The Mechanical Engine

[Peter Lindemann]

Change of Reference

The pendulum in the veljko oscillator makes the opposite side rise once and fall twice. There may be merit in dr lindemann's spring returning the pendulum before centrifugal force zeros out at apex of swing.

Inquorate,

Ted is right. Veljko's system is meant to oscillate, and is balanced when the pendulum is hanging straight down. My wheel is meant to rotate, and is balanced when all of the pendulums are in the position closest to the axis. This change of reference is no accident, and took quite a bit of thought to come up with.

As soon as a pendulum is released, the whole wheel is "off balance" on that side. This is a GRAVITY imbalance. The centrifugal force generated at the bottom of the swing is a plus, and the spring return is to limit the negative effect of the "weightless" moment that occurs IF the pendulum is allowed to reach the natural apex of its swing.

Since I wrote the article and have thought more deeply about the design, I have come to the conclusion that the spring return should actually happen sooner than my original drawing suggests.

The weight should hit the spring so that the force it exerts on the frame of the wheel is almost completely RADIAL in nature. When this condition is met, the counter-force in the frame does not produce any vectors that work against the forward rotation. This can happen anytime after the pendulum has passed the "bottom dead center" of its swing, but the sooner the better, so the pendulum still has as much velocity as possible. I have also decided that the ideal "spring" for the pendulum to hit is a "super ball", cut in half. This should allow over 98% of the energy of the pendulum to be returned to it for the return trip toward the axis. A single transient excursion per pendulum, per revolution of the wheel is the ideal operating method.

Under these circumstances, when the pendulum hits the spring, and the spring is under maximum compression, the pendulum will NOT BE producing a weightless condition, as occurs in Veljko's machine. In fact, that moment will be the point of maximum gravity imbalance, and the point of maximum mechanical advantage for energy production. The two centrifugal force thrusts downward, one before and one after this point of maximum gravity imbalance, all add to the mechanical energy produced to maintain unidirectional energy production in the wheel.

Thanks, Ted, for drawing attention to these features of my design. I hope my added comments here also help make the inclusion of these design features more understandable.

Peter

[Ted Ewert]

Maybe if you wrote an equation of what is happening... that
would help to show what you are wanting to take place =>

(Centripetal x 1) + (Centrifugal x 1) = Momentum x 8 + Wheel Inertia + Friction + Wind Resistance

Usually if you can figure ways to move something from one side over to the
other side you'll get closer to seeing what caused your embarrassing incident.

However, you were very brave. We all get carried away like that.

I don't do math. A picture is worth a thousand numbers.

This shows basically what must occur in order to have an alternating phase relationship within a cycle. Although this configuration can be confused with a simple unbalanced wheel, the difference is in the action of the pendulum.

[Inquorate]

Centrifugal force

The pendulum in the veljko oscillator makes the opposite side rise once and fall twice. There may be merit in dr lindemann's spring returning the pendulum before centrifugal force zeros out at apex of swing.

[CloudSeeder]

Write an Eguation!

Maybe if you wrote an equation of what is happening... that
would help to show what you are wanting to take place =>

(Centripetal x 1) + (Centrifugal x 1) = Momentum x 8 + Wheel Inertia + Friction + Wind Resistance

Usually if you can figure ways to move something from one side over to the
other side you'll get closer to seeing what caused your embarrassing incident.

However, you were very brave. We all get carried away like that.

[Ted Ewert]

My neighbor decided to remodel her kitchen and bathroom this week. I finally got a chance this morning to scrounge through the dumpster and pick through all the nice wood that was being tossed out. Older kitchen cabinets often have very nice wood used for the shelving, and I scored 6, 12" x 3' clear grain fir shelves.
With this bountiful harvest of shelves, and some plywood, I decided to build a small wheel to fool around with. As you can see in the picture I got the basic wheel done.

I was planning on building something close to the computer simulations to see if it behaved similarly. I had just got the weights on when my son's roommate came by to collect my son and head on back to college. He was curious about the wheel so I started explaining the theory to him. I told him that when the weights over on this side of the wheel start swinging, they create an imbalance through centrifugal force and will turn the wheel. Then I swung a weight on one side to demonstrate, and nothing happened. I immediately thought; sh*t. Then I told him it wasn't quite done yet (a gross understatement) and showed him some other stuff I was working on.
This made me completely reevaluate what's happening with this wheel. Obviously, centrifugal force alone, in this configuration will not cause the imbalance in forces we are looking for. There is something else that needs to happen to enable the mechanism to work.
Which brings us back to Peter's original design. In his design he tucks the weights in close to the center of rotation for most of the trip around the loop. Only at one point does he let it fly, and then for only one or two swings and it's back to the center. What makes this different?
In my opinion, the difference is in splitting the phases of rotation (two foci). When I swing a weight on one side of the wheel, it bounces all the other weights a little, but develops no net thrust in any direction. Even when I rotated the wheel and manually swung 3 weights on one side, it still behaved just as if no weights were moving. Nature is telling me that she is very happy with the balance of the wheel, and nothing unusual is occurring (Nature tells me this quite often).
Balance means I'm not separating the centrifugal and centripetal phase of the orbit. I'm not alternating the center of mass.
With Peter's configuration, the centripetal component is when the weights are tucked in close to the main axis. The centrifugal component is when he lets the weight fly. This part shifts the center of mass out and away from the main axis.
In his case, the pendulum's entire swing is in an unbalanced condition, with respect to the rest of the wheel (my pendulum's swing was a net balance in that regard ). This shifts the center of mass to the second axis (focus). I think this is a key difference. Peters configuration should develop a true centrifugal phase, which I believe is crucial for success.
I have to figure out a way to tuck my babies in to bed for most of the trip, then swing them out over the balcony (just like Michael Jackson did) at just the right time.



