[Lab] Introduction and question

[Richard Guy Briggs]

On Wed, Aug 24, 2011 at 09:29:13PM +0000, tonyelwood at telus.blackberry.net wrote:
> Hello builders and thinkers,
> 
>     My name is Tony Elwood. I've been following the mailing list for a
>     few weeks, eavesdropping on all the interesting craziness you
>     people have been up to. I have been building and inventing things
>     since I was a kid and had a box of wires, batteries and
>     lightbulbs. 

Hi, welcome Tony!

> Just getting back into it now playing around with a chipkit uno
> arduino based on microchips 32 bit chip. I built a shield out of
> treadmill parts to drive an 8x8 led matrix. Amazingly it works. 
> 
> I do service for a fitness company and we are cleaning out stock of
> obsolete parts. Does anyone have a use for treadmill drive or incline
> motors. We have a big pile that will be scrapped. Many of them are
> brand new. I may be able to get some for free. The drive motors are
> dc, 1.5-3 HP. The linear actuators are slow but high torque gearbox ac
> motors with wormwheel shafts on them. 

Interesting.  I've been wanting to play with making a treadmill
workstation.  Something that will allow me to get a low level of
bloodflow while I work, standing, walking at about 1km/h while typing at
a computer.

I'm also interested in making a pedal-powered generating station to
generate power from a stationary device pedalling.

If the treadmill workstation can also generate power, that would be
cool.  Some motors are able to be reversed to act as a generator.

This may involve some welding, but I've recently made some progress
there too:

I converted my wirefeed welder to a MIG
	http://tricolour.net/photos//2011/07/15/welding.html
so I'm now good for welding bike frames.  Here was my first project:
	http://tricolour.net/photos/2011/06/01/lamb.html
	http://tricolour.net/photos/2011/07/19/lamb.html
	http://tricolour.net/photos/2011/07/20/lamb.html
	http://tricolour.net/photos/2011/07/21/lamb.html
	http://tricolour.net/photos/2011/07/22/lamb.html

That enabled us to do a 300km family bike trip up into the Laurentians
at the end of July:
	http://tricolour.net/photos//2011/07/24/16-40-21i1.html

This is the same vehicle that was a steam train for the Santa parade:
	http://hpv.tricolour.net/train.html

> Let me know if anyone is interested. 
> 
> Hope to attend a lab soon and meet you all. 
> -Tony

	slainte mhath, RGB

--
Richard Guy Briggs               --  ~\    -- ~\            <hpv.tricolour.net>
<www.TriColour.net>                --  \___   o \@       @       Ride yer bike!
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