1webby1

General Category => General stuff => Topic started by: webby2 on April 26, 2018, 09:40:47 pm

Title: mechanical gain device
Post by: webby2 on April 26, 2018, 09:40:47 pm
I have in simulation a mechanical gain device.

https://www.amazon.com/Plastic-Clackers-Klakkers-Makers-Favors/dp/B003415LOM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clackers

This toy can be very inspirational,, as well as a Newtons cradle since they are basically the same thing.
I started with a basic change to the toy.
This does not include any of the other stuff and is only a change to start with.
This simple mod can itself be "tweaked" and change the behavior of the system.
I would also point out that going from this simple starting point I supplied numbers from the sim interacting with the whole system in at least 2 different ways.
What I am trying to point out is that I might of found a method but it is in no way the only method and is most likely not even the best method.

<TIC> Those that are skilled in the production of mechanical gain devices might be able to infer what all the missing parts are and how they interact :)

Title: Re: mechanical gain device
Post by: webby2 on April 26, 2018, 09:41:56 pm
Now you could connect the two clacker parts together :)

This is how I have done it.
There is more stuff but this is where I started getting some of the stuff I am getting, and this is not the first time I have played with this setup or shared it, I did not "use" it the way I am now.  Those previous times were ITRW, as in testbed.
This also is not setup to use gravity.
Motion makes motion and force makes force.
Give it motion.
Title: Re: mechanical gain device
Post by: webby2 on April 26, 2018, 09:44:09 pm
I myself prefer to run with 2 sets on the same pivot and have those sets interconnected.

I colored the systems to make it easy to see.

Then for starters you can add a motor and a spring and start the motion correctly.
Title: Re: mechanical gain device
Post by: webby2 on April 26, 2018, 09:44:45 pm
I decided to share this even tho I figure there will be,, well stuff.
I guess that there will be:
Those that take it and present it elsewhere as there own idea
Those that will "protect" it using the law
Those that will claim it is either there idea or a knock off of there idea
Those that will simply say it does not work
Those that will use this to justify what they are doing
but most of all, the thing that bothers me the most is that there will be those that will stop with only this version of it, maybe going so far as to say you can't do it any other way or use any other force\motion or whatever.

so the numbers showed that the system, just as simply setup as I have shown, produces approx. 36J in those 3 full negative cycles.
Title: Re: mechanical gain device
Post by: webby2 on April 26, 2018, 09:49:52 pm
After the first run I increased the circle mass from 0.768kg to 2kg and the system ran at a loss and since the motor and wheel are at a fixed RPM something must be getting accelerated.

Since the only thing that can be accelerating is the arm\mass parts then if I let it run for a while they should come to an equilibrium of sorts and things should drop to a net zero.

-4.7J is close enough for now.

Now there is all this motion, all this force and it all is not really hard linked together, if it was then the acceleration would of been instant, that is the arms\masses would of been at speed with the wheel motor period, but there is a dynamic link between them.
What force is compressing the spring?  What force is the spring creating when it expands?  Simple questions.
Where and how is this force exchanged?

What if "I" could control that exchange?
What if "I" put something in the middle of that conservative exchange?

In my other data dumps I have shared, that is what I am doing.  I have put a "control" system in the middle and am using the conservative exchange of potentials in such a way as to not stop the exchange.
I am conserving Momentum, or I at least I should say I am allowing Momentum to be conserved but through my control device, like a dam on a river.
Title: Re: mechanical gain device
Post by: webby2 on April 26, 2018, 09:53:19 pm
I think then with what I have shown so far it is reasonable to say that "I" as the operator have put in the energy to compress the spring and spin the system up to speed.  This energy is now stored within the system.  This energy is in a constant state of exchange, it is oscillating between momentum of the arms\masses and compression of the spring and is seen by the torque required from the wheel motor.

There is a potential that some may not consider.  The red arm on the dual interconnected pic that connects the two arms together creates a closed system between those two arms, this then also means that the momentum of those arms can be conserved.
What if I were to take the relative momentum of one of those arms\masses and transfer it to the other one?
Would the other one then need to accelerate to store that momentum?
What other forces would change with that transfer change of momentum?
What is observing all of this?
How would that point of observation change?

