Impact is the Key

[path_finder]

Dear 11Turion,
IMHO the best (and simplest) solution for the implementation of your design could be:
- two parallel disks with a crown of rollers all around the two rims, giving an opposite but equal rotation (one clockwise, the second counterclockwise)
- a set of radial rails on the internal side of each disk
- a centered circular shield between the two previous disks with some holes at some particular positions, mostly in quadrature, on the rim and close from the central axle.
The purpose of this assembly is to apply your idea to TWO wheels, exchanging the balls through the shield.
This concept has been discussed in an old thread, in particular with John Collins, based on the famous idea of 'escamotage'.
A search with the keyword 'escamotage' will give you some ideas, like here p.e.:
http://www.besslerwheel.com/forum/viewt ... 1536#81536
and here: http://www.besslerwheel.com/forum/viewt ... 1543#81543

[Grimer]

That's not quite true about a device which makes one revolution and resets being the ultimate answer. There is at least one device I have seen which will make a complete rotation and reset, but eventually wind down because of friction losses. It was pendulum based. It is posted on YouTube, and I believe there was a link to it from this site at one time. Not sure if it's still active. So you have to be able to develop enough momentum to do more than just barely reset. I think that one ran for like ten minutes before it stopped.

For those interested in building these things. I needed some steel balls to use as my rolling weights, since I don't think my golf balls will be heavy enough. So this morning I got on line and started searching. I found a pinball repair place that had boxes full of them and let me have them for free, so now I have 32 steel balls to use as rolling weights in my wheel. Oh fun! I picked them up just a few minutes ago, and as soon as I grab food I will be down in the basement balancing my wheel and adding the steel balls to the mix. Maybe by this afternoon I will have some idea of whether this is going to work or not.

The device you describe cannot have reset to its original state by definition.

[11Turion]

Grimer,
I guess I don't understand what you mean by reset then. I thought it meant everything returns to its original position and the wheel makes one complete revolution. That wheel was activated by a weight that was dropped from the top when it was in a standing position. It made one complete revolution and the weight returned to its original position. But it could not continue to sustain that for more than ten minutes.

Here are my two latest videos. I worked most of the morning on balancing my wheel and am not done yet. I got it pretty close and will put the cover plates on and finish up tomorrow. Then add the balls and see what happens.

http://www.youtube.com/user/11Turion?fe ... qU8NMGR85I
http://www.youtube.com/user/11Turion?fe ... qU8NMGR85I

[AB Hammer]

11Turion

The biggest problem I see in your wheel is simple. Turn all your slots to the down position. Since you have 90 degree differences this will make your slots at 45 and 135 degree angle to the axle. Now with all the weights in those positions, turn the wheel and feel all the back torque you will occur. This back torque will be the death of the design. But I still give you thumbs up on your construction.

Alan

[11Turion]

Thanks Alan,
I will give that a try tomorrow and see what happens. If it doesn't work, at least I will know WHY, and I can go back to working on the design. You are absolutely correct. When the two sets of slots are at the point you described, there are 15 degrees of rotation (16 to get past the hump) when the weights are acting against the rotation of the wheel. Conversely, there is 15 degrees of rotation on the opposite side when everything is in favor. My hope was that they would cancel each other out. Momentum gained on one side compensating for momentum lost on the other. Or not. And then back to the drawing board. Won't be the first time.

[clay973]

Stupid question, whats a scapular leaf spring?

[Grimer]

A mechanical device analogous to a milk maid's yoke.

[rlortie]

Derived from scapula: the two large shoulder bones usually referred to as shoulder blades that the scapular is design to be carried by. The similar American term would be: looks like an Ox yoke.

Ralph

[11Turion]

Grimer and any others.
As you can see, I am not one to talk about something without building it so that I KNOW of which I speak. I would be happy to build ideas that some of you have if you are willing to share. But before anyone jumps all over that, let me be clear about one thing. I share everything I come up with on the forums so others can rip it to shreds. My feelings are never hurt, because I will always have a model in front of me that can be revised and changed. I never throw any of my builds away or take them apart. I might want to go back to one some day. In fact, I often do just that. I learn a lot from my mistakes, and sometimes that is the best way to learn. I sincerely appreciate those of you who have looked at my ideas and told me that they will not work, and why. But then I always build them anyway. Not because I don't believe you, but because I want to see for myself. What I come to understand about why something did not work may save me countless hours the next time I go to build something because I will have seen and felt and tasted why some concept did not work, and that becomes way more a part of me than the few words of a stranger. I pay heed to those words. I don't discount them, and when something doesn't work I have them added to my notes.

