cycle power...

I guess most of us cycled at least once in our life - bicycles, not tricycles :P I used to be an avid cyclist even a few years back. At night I always wished I had a cycle lamp but never liked the existing ones available here. You know the one with a dynamo - that had a little circular knob/axel that'd spin as it rubs with the cycle tyre and produce electricity.

I didn't like it cuz it used frictional energy - wastes lots of energy, slows you down and makes a weird noise too. Instead of spinning the dynamo axel using friction, how about using turning power directly from the wheel?! Let’s get rid of the circular rough axel & introduce a tiny gear wheel. The dynamo will be situated near the hind wheel’s center, the gear wheel’s teeth will be 90° to the spokes – so as long as the wheel runs, it’ll hit the gear wheel’s teeth and spin the dynamo’s axel. Rubber coat the teeth, it’ll make less noise. According to my calculation – it’ll produce at least the same amount of electricity as the friction system & more.

There’s another idea but to install it, we need to take off a wheel first. The dynamo has to be set into the cycle, the magnet part around the center of the wheel. The coil will be steady & rigid beside the magnet – so when the wheel runs, the magnet keeps on spinning, creating a magnetic field for the coil to produce electricity. As this one is a bit harder to install than my first idea – I guess this doesn’t have much chance to see the daylight unless the cycle maker decides to have this built into the cycle during production.

Just for fun, it’d be great to replace the normal magnets in the dynamo with the rare earth metal magnets, which are more than ten/twenty times stronger than the regular magnets – should boost up the dynamo’s performance.

I really regret that I can’t provide any sort of picture to make these ideas more comprehensive. If anyone got any software that can allow me to draw mechanical/structural designs easily – please lemme know about it. I’m one terrible artist (can’t even draw a simple mug!) and don’t have the time or cpu speed to master 3d studio.

Guess that's all for today. Thank you for coming back to this page - I promise to meet my dateline next time :) Take care everyone...

Have a nice day...