I have provided the data for at least 3 different ways of interacting, one where I control the rate of change of the arms\masses relative to the wheel and each other, one where I control the wheel rate of rotation and one where I control both.

I have asked myself these questions and I have come up with my own answers and then used those answers to try and make the system act the way I want it to.

This concept can be used in other ways, I am sure of that, as well as I am sure there are better ways of doing it mechanically than what I came up with.

We understand all that is around us mainly by what we see, the mechanical universe if you will,, so if we can see that universe in a slightly different way we might be able to create new things and gain a higher level of understanding of what we see.
Title: Re: mechanical gain device
Post by: webby2 on April 26, 2018, 09:53:48 pm
The center to center measurements
Long arms 10
Short arms 4
Cross arms 8
pivot from axle 4
Title: Re: mechanical gain device
Post by: webby2 on April 27, 2018, 09:10:09 am
I dropped down to one system and added a control device, which is not shown.
Title: Re: mechanical gain device
Post by: webby2 on April 27, 2018, 10:11:50 am
Now I have added a load
Title: Re: mechanical gain device
Post by: webby2 on April 27, 2018, 10:12:32 am
Then I increase the frames per second to get a closer look
Title: Re: mechanical gain device
Post by: webby2 on April 27, 2018, 12:53:21 pm
FYI,
The wheel radius is 4.5m

2.0400000000e+000 long arm  kg
8.4000000000e-001 short arm  kg
6.3617251235e+001 wheel  kg
1.6400000000e+000 cross arm  kg
6.0000000000e+000 spring rest length  m
5.0000000000e+004 spring constant N/m
Title: Re: mechanical gain device
Post by: webby2 on April 27, 2018, 09:25:06 pm
the data from the sim runs
Title: Re: mechanical gain device
Post by: webby2 on April 27, 2018, 09:27:30 pm
more runs
Title: Re: mechanical gain device
Post by: webby2 on April 27, 2018, 09:28:14 pm
and the last run
Title: Re: mechanical gain device
Post by: webby2 on April 27, 2018, 09:33:10 pm
I might be wrong but I think that it is important to observe and understand that the system prior to the inclusion of the "control" device is a conservative mechanical oscillator.
I think this understanding of the conditions prior to the use of the "control" device makes it easier to understand that it is still only a conservative mechanical oscillator with the "control" device active and a load being taken out of the system.

In this setup there is no new energy being created or destroyed and that all the energy is accounted for.
Title: Re: mechanical gain device
Post by: webby2 on April 29, 2018, 01:13:53 pm
Here is just the pic of a 1MW setup,, close enough to 1MW anyway.
All I need to do there is get all the parts to play nicely with each other.
Title: Re: mechanical gain device
Post by: webby2 on April 29, 2018, 01:16:19 pm
IMHO I have supplied enough information for others to do what I have done.

It is not important as to HOW I am controlling this but more about the "what".
This system with and without the control is a resonant oscillator, kind of brings a slightly new meaning to the word, or use of the term, "resonance".
Title: Re: mechanical gain device
Post by: webby2 on May 01, 2018, 06:55:17 am
This is a downsized unit with only a single pivot.  I increased the rate of rotation as well as brought the arms up to a high rate as well.
I had to idealize the arms to rods so that the sim would not error.

