- Rotation Speed: 50~120 r/min
- Output Voltage: 0~28V
- Output Current: <=3A
- Output Power: 10~30W
- Size: 106*64*39 mm (4.17*2.52*1.54")
- Weight: 700g
Portable Hand Crank Power Generator w/ Voltage Regulator
Would a clockwork device be able to produce enough power to vape with ?.
- Thread starter evan le'garde
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Portable Hand Crank Power Generator w/ Voltage Regulator
A clockwork? Something like this?
Let's do some math.
1 hp = ~745 watts = the work required to lift 33,000 lbs 1 foot in one minute.
So if you wanted to use a very simple machine, say a weight on the end of a rope wound around the pulley on the shaft of a generator, and the range of motion was 1 foot, you'd need a ~440 lb weight to produce 10 watts for 1 minute. But if you just wanted to take a 3-second long hit, you could do it with a 22 lb weight being pulled by gravity over a distance of 1 foot in 3 seconds.
Yes, im talking about a clockwork box mod.
Would more than one spiral spring increase the output ?.
If so then how many would make the device usable for say 5 minutes.
I'm not talking about vapocalypse. Just wondering if such a device is possible, practical.
Just how complex would it have to be if it's even possible at all ?. Could enough clockwork be crammed into a small regular sized handheld box and also be practical to use ?
I'm guessing that a clockwork box mod would be cheaper to manufacture than a solar panel box mod, yes ?.
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How about a series of spiral springs which could all be wound up at once but would unwind consecutively. This what i'm talking about when i say complex.
OH I think I get it now. You want true wind up watch type internals to drive a small generator to send power to the coils, but stop the mechanism when not pressing the button.
I am not going to do the leg work to find parts as such but here is how I would proceed.
1. Find a small generator capable of delivering at least 3.5 Amps at 4.2 Volts (which is 14.7watts under a 1.2 ohm load). This will give you an idea of minimum size. NOTE: You may have to get a small electric motor and use it as a generator.
2. Find out what the RPM has to be in order to deliver that output. You will also need to find a way to determine/measure how much frictional load the generator will add to a spinning gear.
3. Find some sort of wind up motor (a music box comes to mind) and see how fast it can spin under a similar load. You will need to take the music box motor apart to remove the music tumbler and get to the actual drive shaft of it.
4. Calculate the correct gear ratios to convert the torque from the music box motor to drive the generator at the required rpm.
This should give you an idea of how big/small the final product will need to be. Of course since you are re-purposing these components they may not be optimized for space but at least you can get an idea if it works. If your proof of concept works, the next step would be to resize the components to fit into the desired space and layout of the box mod.
I am not going to do the leg work to find parts as such but here is how I would proceed.
1. Find a small generator capable of delivering at least 3.5 Amps at 4.2 Volts (which is 14.7watts under a 1.2 ohm load). This will give you an idea of minimum size. NOTE: You may have to get a small electric motor and use it as a generator.
2. Find out what the RPM has to be in order to deliver that output. You will also need to find a way to determine/measure how much frictional load the generator will add to a spinning gear.
3. Find some sort of wind up motor (a music box comes to mind) and see how fast it can spin under a similar load. You will need to take the music box motor apart to remove the music tumbler and get to the actual drive shaft of it.
4. Calculate the correct gear ratios to convert the torque from the music box motor to drive the generator at the required rpm.
This should give you an idea of how big/small the final product will need to be. Of course since you are re-purposing these components they may not be optimized for space but at least you can get an idea if it works. If your proof of concept works, the next step would be to resize the components to fit into the desired space and layout of the box mod.
on the serious side... possible yes, practicle no... the amount of energy that would be needed for any "lengthy" amount of usable vape time would require a rather large spring making the box bulky and heavy....
plus you would spend more time winding up the spring than vaping...
basic energy laws for a "storage" system is energy in is > energy out, mechanical to electrical isnt very efficient...
plus you would spend more time winding up the spring than vaping...
basic energy laws for a "storage" system is energy in is > energy out, mechanical to electrical isnt very efficient...
Yes. more than one spring would increase the output. How it would work would be dependent on how you arranged the parts. Oddly enough, it works just like series/parallel batteries. Mounting several spiral springs on the same shaft, so they unwound at the same time (parallel), would increase the power output but not the time from full wind to release. Increasing the output power would let you use a higher gear ratio to drive your generator (which would probably be a DC motor of some type). If you could get enough power and gear ratio together, you might get several vapes from each winding by having the power button release reset the ratchet and preserve the rest of the spring wind for the next hit.
Mounting the springs so they tripped sequentially (series) would make the same power as a single spring, but last longer in practice. You'd need the same gear ratio as using a single spring, and some way to slip gear the output shaft so it only turned the currently operating spring, and some way to sequentially trip the spring ratchets. None of that is impossible, but it's more complex and larger and heavier and more expensive than the parallel setup.
