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Roll Experiment Design

A project log for Kite Propulsion

Harnessing the wind with robot controlled kites

ekEK 05/18/2022 at 00:200 Comments

What if the kite could spin a conveyor belt platform via an external wheel? Instead of capturing a rotating wheel inside a housing with contact bearings. The first step is to verify that the kite can move a wheel on the ground. 

The Roll Experiment design is comprised of 3 main pieces:

Cross-section view to show the mating axels

Complete view

Both wheels are fixed to each other, they do not rotate independently. The 2 wheels are recycled from a previous project, which were 3D printed on a large format FDM printer in PLA. 

The collar (yellow) is freely rotating about the axle (blue). This is where the carabiner attaches. The axle pieces mate and are fastened in place with 4x M3 fasteners.

The axle extends from the wheel using white ‘spacers’ with heat-set inserts.

After fabrication and assembly, it was time to test it. However, the kite was grounded at 0.0 km/h winds. Testing will happen next time!

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