A while ago now, we were approached by RS Components and asked if we wanted to try out one of their kits. We were offered the choice of a car or a windmill. It sounded interesting so we said yes and my son decided that he would love to try making a windmill.
When it arrived my son was very intrigued by the various wires and wanted to get them connected up as soon as possible. He was so keen to see how it worked he didn’t even want to colour the windmill in. He did have to cut out the windmill template though so he got started.
He had to concentrate quite hard as the card needed to be cut out round the solid lines. Dotted lines indicated folds and he was being careful not to cut the wrong ones by mistake. Finally all the pieces were ready.
Next we got the Pritt stick out and stuck the windmill together. First we did the base and then we added the roof to it. It stuck together quite nicely with one side being left open to put the electrical bits in.
The sails were attached to the windmill by pushing the wooden rod from one side to the other and then pushing it though the sails. This part was a little fiddly as it was hard to get a decent hole in the sail that was tight enough to hold the sail on place without it being loose. We got there in the end. To hold the motor in place it needed to be attached to the base of the windmill with bag tags which was simple enough.
Finally the electrical connections needed to be done, the part my son was looking forward to. To make the sails turn the elastic band needed to be put round the wooden rod and then attached to the front of the motor. The battery is then attached to the crocodile clips and the sails turn. We hit a couple of snags at this point. First the elastic band was too wide to fit round the end of the motor. We did try a slimmer elastic band and this worked better and the sails turned. This had the effect of pulling the wooden rod out of the hole at the back and the whole windmill then stopped. To hold this in place we wrapped another elastic band at the end and this seemed to work better.
My son had great fun with this kit, even though it did not work perfectly and he found out a lot about how motors work.
Disclosure : The lithium battery, DC motor, and wire used in this project were supplied by RS Online, the world’s leading high service distributor of electronics and maintenance products. If you are a blogger and would like to conduct this task with your child, please get in contact with RS Components Marketing and register your interest.
We had similar problems with ours, good fun for a wet afternoon though !