Message for Michael


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Posted by grim (206.162.192.40) on September 23, 2003 at 13:24:57:

Mike

I must apologize if my reply to you came off as a slam or burn. That was not my intention at all. Unfortunastely your message got caught between two trains of thought.
If your intentions were simply to inquire or offer advice, curiosity, etc., then please except my sincere regrets in the way your answer was sent to you.

What do I know...well, after looking at Honnecourt, the early Indian and Arabian designs, etc, it occurred that they were all the same; trying to put more weight on one side
of the axle than the other, resulting in always more weights below the axle then ever above, which made the wheel bottomheavy, like the unicycle rider/string toy whose low riding weights keep him from flipping over off the string he rides.
So an image was scanned and inverted, which yielded weights lifted off the "bottom" of the wheel.
According to what could be seen, the wheel now had more weight above the axle, and was therefore topheavy and unstable. This was a "flaw" all those machins had that had been mentioned
long ago in a post. The trick was to make gravity do all the weight-lifting operations. Levers, trip pins, etc rob energy in their operation; for this to succeed, the only way was to use levers and
counterweights directly on the weights themselves, so gravity grabbed the small counterweight and through the second class lever raised the larger weight of the bottom of the wheel and held it there, with the wheel's only
involvement being as a mount for the large weight's pivot point, through which the COG changes were transferred to the main axle.

Timing of lift was slow, so small posts and springs were added to the system, to assist the counterweights in lifting the large weights at the proper time. The correct setiongs were by experiment.
When all was completed, the whole assy was released, and it took off on its own. The lower weights were striking their stops quite hard, if you count "one-thousand-and-one" as a second's worth of time, they were striking
at a rate of one raise/hit per syllable. Lost the springs. Reattached, same thing, this time one of the counterweight levers shifted also. Dissasembled, bolted them both tighter, ran
again. Gave up when they hit so hard that they egged the bolt holes in the 1/2" plywwod disk at their stops.

Smithy's just flat cracked the disk he was using, finally, also at the stop points.

I believe, after thinking, that weights trying to drop on the top release side at 32ft/sec/sec around a 15"
disk may have definitely contributed to the problems. Brett suggested four weights, two on each side, might smooth
it out, but it was finally opted to try a different approach.

Five-six turns is all that could be achieved before the construction let go. But it did start from a standing start
and passed two turns easily from its start, so maybe you're right. Might be worth building a bigger, heftier model,
feet instead of inches diameter.

This is the sum of what is known about it.

Once again sorry if an attitude came across, that was not the intention.

Regards

grim




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