What is the longest your wheel has ever ran

[rlortie]

Fletcher,

Your retirement scenario pretty well resembles mine, difference being I had to keep my watch. You see, I have to have the garbage can full of discarded wheel parts at the curb by 12:30 PM every Tuesday. :-)

Ralph

[Fletcher]

Well no, actually I had started an unrelated business a year before that which I sold 9 months ago - I was less of a hands on & more an absentee owner though - I seemed to spend a lot of time in my workshop for some reason.

"How's business in the gravity wheel trade ?" Well ... slow ... in a word.

Apparently it is a business with huge R & D costs - on the plus side, no big wages bill & overheads are low - I grossly underestimated the payback period & overestimated the IRR & NPV - the EBITDA is looking shaky too. - come to think of it the bank isn't to impressed with any of the alphabet numbers I give them.

There is light at the end of the tunnel I'm told - I'm happily but slowly experimenting & building a wheel at the moment [just a little complex to build right - no, its not CF related] - have been for about 2 or 3 months now - so who knows what christmas may bring in the stocking - I won't say which christmas & don't tell my bank manager I said that ;)

[graham]

How's business in the gravity wheel trade ?" Well ... slow ... in a word.

Yes but at least it's steady .

Fletcher I like your sense of humor, and good luck. I'm expecting big things from you .Tell you what, I'll give you till New Years, no need to rush things.

Graham

[arthur]

I have a question:

If a wheel is always 10% heavier on one side

for example imagine:
a 10 lb weight at 9:00 and an 11 lb weight at 3:00
...the wheel spins clockwise and the weights magically switch spots when they hit 12:00 and 6:00 - so that the right side of the wheel is always 10% heavier.....

what is the highest rpm that this wheel could theoretically obtain? (lets imagine no friction etc)




(ok I edit this again now realizing that this is a dumb question in the 1st place because what graham says is right)

[graham]

Arthur I reckon it will just keep accelerating till its bearing give out or CF makes it fly apart.

Graham

[Fletcher]

I'm expecting big things from you. Tell you what, I'll give you till New Years, no need to rush things.

Awgh, shucks Graham ... PRESSURES ON ... *wiping the gravy pouring from my brow*

Lets just say that the best ideas can be derailed by inattention to detail & lights at end of tunnels can be trains :)

OOB wheels definitely have a place in my designs as they do for many members it seems. As always, you will hear the result, one way or another. And if it is a poorly conceived failure & a 20/20 embarrassment, you will still see the design & its faults on my 'symmetrically balanced' thread, for everybody's benefit & discussion, but rather sooner than anticipated.

[graham]

What I find so hard to understand is WHY no one has yet been able to do what Bessler did.
Nearly 300 years have passed, generations have come and gone, countless inventors, probably in the thousands have attempted this "simple arrangement".
All have so far failed.

Are we in todays world in a better position with all the modern technology at our disposal to be able to build wheels that performed as his? I think not. He had only what was available in the 17th century yet he built them with apparant ease.

I believe it's one of the greatest tragedies in Human history that JB never disclosed his method . We would all be living in a much cleaner nicer and probably safer world had he not been so selfish.

Graham

[arthur]

WHY no one has yet been able to do what Bessler did.

probably because the MIB step in every time an inventor is onto something


......also because we are conditioned since 1st grade to believe that it is impossible.

[jim_mich]

Graham, if Bessler had shown the world how to make a PM wheel in 1712 then how many of our present inventions and technologies might never have been invented? Would we have electric motors? Or electric lights? Or electronic communications? You can't very well mount a giant wheel on a tractor and plow a field with it. I think Bessler's time may have not been right for a PM wheel.

Then the question arises if today is a right time? I'm reminded of a prophecy about a bottomless pit and some bad things that are said to emerge from it. Could a perpetual motion wheel be considered a bottomless pit where weights continue to fall forever and never hit bottom? Availability of fuel limits the speed and distance that armies can travel and be maintained. Bessler wheels could provide unlimited energy to wage Star Wars type destructive warfare. The main reason armies don't have science fiction type 'death rays' is due to energy limitations.

[arthur]

f$%k that we are better off with free energy

[Fletcher]

Bessler had determination, & in a moment of rare insight, the talent to distill/strip things down to the simplest most fundamental levels & still be able to keep sight of the causational relationships that binds them together.

All others since have thought cluttered thoughts, by comparison. We zig where he zagged.

[arthur]

jim I believe that the people who fabricate these wars already have this technology and that it is more like a matter of human freedom

[daxwc]

Free energy? You must be young? Because in the real world, the wheel will be taxed by the government, just as in Bessler's time.

[DrWhat]

I agree, I think it would be taxed, but if it helps the poor parts of Africa (etc) then I am willing to live with that.

[arthur]

how could the government tax a gravity wheel powering a home generator?
I dont think the government could get away with that

thats like taxing people with solar panels.