I added 2 springs so that I could either add or subtract energy from the arms and in these 2 pics I am subtracting energy via the springs.
These 2 runs were from the same starting point the difference is in how I have my control system adjusted.
Title: Re: mechanical gain device
Post by: webby2 on May 02, 2018, 10:48:36 am
A small note,
This system is directional, that is if I rotate the wheel in one direction I as the operator can extract work, if I rotate it in the other direction I as the operator must supply work.
Title: Re: mechanical gain device
Post by: webby2 on May 02, 2018, 12:34:02 pm
The system as shown is directional,, so here is a small scale low power slow version of both.
Title: Re: mechanical gain device
Post by: webby2 on May 03, 2018, 08:23:49 am
I have sim'ed this up for a real world build.
The pivot arms are now 30cm long, the pivot from axle is 30cm and the long arms are 75cm,, I have increased the working mass and made a few enhancements that I know how to make :)
I am rotating the wheel at 360 degrees per second, aka 60RPM and with approx. 265J per second gain I think that can overcome the losses of a motor and a generator.
Since I made changes to the setup I am only showing the power graph and the data file.

Made like this I think I can rotate a lot faster safely.
Title: Re: mechanical gain device
Post by: webby2 on May 18, 2018, 08:25:26 am
Due to my lack of skills in building, the increased complexity of the build is too much for me, with that I rolled back to a simplified version that I will build.
I have also included an auxiliary input by use of a constant force in, with this data set I have used 2 constant force springs to facilitate that input.
I need to add the auxiliary input to counter the real world losses the mechanical oscillator component has.

This is for a single system, where the build will have 2 systems and a full proper build would have a total of 6, 3 pairs of two properly phased to reduce the peak input torque of the drive motor and provide a more constant output.
Title: Re: mechanical gain device
Post by: webby2 on June 23, 2018, 10:47:12 am
LIfe,,

I have been busy with my father dying from a brain tumor,, so I have not been overly involved with this project.

I am learning how to use FreeCad so that I can draw my parts and also how to use my 3D printer so I can print them,, I am also using the trial and error method of design to try and make the testbed as simple as possible while maintaining functionality and also have a full set of drawings so that any other person I share them with can print out there own parts,, I am also making it somewhat small so that it would fit easily on a desktop.

It may not be as impressive as it can be but I think it will run itself as well as power a load of some sort at the same time.
Title: Re: mechanical gain device
Post by: webby2 on July 15, 2018, 09:38:08 am
I think I have the final part design for most of the parts and have started printing them.

With the the limitations of my 3D printer it will be a smallish unit and even with that it is going to take a week of printing to make the parts I have designed up.  I set the printer to use 0.1mm thick layers and limited the print speed to 50mm\sec in an attempt to keep the parts accurate enough for the prototype.  I am printing in PLA and I think it will be strong enough to function.
Title: Re: mechanical gain device
Post by: webby1 on August 05, 2018, 09:32:15 pm
Long story short,,,,

I assembled the parts that I printed for a test-fit to check my design and decided that I needed to use bearings in places that I had not placed any, I at first thought that plastic on metal would be acceptable for the first testbed, but I do not think it would allow for much run-time so I have added bearings.

In doing so some of the clearances I was using were not sufficient so I then needed to redesign the parts, not that big of a deal but one part in particular took me a week to get just right,, I hope.

My printer has failed several times now, first the Y carriage linear bearings and then those smooth rails, then the X rails and bearings,, well I guess I overworked the printer and am now rebuilding the printer with a few changes.  I hope to be up and printing again in a few days.

Good news is that the first test-fit and motions worked just like they were supposed to so I am assuming that the re-designed parts will do the same.

When all is said and done I will have a full set of .stl's for a build and a list of parts used so any one that I share them with could reproduce the unit.
Title: Re: mechanical gain device
Post by: webby2 on September 05, 2018, 10:37:48 pm
Here is a part I am printing right now,, this part will take 11 hours to print.

The blue area is my print area,, I have kind of setup this build to use just about all of what my printer can supply :)
I just finished printing 18 other pieces to make 2 other parts,, each of those pieces took about 7hours to print.

