PPPM: Pedal Powered Smoothie!

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mjnesbitt
August 09, 2008

The PPPM makes quick work of a mountain of smoothie ingredients (more than a liter when blended). The 500 Watt blender, powered by the 1,000 Watt inverter, drains the 58 Farad Ultracapacitor down t...

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multiverses2009 (2 months ago) Show Hide

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How long does your bottom bracket last with that flywheel? Why not just put a belt on the back wheel of a bicycle to turn the motor and charge the UC?

mjnesbitt (1 week ago) Show Hide

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Bottom bracket = 5 years of daily 1hr workouts and no wear. Leg thrust is 10x weight of flywheel.

maez409 (8 months ago) Show Hide

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didn't the professor make the same thing on Gilligan's island ?

mjnesbitt (1 week ago) Show Hide

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After a long cell phone call with me, yes.

mjnesbitt (10 months ago) Show Hide

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I turned the blender off just before the inverter would have automatically shut down. I have a voltmeter mounted on the handlebars so I knew what was going on. It was easy to pedal. No increased resistance - the UC did the work. 500 Watts continuously is equivalent to running up flights of stairs. That's how hard you would have to pedal. In the movie the blender drew around 450 Watts. More power = more torque at a given voltage.

111110001 (10 months ago) Show Hide

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Great job.

ustice (10 months ago) Show Hide

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Cool, but wouldn't it be easier to remove the electric motor, and replace it with a gear system which is powered by the petals? There would be a lot less energy lost, and you would likely get your smoothie a lot faster, not to mention it would be cheaper (if less generalized).

mjnesbitt (10 months ago) Show Hide

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The UC is a better way to match Human Power to a task that requires a burst of power than gears. In the movie, it stored a long stretch of easy pedaling and released it in 5 seconds. Gears can't do that. Batteries, capacitors, and flywheels (larger/faster than the one I am pedaling) can.

mjnesbitt (10 months ago) Show Hide

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While gears (or hopefully no gears, just direct drive to the blender) would possibly be more efficient, you would be limited to your own personal maximum power output, and maximum power output would mean "as hard and fast as you can possible pedal in a total all-out sprint."

mjnesbitt (10 months ago) Show Hide

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Another way to look at it: I could pedal at the pace of the movie all day and make a smoothie every minute or so with no strain (in a Green Expo, for example). With direct drive, I would have to sprint HARD for 5 seconds every minute to accomplish the same thing. That would get old fast.

PPPM: Pedal Powered Smoothie!

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