Final Design

This is the final design of our Early American Energy Project.
During the process of creating this windmill, we encountered a lot of Edison moments. Edison moments are when we run into a problem and have to redesign our project to fix it.

One of the major Edison moments we encountered was when we realized we didn't have access to the materials we thought we did, so we had trouble finding the correct gears to put on it and a belt or chain to connect them together. In order to find gears, we had to rummage through my dad's supplies and take apart a drill to see if there were any sprockets. Eventually, we found some small gears that we could use and nails to use as axles.



We tried using a rubber band as a belt, but there was way too much friction. If we were to do this project again, we would use longer nails so the windmill blades were lower than the gear so there would be room for a belt and we would use large sprockets with a chain.

A new project requirement would be to not rely on Vezino's VEX kit parts since we didn't realize we did not have access to them until it was too late. An added challenge for the teams would be that they can only use materials that could be found in Early American history, and can only BUILD with tools that were found in Early American history.

Technical Drawings

Drawings of how the lumber windmill will use and transfer energy. The wind pushes the blades of the windmill which turn the axle which turns the sprocket in a sprocket and chain system. That will turn another sprocket that will connect with the rotational saw.

Project Design Brief

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Back in the days of colonial America, people did not have access to electricity, so they had to power things by manual power, animal power, wind or solar power. In order to harness these other forms of energy, people had to build machines to most effectively use it.

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One of the tasks of a colonial American's day was cutting wood. This took up a lot of time and energy from the average American's day.

A solution to this would have to use energy that was used in this time and be efficient so that it costs less energy to use the machine than to do the task itself. Our solution has to use wind power and work as a lumber mill.

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We would have to design something that uses materials that were found in that era, using science that was known at that time and uses wind energy effectively.

Wind-powered Lumber Mill

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Early Americans only had a few sources of energy, water, animal, human, fire, and wind. In our Axis STEM history class, we need to create a machine that does a task an early American would need to do using one of the energies they had available. Our group has to create a lumber mill that uses wind power.

We were thinking of connecting a windmill to a sprocket and chain, with the second sprocket being a rotational saw. The wind would make both the first sprocket and the second sprocket move, powering the saw.