You can almost make out some of the "improvements" I have made to my printer,, the green parts are easy but I changed to a Bowden extruder with an E3d V6 clone,, so a new print head mount and this one I designed with the parts cooling fan built in and behind the hot end\ cold end, so there is a channel that runs down behind the cold end and behind the hot end and then angles out and down to blow air onto the extrudite and the fan sits on top of it all,, you can just see the bottom of the fan housing top right,, just above the green mount,, this all bolts onto the NEMA 17 motor holes that my direct extruder used on the x-carriage,, then I added a 40C bi-metal switch to the cold end fan so it turns itself on and off,  CAUTION, the bi-metal switches use the case as one contact so the case must be insulated from any electrical connection other than the fan, and I made a few more tweaks to the printer,, hopefully it will now be able to print out the rest of my parts.
Title: Re: mechanical gain device
Post by: webby2 on September 13, 2018, 08:31:09 am
At this point I am doing my final prints one at a time, making the part fit close enough and then making the next part to fit, building it a layer at a time if you will so that I end up with adequate clearances without having huge gaps.  Some parts do not move nicely and so they need a little more room, some are really nice and don't need so much, that and with the final build things are glued and screwed and will not be able to be disassembled all the way down to the single part.

This is making this move very slow, and I am getting a little frustrated and bored and over-thinking way to much with so much time on my hands,,,,,

BUT, the parts I have done so far work very nicely :)
Title: Re: mechanical gain device
Post by: webby2 on September 16, 2018, 09:35:16 am
Well,, I broke a few of my small bearings while pressing them onto there shafts, I did not see that my block had shifted onto the wrong race so I ordered more bearings, I initially only ordered enough to have spares for the setup without full bearings and would of had 1 spare bearing.

I assembled my input control motor\gear and stuff and fired it up to make sure the gears and everything worked smooth enough together, one of the motors I am using was a little messed up so I did my best to fix it up,, so far so good.

The actions that I have played with that have the bearings in place are very smooth and consistent, the parts work almost freely :)
Title: Re: mechanical gain device
Post by: webby2 on October 10, 2018, 06:34:17 pm
After a few changes and general messing things up I now have my system printed and am doing the final assembly work,, balancing parts and making sure the clearances are correct,, all that tedious stuff.

I did a full assembly of my test parts with a few final parts, full bearings and all that, and things worked really nice and smooth and all the motions are what is expected.

Things are looking good,,  hopefully within another week or two I should have the hole system together and ready for the next step.
Title: Re: mechanical gain device
Post by: webby2 on October 27, 2018, 08:43:11 am
Things are what they are,,,

I needed to adjust a few parts beyond either my ability to do so nicely or the part itself so that has made me print replacements, no big deal it just takes time.

I had another computer failure, strange stuff in that my HD failed again but at the same time my Sons HD failed as well.  I have now backed up the important files so if I have another failure I do not need to spend as much time to recover.

My printer went way out of calibration, mainly due to my own error in not securing the Y frame rails to the board the printer sits on,, got all that fixed up and my parts are printing way better.  I am using a new filament, I was using Hatchbox filament but I ordered some from Amazon Basics, well this filament is a little different, it is not as flexible and not as shinny,,, it also seems to be stiffer which I think makes it more brittle but with the way I am using it the extra stiffness is a good thing.

I am almost completely done with the main system, barring any other things I missed by the end of next week I should be done with that and ready to start on the next steps.
Title: Re: mechanical gain device
Post by: webby2 on November 02, 2018, 09:00:47 am
Doing some preliminary testing of the main input control system.

It is not as efficient as I would like but it is within what I was expecting,, I can always hope for ideal but I except what things are,,

I am still waiting on a few parts to show, I ordered some slippery tape to use between a few parts that slide on each other, I thought that using the tape would be cleaner than using lubricant and easier to change things out if needed.  I am also waiting on a flange that will solidly lock the main shaft to the main input control system.

I will start up on the ancillary parts next week and when those are done I will be able to test the whole system.

So far all the testing I have done is what is expected and they are in line with what my simulations predicted.
Title: Re: mechanical gain device
Post by: webby2 on November 06, 2018, 10:29:19 pm
I found out a few interesting things today,,

A razor blade knife\ utility knife,, blade, has a center tang that is 3mm wide,, a very handy thing if you are making grooves to fit a 3mm wide bearing!

Too much exposure to the vapors from Super Glue will make you feel like crap,, flu like symptoms,, not happy about that.

