Picking things back up

[webby2]

Things are moving slow but they are still moving

Some of the print times are getting up to more than a day long,, it is a little scary at times how involved some of my prints have gotten.

[webby2]

eyes can be so misleading,,,
I have been working on making a shape, a particular shape and every time I thought I had it designed in FreeCad I looked at the thing and it just looked wrong,, so I tried again in a different way and so on and so on.

I have had this kind of thing before and I finally remembered that what "I" see as not level just actually be level from the parts perspective,, just as what I see as non round might be a perfect circle

So I went ahead and printed the part and it fits and does what it is supposed to do even tho to look at it you would not think so.

I have my first basic unit put together so that I can actually see and play and feel how things interact and so far it looks like it might do exactly what I think it can.

I will play with this for a while and then get into designing the parts more accurately and then see what it can do from there.

[webby2]

I think I just figured out a way to further multiply the input work.

[webby2]

Been busy

So things I am making are getting a little complex and yet very simple it is more in the how can "i" make it that is getting complex.
Now to try and remember how I used a few macros and programs to design a certain kind of part that as it turns out is something I needed to know how to do to make a part for this build,,,

Life is kind of funny sometimes,, the past time wasters might end up being what was needed all along for tomorrows next best thing,,,

[webby2]

I revisited my workup sketch and refined it to the point where I can use it to build a part that is needed.
Here is a pic of the file
Going this route I do not need to fiddle with the macro I was going to use.

[webby2]

some days I am slow at picking up what things are showing me

My present test-bed has a deviation from constant to provide a form of constant and I have been making my parts with that built in,, well if I don't build it that way then I am left with a 3.14 degree of change difference.  My input travel and conversion travel have a constant difference, a small one granted but a difference non-the-less.
The 3.14 is just a coincidence by the way,, purely a geometric driven relationship.

[webby2]

things are interesting.

What I am working on I think I have all the forces accounted for it is just that they are not all equally distributed.

I am working through what I think should work and trying to maximize that inequality with the scale that I can build at,, make it much bigger and it would make more but I am limited on size so I am hoping that it is enough to overcome frictional losses,, well if it even works

[webby2]

With my current test-bed I can go in several directions for the rest of the build,, I needed to decide and commit to going in one direction so I decided to go with the less than route but a simpler build.  Less than meaning not as much output as some of the other ways of doing things but still hopefully enough to run itself.

[webby2]

I have been building this test-bed so as to NOT use gravity,, that, I thought, would only confuse things, but I think for the ease and simplicity of the build I will use gravity in the output section.

[webby2]

I was playing with Freecad to determine the sizes of things I need to make and found something interesting as far as the ratios go,, the angle value can work in more than one way.

This means I might not need to build a part so tall.

[webby2]

I designed a part wrong, unfortunately I did not know I did so and then I spent 2 days working on changing parts to work with the error,, silly me and a waste of time and filament.

[webby2]

I have been going over the bad part design and even tho it does not matter if I understand why I need to design the part to be held in a place that is not the same as I think it should be held,, I keep trying to figure it out.

When I put it where I think it makes sense there is a lot of variation in motion, when I put it where it wants to go there is almost no variation in motion.

[webby2]

The idea of being able to make all my parts perfect is great but I am not going to be able to do that,,,,
What I am doing is making "room" for slop, as in if this is this sloppy where and how can I make it not matter so much.

I am also redesigning things as I go to have clearance,, a few parts collide and that is a problem of course

[webby2]

I kind of strayed from my path a little bit,, just a short sidetrack

Also I am recycling a few years worth of test-beds,, it takes a while to strip them down and stuff, that and it is also kind of fun to see just how intricate some of my previous builds were.

[webby2]

I was running with 5 sub-systems and decided that those were a little overkill and was going to change that, then I thought that maybe I could just make it all easier if I could only take 2 wheels of different diameter and have them rotate at a 1:1 with nothing else in-between them,, so no extra gears or levers or anything just the 2 gears geared together at a 1:1.

It took  little bit of time but I have come to a way of designing this gear-set and am printing it to test.  The difference is not that much it is like a 100mm radius to a 147mm radius.  If that indeed functions as designed then I will re-design another part to make it much simpler and stronger.