Hi all. Wasnt really sure were to post this, but as it is a completely home built device i thought id put it here.
Hi all. I have been testing out my home built tornado machine and have made a video showing the various vortices i have created. Completely made from spares, it cost me a total of £15 (for the mist machine). Im very pleased with myself as i have always wanted one, its about 1.5 metres tall with a total of 6 fans.
I have a combined 4 120 mm fans at the top, in pairs so i can control each. This creates the low pressure core in the centre of the machine, then i have 2 smaller fans up the side with a large inlet to get the air rotaing freely. These have been wired into a Varible resistor that i had for a PC and i can control the speed (i.e the rotational velocity) of the air. I have also hooked the 2nd of the 2 fans (the highest out of the 2) to a switch so i can have the bottom one on and top off etc, all this gives full control over parameters to produce a wide range of vortices.
unlike all the others i have seen, i wanted to make one that was as open as possible. This design i made allows the whole section to be open at the front, and you can put your head right up to the vortex to have a good look. You can tell when the vortex is nice and healthly when you can see a dark streak down the middle (i.e a clear core).
Here is a video of it :
http://www.worcwx.co.uk/Tornado%20Machine.wmv (12mb, wmv)
And a few pics:




