjustable brakes for storms, so were set to not go beyond a set max speed.
We rigged a little helicopter to run from a lot of small holes in the table under it, with a regular 8" fan blowing air up past the chopper's big blades. We moved live fuses down loading conveyors in an arsenal with air feed. One of the fellows made a tiny train to run around in a little oval this way too. It was a cute novelty.
