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Belt and pulley blower
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About This Video:
I made a belt and pulley drive to power a blower. Up until now I had been using a rope and stick to spin the fan rotor of the blower. Though this was useable and produced continuous one way rotation, it was unable to reach higher revolutions per minute due to limitations of the drive mechanism. As a result, only low pressure air flow was attainable. This is enough to smelt iron ore to produce a bloom. But it is not solid, with the result being slag with high carbon steel or cast iron droplets instead of a large solid bloom of low carbon iron. A pulley and belt produces continuous rotation and can be geared up with different pulley sizes to produce greater rpm.

I first made a large clay wheel to be cranked by hand and a small one to drive the fan. It worked but had issues due to weight wasn’t durable. The small clay wheel worked ok though. The next test was of a cane wheel made by weaving a basket without a base so if formed a cylinder for the belt to wrap around. This worked better and was faster. It sometimes has issues with the frame it’s set in though. The final test was with a “floating” version of the cane wheel meaning that it wasn’t set in a frame but had 2 handles and was spun while holding with 2 hands. This worked with fewer issues but would not be scalable.

All of the wheels in the video where 25 cm in diameter and gave a ratio of about 1:10 (one hand turn = 10 fan turns). The previous rope stick blower gives about 960 rpm whereas the the pulley and belt might give 1200 if cranked twice per second, though this may be exceeding its limits of durability. A larger diameter wheel of say 50 cm will give 1:20 ratios. Future experiments will need to be done to see if they make a difference to smelting results.

00:00-14:05 Making the parts
14:05-17:34 Clay pulley wheel
17:34-24:54 Cane pulley wheel
24:54-27:48 “Floating” pulley wheel (not fixed to a frame)

About Primitive Technology:
Primitive technology is a hobby where you build things in the wild completely from scratch using no modern tools or materials. These are the strict rules: If you want a fire, use a fire stick – An axe, pick up a stone and shape it – A hut, build one from trees, mud, rocks etc. The challenge is seeing how far you can go without utilizing modern technology. I do not live in the wild, but enjoy building shelter, tools, and more, only utilizing natural materials. To find specific videos, visit my playlist tab for building videos focused on pyrotechnology, shelter, weapons, food & agriculture, tools & machines, and weaving & fiber.

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