I haven't gotten back down in the basement to work on my current model because my new laptop came in the mail yesterday and it was too much fun loading on all my software. I will be using my current laptop to run some of the software for some of my experiments on PM Pulse Motors, and wanted to make sure everything of value was loaded onto the new one. I made the mistake of touching my current laptop while still walking on the treadmill in some sweats, after having walked for three hours. It blew out two of the light bulbs in the room. Blew out my sound card, made a big bang in the headphones that were in my ears, and blew out my power supply for the laptop. SO I am taking no chances that I lose everything on it by hooking it up to probes from permanent magnet motors!! It is a few years old and I have been wanting a new one, so this was a good excuse.

Here's my latest YouTube Video
http://www.youtube.com/user/11Turion?feature=mhee

I realized just after I took the video that I left one of the most imnportant parts completely OUT of my build, which is the angled end pieces on each of the tracks. Severely angled end pieces. I have a drawing of how it should be, so will include it. The white area is the only area where the balls are allowed to roll. Hope that makes sense. The back side of the wheel looks just like this, only rotated 90 degrees clockwise. As you can see from the drawing, in a clockwise rotating wheel the weights are FORCED toward the center on the left, and Allowed to the far right on the right, which helps achieve overbalance.

By the way, I have ANOTHER design in mind which utilizes the principles I have learned with this build. It would be a wheel with tracks radiating out from the center. Each track would have a balancing track on the opposite side of it from center. Each track would be three times wider than the ball that rolls in it. Each track would have a SEVERE end cap on it, like in the drawing I just posted, which allows it to roll out to the rim when it is on the right side, but prevents it from rolling all the way out when it is on the left side. This would ALWAYS make the right side of the wheel heavier than the left, would it not? Just taking my ideas to the next level.

[11Turion]

Take a look at just ONE of the tracks in the picture I below. The ball on the left CAN't go all the way to the left because of the inclined end cap. The ball on the right can roll all the way to the right. So with just a tiny bit of help to start things moving, you get rotation to the right. Which is enough (if you have tracks like spokes out from the center, to bring the next set of tracks to the level position, but the ball on the left in the next track CAN'T roll all the way to the left while the one on the right CAN, which causes rotation, etc. etc. etc. Does this not make logical sense? Because of the angled end cap you are creating a lot of time where the things on the left cannot make it out to the end of the track, while things on the right can ALWAYS make it out to the end of the track. I hope someone can tell me logically why this will not work. (Actually I DON'T hope that at all!!) If you have these spokes radiating out from center on BOTH sides of the wheel, will you not get the kind of rotation we are looking for?? It is going to be my next build, so let me have it. Why won't it work? By the way, if you look at this closely, you will see that if you give it help in EITHER direction, you get the overbalance, do you not?

[AB Hammer]

11Turion

Each time we change things you have to watch that you don't make things worse. Here is your picture rotated. Look at where the weights will be. You will have more weight on the ascending side at the worst time in this design. Draw you center line and see.

Alan



PS check your PMs

[murilo]

11T,
Alan wants to say that your build is gravitically 'polarized', with obviously keeling.
Best!
M

[11Turion]

Alan,

I guess I should pay a little closer attention to detail in my drawings. I know what I have in my head, but sometimes it doesn't translate well to paper when I start drawing. Not having a decent drawing program may have something to do with that too. (I did that in "Paint.") I have a couple drawing programs, just don't have them loaded at the present time.

And there would be as many of these "spokes" as would fit around the wheel. On the back of the wheel would also be a second whole group of spokes, slightly shifted in degrees so that they do not align with the spokes on the front of the wheel.

I envision it more like the attached. BUT, the more I think about it, the less I like it because the advantage is soooooooo slight. I look at my present design and there is an advantage of seven balls at one time being overbalanced. In the current configuration the balls go top to bottom and left to right, ( in a "+" shape, and I definitely get that overbalance, but there is nothing stopping me from adding a second layer over the top of that in the shape of an "x" that would address the issue of the "dead" spot in the rotation. All it takes is some more wood and some more steel balls. All of which I have.

Ahhh well. Just more things to build and play with. I have four large wheels cut out of plywood, and a really nice frame to spin them on when they are completed.
http://www.youtube.com/user/11Turion?fe ... Rq99-q_bVk

[11Turion]

Since I didn't have much luck with the weights on my wheel that I was trying here....
http://www.youtube.com/user/11Turion?fe ... iwQVieW1jE

I decided to use those weights and arms in a different configuration which I describe here...
http://www.youtube.com/user/11Turion?fe ... fCs3t-7_Jk

And if you can't see the drawing very well in the video, here's a copy...

I hope some of you will weigh in on this. Logically, when the weights have dropped to the bottom of the wheel and moved the arm into play, there is no reason why anything should move until the wheel rotates 180 degrees. If that is a true statement, then the wheel would always be overweighted on the right side, and should rotate. In fact, once you have put it into motion in EITHER direction it would turn in that direction, at least as far as I can tell. But that's why I bring all these things here, so you guys can tell me I'm wrong.

[Tarsier79]

Is more mass lifted than drops? Consider the combined mass compared to rotation.