Posted by Joe Courage (198.91.33.104) on January 30, 2002 at 18:00:08:
Three groups of four levers have 12 levers and will equate to the drive shaft getting a power turn every 30 degrees. Five groups have 20 levers and the drive shaft will now only have to wait for a helping turn every 18 degrees. The more levers there are in motion, the more powerful and smooth the drive shaft operation becomes.
The offset is very important; here is how it works. We will make our drive shaft accommodate two groups of levers. Although you can build it differently to accommodate as many groups as you want, two groups are all we need to illustrate the basic offset principle.
The next two paragraphs are critical. Please read.
We will reduce the left half of the four by four drive shaft to three inches by three inches. We will keep it parallel to the right half. Then we cut the right half down to three by three also, but instead of making it parallel to the left half, we use the "dado" woodworking procedure to make the center of each of its flat sides line up perfectly with each corner of the left half. This makes each corner of the right half line up with the center of each flat side of the left half. In other words, instead of lining up flat sides to flat sides and corners to corners, we are lining up flat sides to corners and corners to flat sides.
This way, you now have a very smooth operation with eight gentler strikes for each turn of the wheel instead of four hard jolts. Although the drive shaft is still a single block of wood, it looks and works as though it were two separate drive shafts that were stuck together, with a common axis.
To make one from scratch with three groups of levers instead of two groups, which will give you 12 altogether and a lot more power, you would do it the same way: cut down the first third of the drive shaft, then from one end of the drive shaft, eyeball-engineer the other two sections from the center of a flat side of the first section. Visualize two corners, 30 degrees apart from each other and 30 degrees from each side; one will be part of the second section and the other part of the third section. They will serve as your reference points for positioning the last two sections, and you can take it from there with the dado procedure.
To make the wheel from steel is far simpler:
Get a length of round steel pipe long enough to be the draft shaft. Then get a length of square pipe that will just barely fit around the round pipe. You will be cutting up this square pipe into short sections for each group of four levers, for as many groups that you would like. Then you nudge the square sections sideways around the round pipe, using a hammer if necessary.
These sections of square pipes are the equivalent of the square sides of the wooden drive shaft sections.
After you have finished twisting the square side sections around in order to correctly position them from one another by the appropriate number of degrees according to the number of groups of levers that you plan for it, weld them to the round pipe. Then weld a hinge attached to a steel lever to each piece of square pipe. This welding job illustrates the simplicity of the steel method, which eliminates a lot of work involved in the wood method. Finish the rest of this gravity-recycler using the same principles as the wood method.
Weld a narrower piece of pipe at each end of the drive shaft to go through the bearings.
In order to get the machine to produce enough power when dealing with tight space constraints, weld each group of four levers on much shorter lengths of square pipe and line them up together instead of spreading them out as in the previous directions. The levers will almost appear to be on top of one another. This option involves more skillful welding but quadruples the number of lever groups for the space that you are working with, thereby producing more power.
As in Murphy's law, if there is any way for some steps to remain unclear, they will. So please feel free to ask questions.
Joe