You can’t beat these simple machines though for teaching kids how things work, which of course are just as relevant today as they have always been.

Take this Stuart Turner dynamo for example, it is so staggeringly simple its hard to believe it works.  It is nothing more than a coil wrapped around a rotor with the ends being brought out to two slip rings with sprung brass arms running in a groove in the slip ring.  The magnetic field is simply a chunk of magnetised iron sat in the base.  So the rotating coil has a current induced in it by cutting the magnetic field as it rotates.  At the slip rings you get an AC current generated but, if you were to fit a commutator and a pair of brushes instead, you could create DC current.

I connected it up to a small 2V LED and it produces a nice light to demonstrate the working.  Certainly not efficient by today’s standards but very satisfying anyway!

I’m really pleased that my little article has brought back some memories for people, and thank you for the very kind comments. The model was only meant as bit of fun and to get an old motor out of the cabinet and on to the water.

If anyone has any ideas why the motor should interfere with several different types of speed controller but not with a servo I’d be really glad to hear them. As  I mentioned I hope to get the beefier Taycol standard in to a model sometime and I’d rather not end up with an old bobs board speed controller from my junk box

Charles.

Ps ive tried the Standard with a couple of esc s with the same result.