This is the test bed for some of the turbine blades I make.   This was actually a modified version from "Wind power Workshop" by Hugh Piggott.  If you don't have this book, I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in Wind power.

The only thing that was modified from his original version is the bearing head.  Mine had to use the modified Gm alternator instead of the "brake drum" alternator. The above picture shows most of it together with the blades in place sandwiched between two machined aluminum hub sections.  Notice the chain drive sprocket behind the hub?

A couple more shots of it at different angles.  This one you can see the balancing weight on the hub as well.

All bead blasted and ready for paint.  Here you can see the alternator lower mount at the bottom and the upper mount in the left hand picture.   The main shaft head was machined to accept a standard 1" tapered roller bearings for a small trailer. Quite inexpensive.  I have less than 90.00 invested into this turbine.  It will produce 400 watts at a wind speed of 28mph.  That comes out to around 22 cents a watt. 

I'll try to get some photo's of the completed unit when I get some time.   This turned out to be a fairly quiet running unit and it does a very nice job. I actually thought it would be much noisier with the chain drive system.  The alternator I used was the "third" of the series of testing. 

The above shots were taken just after it was assembled for the first time after all the painting (boring stuff) and misc stuff were completed.