Dutch Windmill Blades extruder motor visualizer

thingiverse

I started by printing the basic NEMA Windmill motor rotation indicator, but I was underwhelmed. So I printed it at 200% scale and felt much better, yet it still seemed too small and chunky - especially after looking at pictures of Dutch windmills where the blades almost touch the ground as they rotate. I sat down with a picture included above and estimated how big the blades would need to be if the printer extruder motor and extruder housing were a Dutch windmill. This is the result. To make the blades rotate in the real world, they need to be covered with something like canvas sail cloth. Without the cloth, the blades don't rotate, but I wasn't going to take the time to put cloth on my printer blades just for realism. So I have a second model with a 0.2 mm layer that is supposed to represent the cloth covering, though only on one side. You will need two magnets referenced in this article: One fits just inside the motor housing and the other is super-glued to the blade. A small circular indent was put on the back of the blade center to aid in placing that last magnet. Unfortunately, Dutch windmills rotate counterclockwise while printer motors rotate clockwise so it's not completely realistic - but not bad.