How complex? Not at all, really, so long as it's big. The smaller you want to make it, the more "folding" of the gear train you have to do to make it fit. You'll wind up with a pair of sideplates that have to have a dozen or more precisely located bearing holes in them because you'll need 5 or 6 small diameter gears to attain the gear ratio you could get with two or three big gears. And you're going to need a lot of gear ratio: a spiral clock spring, unwinding completely free, might make 200RPM. To get 6V out of a motor you'll need ten times that, with a good bit of power if you want any amperage to speak of.
Here's a nice little motor:
[Hot Item] 12V 24V 30-50W DC Motor (53ZYT)
It's (53zyt03) 12V, 50 watts, and normally operates at about 3000 RPM. If you could drive it at 1500-2000 RPM with about 25-30 ft/lbs/sec of force, you could get 6V and 25W (about 3A current) out of it, for a nice little tootle puffer mod. The size is about 2" in diameter, and about 5" long including shaft.
Now here's a nice little spring:
SCP18G198VS
It's 3 inches in diameter, half an inch thick, and offers 8.3 in/lbs of torque to a 5/8" shaft. We'd need about 45 of these springs to make 30 ft/lbs of force. That should provide us with enough power to overcome the friction in the gear train and still drive the motor fast enough to get tootle-puff power out of it. That'd be a spring bank 3" in diameter and about 24" long-- way bigger than a box mod, to answer that question-- before we get to the gear train. Note also, if bought new, that's about $5000 worth of springs...
So, I'm not going to calculate the gear train, we've already answered your questions: Can it be done? Yes. Is it practical? No. And no, enough clockwork could not be crammed into a Hammond box to make this work. If I were really going to do it I'd probably make it a floor-standing genset with bicycle pedals and a wire leading out to a vape wand you could hold in your hand while sitting in a chair and cranking the power. Note I haven't calculated the hand-squeeze/flywheel idea from @listopencil above. Also, he has linked a hand cranked generator that would recharge an internal battery mod (slowly). Looking it up it's 2 x 3 x 4 inches, not counting crank, and weighs about 1.5 lbs.
Finally, no: such a thing could not be made more cheaply than a photocell mod. Heck, you can already buy those:
https://www.amazon.com/Teryei-15000...coding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=4XM99D976BM7S5VE7YHE
Plug that little jewel into any USB charging mod and you're down the road... And it's under $25...
Here's where i'm at. I'm thinking of about 15 spiral springs side by side and each spring would be 2mm wide approx. A small amount of cogs to ensure the wind up time would be kept to a minimum, so stiff to wind up, but not so hard to make it not worth the bother. My most recent thoughts are "would a 2mm wide spiral spring have enough energy or does the width of the spring increase the energy it can hold ?". If a 2mm spring cannot provide about 10 watts for about 4 seconds then the whole idea from start to finish isn't going to work at all. The point of multiple springs would be to provide about 60 seconds of vape time (Pulse rate) if the springs are used consecutively, automatically, which in real time is probably about 5 minutes. Assuming a vaper might have maybe 15 hits in a 5 minute period of time.
So i'm not asking for the world. Not much at all, just that "sweet spot", if it even exists. Doesn't matter if the device weighs half a kilo or if it's stiff to wind up !.
Today i also though that maybe if the device has to be a little wider maybe a bit wider than a triple battery box mod, so wide that even the biggest hand can't hold it, then a strap could be used on one side so your hand could slip under it to hold the device and the thumb could be used to operate it.
Oh, don't break your heart. It can be done. It's just going to be way bigger than you like.It's a shame really. I love the idea of a clockwork e cig.
nevermind !.
I'm wondering if someone did build one, a prototype, just to show that it can be done, just how big and heavy it would actually turn out to be. You know, given the parameters : A "Clockwork" MTL box mod capable of providing 10-12 watts which when used would operate for approximately 5 minutes at a pulse rate.
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I can envision one using a falling weight for power storage about half the size of a grandfather clock, except the taller you make it, the more room the weight has to fall and the more power it will store. A lot cheaper, too, than all those spiral springs. Them things are high dollar. If it has to be spring driven, I'd prefer to use something like a car suspension leaf or coil spring-- much cheaper per ft/lb-- and compress it using a lever assembly.
Make sure you paint it orange.
My gut says it's possible to store enough energy in a reasonable sized spring to have a tootle-puffer size hit or two between re-windings, but the complexity of it all makes me shake my head and ask "why"?
How about a butane powered vape? Pass hot combustion gasses through a hollow stainless steel coil?
I was thinking of using the hand crank generator as a mod for MTL. The specs on it say 0~28V, 10~30W, and <= 3A. It's not a clockwork mod, but it's the closest thing to a mechanically powered vape that I could find. Sort of brings a whole other meaning to "mech mod."
I heard that. I looked up the specs too, and I think it can be made to work. However, you'd still need an actual mod board-- voltage regulation at the very least, as the voltage will vary with crank speed-- to make it go; and it'll take both hands to use the crank unless you mount the housing immovably, which will make it a bit hard to use your third hand to vape with. Just a thought. I agree what you've found can be made to work, but I think it'd work better if you used your crank box to recharge a mod battery...
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