1. The MD 42-O
SFEA Corp.

2. Objectives Design a windmill that operates with efficiency
Maintain above a 10% efficiency rating
Be cheap and easy to produce
Portable

3. Prototyping
Began with a four blade design that used gears and parts from the VEX EDR system in order to obtain a gear ratio of 9.667
Obtained an efficiency rating of 15%
Began talk of trying to improve the overall design by
adding more blades

4. Issues Faced Issue: Too much friction on the gear train
The generator created too much friction
Windmill was too heavy on one side, leading to the breaking of two blades
Solution:
Arranged the gears so that they aren’t fully meshed
Allow the Generator more freedom of movement
Add in a counter weight in order to resist the drag force pushing the windmill down

5. Final Design
the MD 42-O
After much deliberation, both members reached a consensus to upgrade the windmill from 4 blades to an extra 12 blades.
The process was made much easier thanks to a template paper which allowed the creation of blades to be vastly sped up