FYI - the "Floppy Disk"

[Fletcher]

Hi All, for those interested appearing here 'hopefully' is the constantly out of balance (coob) attempt from some time ago. I call it the "floppy disk" for obvious reasons :-)

The centre arrangement is made up of 8 identical bars with mass, each is pivot joined to the next to form a loose circle. They are then attached by non flexing rope thru pulleys (or chains around sprokets) to a pendula arrangement conected to the wheel rim as shown. I didn't actually build this one because Rainer had been coaching me on how to use Working Model 2 (WM2D) so it was an excellent opportunity to try it out. Saved an enormous amount of time, effort & brain space, plus I could change the parameters & variables at will. So please excuse the basic nature or the componentry.

How was it supposed to work ? On the top side gravity caused the pendula to fall tensioning the ropes thru the pulleys to the center floppy disk. Because the ropes travelled thru 2 pulleys and thru 90 degrees clockwise the falling pendula at 12.00 o'clock tensioned the floppy disk at 3.00 o'clock & caused the floppy disk to move right resulting in coob. Unfortunately it also created a lower CoG as well as a right shifted CoG so that the right shift was unable to overcome the "keel effect".

Regards Fletch

[Fletcher]

Blast from the past lol. I'd probably show that sim a little different now, transparent for starters, so I could show the System CoM in action.