Ted

[Michael John Nunnerley]

Warren,

As the Ferengi say "I am all ears".

Your ideas are quite interesting and I am glad you are sharing them with this thread. So far, what I see is that we agree on a number of fundamental features for a working system.

1) it requires a stationary central reference at the hub
2) the weights swing and reset in about 90 degrees
3) all weights reset close to the axis after some "transient excursion"

I look forward to seeing how your experiments develop.

"May the force be with you" ... centrifugal force, that is.

Peter

Peter you are right about 2D program, and you seem to agree with me on where the weights should be, and as of yet I have not suggested how it may be done, I am only offering some focusing points on the design as at the moment most is theory. When I have some form of an idea I will post a diagram and it is possible that it will have pendulums or at least reactive force to move the weights. The above quote is to show we agree, no offence taken.

[Peter Lindemann]

Bessler's Bearings, etc...

Guys,

There are a number of assumptions in the last few posts about Bessler's bearings and design that I would like to comment on.

First of all, I think some of you may not know that a bearing made of stiff leather saturated with animal grease, with an iron shaft running on it, can rival a modern oil pressure bearing for friction and durability. I know this for a fact, from some old farmers who have fixed tractors using this same technology. At first, they thought of it as a "temporary fix", but it worked so well they kept putting off the true bearing replacement. After a few years, they just forgot about it!

Beyond this, the wheel and axle are among the oldest inventions on Earth. 18th Century Europe had had "horse drawn wagons" since Roman times. So, Bessler had access to "bearing technology" that was more than adequate for his needs.

Second, it is also my personal opinion that we will never truly know "Bessler's Design", as it is lost to history. Therefore, I believe we should not assume that any of the designs we are discussing in this thread are related to how Bessler may have solved the issues we are grappling with. I have high confidence that we are working with the proper forces and methods, but I doubt we will stumble on Bessler's exact design.

Keep up the great work,

Peter

[Inquorate]

How bessler stopped pendulum swinging after 6o'clock?

He wouldn't have had access to good bearings; perhaps the bearing friction alone was enough to damp the pendulum's swing...

@Sucahyo what do you mean 'different pendulum shape'? - one with air resistance?

[sucahyo]

@Ben, I think wood with spring is a very bad damper, you don't have dampening part. Damper is for stopping movement by converting it to something else, not storing it like spring do. Maybe you could made damper with needle filled with oil/water, a couple fold of cloth, a sponge. Or combined, a wet sponge.

About changing the pendulum swinging time, can't we use different pendulum starter shape?

[Inquorate]

Eccentric wheel

what I'm saying is, can we replace the eccentric wheel with a bedini coil at 12o'clock, and have magnets on the bottom of all the pendulums.

As it is, the eccentric wheel limits the weight we can have on each pendulum; too heavy and it won't bounce over.

[Vortex]

I've been thinking... Most of these computer sims have frictionless bearings on the pendulums right? And maybe the pendulum will stop swinging on their own by 7o'clock.. Or at least be substantially reduced. Hence preserving the difference in downward motion difference on each side of the wheel.

I've also been thinking about the cost of delaying the pendulum's movement with the eccentric wheel at 11:50 to make the pendulum swing, and how it limits the weight of the pendulum versus the weight of the flywheel.

What if we used a bedini coil to push the pendulums at 12:00? - would the return from gravity / centrifugal force be more than the cost of bedini coil pushing the pendulum, keeping in mind the efficiency of capturing the radiant spike.

in theory, it could very much still be cop > 1

I was just about to post about this, "frictionless bearings".
A pendulum will never slow down, let alone stop.
I was thinking of using a circle, which has friction, to replace the pin joint but there is not a donut housing to place the circle into.
Then I found the "Pin Friction" script in the manual... it's code running outside of the model that adds friction to a pin on Working Model 2D.
"6.9 The Pin Friction Script
This script allows you to simulate friction on pin joints. Before running the script,
create and select a pin joint. Run the script to create two input controls: one for the
effective pin radius and the other for the coefficient of friction in the joint. Adjust the
values and run your model to simulate the friction."
Now the only question is what is a realistic "friction coefficient" for a pin joint?
Do we pretend the pin joint is a bearing and use a bearing coefficient?

I don't know what you are talking about other than that

[CloudSeeder]

No. I mean hmm, I don't remember. I get so used to everybody saying they figured it out I get to thinking it's all figured out already. I think I would like to see someone try having the pendulum swing from an elongated-downward circle, see if that wouldn't throw more of a downward force during the swing.

Maybe the side next to the wheel be normal and the side away have a slightly steeper slope. That would make the coming-back more of a drop downward than coming back in toward the wheel.

[Inquorate]

Hi all

Did anyone notice my post on the previous page? 2nd last post.

[Ted Ewert]

Here are some segment patterns to help with your layout. Print one if these and you can center it on your wheel and trace the lines out as far as you need to.
There is 8, 10 and 12 segment drawings that can also be used as 4,5 and 6 segment patterns.

[barbosi]

Need some inspiration?
YouTube - The Music Machine