I got carried away and rebuilt, a few times even,, an internal part of the main system, it is now smaller and lighter and is all held together by bearings running in grooves, I am still using 7 bearings for the whole system but now they are running in grooves,, once all cleaned up and washered it will be very nice.  I made a small change to it to reduce some sliding friction and the tests showed a good change so I thought that if I removed all such things I would only be left with the gear mesh as a large frictional loss.

I have to grind down washers so that they become bearing spacers,, not the best way but it works.
Title: Re: mechanical gain device
Post by: webby2 on November 09, 2018, 02:20:58 pm
Still playing with the main system,, I broke a few parts a few times and so thought that it would be prudent to make sure the system can run for a few hours at a time before moving forward.

So far things are going fairly close to what the sim was predicting, and if the main system follows those predictions then I see no reason that the full system should not also follow what the sims are showing.

I change how I was using some bearings, well I have them secured by bolts and some of those bearings pass over each other,, with the first designed usage I had all sorts of head room and did not think about the clearance,, but it turns out that when you lock the bearings down and close those clearances the bolt heads can collide,, and that breaks things after a while of hitting,,, my bad on missing that.
Title: Re: mechanical gain device
Post by: webby2 on November 14, 2018, 03:55:06 pm
I need to stop with the time estimates,,

So I found a flaw with the build design, that is it allows for movement in the wrong plane.  If the levers were moving in the horizontal plane what I get after a lot of run time is an oscillation in the vertical plane,, this comes from the stupid fact that I used a single single row bearing for the pivot of the arms,,  I have changed this and am re-printing the whole thing due to the increase in sizes of all the parts.
Title: Re: mechanical gain device
Post by: webby2 on November 30, 2018, 11:23:22 pm
I ordered some parts, for the system and for my lathe.  I broke the belt for my lathe and I need it to cut the cir-clip grooves in the pivot shafts.

I had to modify my printer a little bit so I could print a part 4mm bigger than what my printer would do,, the bed was to small.  I got that done and am trying to clean up the large part and get it within a reasonable tolerance.

It is taking longer to get parts from overseas, whereas they used to be a stocking item they seem to be more of an on demand thing,, more time waiting.

I have most of the other parts printed and cleaned up, one small print flaw to fix, a small warp in one of the parts, if I can not fix it nicely I will just re-print it again.
I also made a final decision on my ancillary parts, that is how they are going to be setup and what I decided will take a lot of fiddling around,, lots of small parts that need to be arrange within a bigger part and then a few bigger parts assembled into the final part, I need to make 2 of those.
Title: Re: mechanical gain device
Post by: webby2 on January 24, 2019, 11:38:57 am
I gave myself permission to get sidetracked over the December-January time period, that and I ordered some wrong parts.

What was fun with the sidetrack is in what was not the same as my main build, looking at things a little different so I can have a more positive feeling about what it is I am doing.

So I am going to repair my lathe and get back to building, I have a lot of tedious parts to make and have not been looking forward to it.
Title: Re: mechanical gain device
Post by: webby2 on February 06, 2019, 09:36:51 am
I have been playing with the sim.
I have a scaled version of the system sim'd up and was working on my run topology for the controls,,,, well I messed up one the changes I was looking into and this is what I got as an output,, a rather large cost for an ideal device :)

I laughed at the output graph, it is such a large difference that nothing needs to be done to see that it is a large loss.
anyway, I suppose you can see that I inverted my topology by mistake.
Title: Re: mechanical gain device
Post by: webby2 on February 17, 2019, 10:23:57 pm
Here is a pic of a planetary thingy I got sidetracked with,, this is just one of many variations I was looking at.

