Lever Arm Generator
Baron Creager, Brandon Giordano, Luke Halonen, Alberto Jasso
The solution we implemented was the Lever Arm Generator. The Lever Arm Generator incorporates the principle of a lever arm as witnessed in a maintenance rail car hand trolley. The Lever Arm’s pumping motion, instead of causing a rail car to move, causes a rotation about a generator axle thereby generating power. The following subsections break the generator down into their components and explains them in detail.
Our solution’s main component is a bicycle that is available to strip, cut, and reassemble in a way that utilizes the bike’s already manufactured gears, bearings, and support bars to create our final design.
The gear system for a standard multiple speed bicycle is perfect for a multiple chain generation setup. One side of the pedal setup is an ideally shaped rotating axis to attach the piston shaft to from the lever arm. The gears attached to the pedal create a way to transfer the energy from pumping, to the back wheel gear cassette.
Removing the front forks and striping off the handlebars, wheel, and all braking/shifting components allows for the forks to be inverted and inserted in the location for the seat. This creates an upright support to secure the lever arm as well as supplying us with an already manufactured spinning axel between two supports. As for a lever arm, the handlebars can be secured to the rotating axis on the inverted forks and have the piston shaft from the pedal attached somewhere down the length of the arm. By creating this design, a triangular base with the gears and chains is created, a shaft and lever arm setup is created, as well as completing the setup for a mostly bicycle made lever arm generator.
The finished product of the Lever Arm Generator is can be used in two ways. First, small appliances can be directly hooked into the female end of the cable connected to the generator thus powering each item individually. Second, the Lever Arm Generator can be used to charge a battery to store power for later use.
Proper usage of the Lever Arm Generator can be achieved by one or two people by stationing themselves adjacent to the lever bar and applying an up and down force on the lever bar. The lever bar’s motion causes the bike portion of the generator to begin rotating due to the connecting shaft between the two components. As the pedal gear rotates, the wheel connected to the rear gear spins causing the belt attached to both the generator and the tire of the wheel to produce power.
Maintenance will be needed primarily to ensure that all rotating joints are properly greased and functioning properly.