progress check

[johnl285]

what's the longest time your wheel spun without stopping?

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.1 ... .html?pg=5
says here aldo costa's wheel has gone 3 hours straight before stopping but it was aided by the wind.

[jim_mich]

We've discussed this one before.

http://www.besslerwheel.com/forum/viewt ... =4347#4347

http://www.besslerwheel.com/wwwboard/messages/241.html

http://theverylastpageoftheinternet.com ... _wheel.htm

http://l2.espacenet.com/espacenet/viewe ... =fr&DB=EPD

http://l2.espacenet.com/espacenet/bnsvi ... 745857A1+I+

I looked at the patent and realized it uses is the same old concept that we repeatedly see of pushing weights inward at the bottom and outward at the top.

[ken_behrendt]

I'm impressed with the scale on which Costa is constructing his wheels. However, at a diameter of almost 60 feet such a wheel will have a very high moment of inertia and, when a sufficient torque is applied to it to produce noticable motion, it will develop a lot of angular momentum which, with well lubricated bearings, should keep it turning for some time.

However, unless it is TRULY a PM machine, it will be unable to perform any significant external work other than pushing the surrounding atmosphere out of the way as its parts turn and it gradually slows to a stop.

He says that it turns longest when "assisted" by the wind...so do windmills! In the case of his wheel, I would imagine that there could be some sort of turbine effect involved. If a wind blowing along in the plane of the wheel was shielded from striking the lower portion of his construction by ground obstacles, then the incoming wind would only be able to strike the upper half of the wheel. Now, if the upper half of his wheel just happened to be turning in the same direction as that wind was blowing, then it would, if it presents a sizable cross sectional area to the incoming wind, get a small push or assist from the wind that would help it maintain its motion longer.

I think that there have been several other such large diameter wheels back in the history of perpetual motion. Often they were demonstrated to the nobility and were impressive during the short time that they were observed.

But, ONLY Johann Bessler's wheels were noted to be able to perform significant external work...

ken

[Vic Hays]

I did work for a guy once who wanted to build a proof of principle deisel engine full size. It was two cylinder and 150 cubic inches. We finally got it running, but it took hurculean efforts to build it and to crank it to start it. Immediately we realized changes that needed to be made. It would have been so much easier to build on a smaller scale.

Costa is not the first person to think that their principle needs to have a certain size to work. I will grant that some of the finer principles may not be observable in a very small model, but there is no reason to make one gargantuan.

[johnl285]

any experimental devices that members have made that spin for 10 minutes or more?