Cool. Have you ever used the Manipulate[] function in Mathematica? It blew my mind the other day. You can just wrap any expression (including plots), with something like Manipulate[expression, {k, 0, 10}], and you get the regular output with a slider for k in the range [0,10]. If expression is a plot, it'll redraw as you drag the slider.
That documents the whole building from start to finish, including the 3d computer controlled router/plasmacutter we built in order to fabricate all the parts.
The whole thing including making the tools took about a year and half.
A single picture of the completed machine is here:
It's a variable pitch 3 blader with a 'drum' type rotor that holds 18 2x1x.5" neos. Total power about 2000 Watts, design power was 2.5 KW so not perfect but still pretty good.
Windmill blades and airplane wings have a lot in common.
I wrote some python software for it to model the curvature and get an idea of how to get the maximum effect out of a blade cut from a given blank.
The neat thing was that without the software being interactive we'd have never clued in to some of the possibilities.
In case anybody is interested here is a snapshot of the python program:
http://pics.ww.com/v/jacques/renewables/windmill/snapshot3.p...