Some interesting stuff with my main build,
First the control that I need for the control unit is more complex than I can make, so I simplified that part and went back a few steps in design.  This means that I can no longer have very fast load control or anything like that, the system will take the time it takes to adjust to any change in load,, so I will try and make the load match the system,, I was hoping to be able to make the system match the load.
Second is an observation,, my input adds energy to the system as a whole but at the same time reduces the angular momentum of the system while maintaining the system rpm.
The trick there is in locating the mystery storage area :)
Title: Re: mechanical gain device
Post by: webby2 on February 27, 2019, 09:42:50 pm
In my opinion this is what a successful simulation of an output gain might look like
Title: Re: mechanical gain device
Post by: webby2 on February 27, 2019, 09:43:32 pm
This is just the motor power from the same run
Title: Re: mechanical gain device
Post by: webby2 on February 27, 2019, 09:44:05 pm
and this is the total power only
Title: Re: mechanical gain device
Post by: webby2 on February 27, 2019, 10:03:21 pm
I have the sim set to 100 degrees per second of main motor rotation, I wanted to increase the system frequency up but chose to keep it slow so that I could get a reasonable amount of data points for the time it takes to run the simulation.

The other input power is not so important really, it is the torque of the main motor that matters and with the motor set for a constant 100 deg/s the torque follows the power curve with a peak of approx. 1000 N-cm (positive) and -2000 N-cm (negative).  Positive torque means an input cost a negative torque means an output gain.

The system add and subtract to\from the main motor is not relative to the actual motor RPM, so the motor output POWER will go up with the RPM of the main motor but the other external inputs stay pretty much the same.  So in other words if the system is making an average out of 500 N-cm and that is at 100 degrees per second then if it is making the average out of 500 N-cm at 2160 degrees per second my input is the same relationship and so with the main motor spinning 21.6 times faster there is 21.6 times more work out.

If I increase the other control inputs so as to increase the frequency of that cycle then the torque values go up as well, in both directions of course, right now that frequency is close to 1/2 cycle per 5 seconds, there are 2 input pulses per 360 degrees of the control input system.  The higher the control frequency the higher the torque swing and I am using more external input to drive higher, but that stays with the same relationships.

What this means is that I can increase the system output by either increasing the control frequency or the main drive RPM or I can increase BOTH.

This sim is actually setup to run in a more safe mode than needed but the plastic parts can only handle so much force and so I tuned it down to reduce a few force interactions to hopefully save from ripping the testbed apart.

With all this then I do believe that I can now finish the build to the specs I have in the sim.
Title: Re: mechanical gain device
Post by: webby2 on February 28, 2019, 09:27:45 pm
here is some stuff with the motor set to 1080 degrees per second
Title: Re: mechanical gain device
Post by: webby2 on February 28, 2019, 09:29:07 pm
you need to look at the scale on the graphs :)

I am re-running the 100 degrees per second to grab the motor torque for it as well as the all others,, I will post it when it is done.

The all others is without the motor, this is to show what my external input is besides the motor.
Title: Re: mechanical gain device
Post by: webby2 on February 28, 2019, 09:38:49 pm
That went faster than I thought :)
Title: Re: mechanical gain device
Post by: webby2 on February 28, 2019, 09:48:50 pm
If you look you will see that with the motor spinning 10 times faster the motor power is 10 times greater but the other external input is the same.

This is what I was referencing with the fact that the external inputs are not dependent on the motor RPM and nor is the manifested torque of the motor.  The motor torque is created by the system interactions so if the motor is not spinning the torque is the same, or,,, if it is spinning however fast the torque is the same for the same input settings.
Title: Re: mechanical gain device
Post by: webby2 on March 06, 2019, 09:41:30 pm
I like it when you do the same thing basically over and over again and something new pops out :)

So I have a lot of printing time so I have been playing with the sim more, and well,,, I came up with this setup.

The system is spinning at 1000 degrees per second, 167RPM, and this is the all up power graph.  In this setup the stresses on my build would be even less and a few interesting "checks" with the sim have it in a condition that I actually trust for a change.

There is a difference in the appearance of the graph,, :)
Title: Re: mechanical gain device
Post by: webby2 on March 06, 2019, 10:06:03 pm
I should point out that I never fully trust a sim,, including this one, but with what it is doing I feel better about it than normal,, maybe that is a better way of putting it.