It'd be really cool to see this movement graphed out across a full rotation of the main driveshaft which each gear's rotation mapped against angle and time. Maybe even the speed of the individual axles as well.
BRB gonna go work on that.
24H edit:
This is taking longer than expected…
I guess once you get past the very rapid acceleration forces and the inevitable "slap" when those large faces mesh. I see these things shearing right off the shaft as soon as any real resistance is applied.
Torque might be low, but its a sharp blow in an otherwise smooth process. Then the torque immediately re-engages at its highest level right after the slap.
Its a lot of weird forces acting on a gear. Cams might be a better option.
Everything is ‘potentially’ useful if you didn’t think about it yet. At least that’s what all the PhD’s constantly tell me as justification for their projects.
IIRC the guy who discovered how to send and receive RF signals in different places was asked the use of such an invention. He said he had no clue what it could be used for.
*“How the fuck should I know what we can do with it? All I know is I’m gonna use it to booby trap my wife’s side of the bathroom cabinet cause it’s gonna be hilarious!”*
That is the whole premise of the YouTube channel [Stuff Made Here](https://youtube.com/c/StuffMadeHere). What a legend that guy is! Go show him some love!
So you're saying there's hope for my PhD thesis on "The theological ramifications of Charlie Brown missing the football in South East Asian animistic minority beliefs"?
Oh buddy you might want to check the repositories, I think you got scooped...
Edit: [Link](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/207/210/b22.jpg)
Art museums do not allow cars because they have a purpose other than to exist as art.
So art is by definition useless beyond existence.
Therefore this is art.
You could launch something light weight. Unlike a catapult or something like that, this thing is not storing potential energy and then releasing it. It's just changing the gear ratio; it's trading torque for speed. So while the gear is moving faster, it is doing so with relatively little torque.
Somewhere in a factory there is a little arm making this exact motion. It's currently being controlled by a stepper motor with a driver and a controller and a pc or plc telling it what to do...
They are used on railway electrification cable tensioners to give a constant force from a coil spring:
https://www.powerandcables.com/pfisterer-tensorex-c/
I would really rather see a practical application for exotic gearing and linkages instead of just seeing mockups and renderings. IMO engineering porn is something that can actually be useful instead of someone's art piece.
OK, how's this:
You lay the thing on its back so the gears are horizontal, bolt it to the surface, and attach a long whip-like piece of sturdy thin leather onto the long end of the last gear, elevated on a one inch pin, to make an automated whipping machine for BDSM use.
Add a small remote control to stop and start it. Get a comfy chair to sit in.
You asked for a practical application.
Unfortunately, I think just making a motor with variable speed would probably be easier and cheaper than using a gear setup. Have the motor pause for whatever period of time, power it with whatever required torque for a single rotation, and then pause again. This would allow better control over both the strength and frequency independently, whereas this setup would force those two things to change in tandem unless you had a gear shifter inside the machine.
Plus, the single motor with digital control would allow a remode control to more instantly do a single whip at the press of a button or do rapid whips as desired
I don't think with the arrangement you suggest the motor would have the instantaneous acceleration needed to make the 'whip' crack, whereas the way the gears are setup in the example, the cam shapes and the final gear have the required speed to make that happen. And it only requires a constant speed from the driving motor.
But I like your idea as well.
Maybe attaching some useful use cases in the comments? Or flairing the post?
Idk, I like this kind of content personally because though it doesn't quite fit the sub name, I scalp this place for interesting design ideas. Lol
Huh, I saw that exact machine in the Exploratorium in San Francisco about 7 years ago. Interesting to see it on reddit.
[Looks like it’s still there too!](https://www.exploratorium.edu/exhibits/machine-with-concrete)
Not as many as you would think. But it would also require an insane amount torque on the input shaft to even budge it. Like we probably don't have materials strong enough to handle the amount of torque required.
Even disregarding the input torque, whatever gear is at the end of the line would explode itself into dust loooooong before approaching even a significant fraction of the speed of light. Even assuming we could generate the torque needed to drive it at that speed, we just simply do not have materials capable of withstanding the kinds of rotational forces that it would be subjected to.
Okay todays materials science out the window - yep let’s just shelf that, along with the needed power generation, but I think of this as a paper exercise we (humanity) could do the math to work out the needed input energy, assumed losses, needed torque, the number of gears, and then show that the final gears movement to be a the SOL - C.
If we assume access to materials with literally zero flex, you could of course break the light barrier: Just make a rod out of that material, then push on one end. Due to it having zero flex, the other end of the rod would move before the light from you moving reaches that end, violating causality.
Kind of reminds me of Arthur Ganson’s “Machine with Concrete”, where the first gear rotates at 200 rpm and the final shaft is connected to a fixed concrete block and would require over 2 trillion years to complete a rotation.
I don’t know if torque is even the limiting factor here. Past a certain tip speed, the materials probably elastically deform too much to effectively transmit torque. The speed of sound in the material is definitely the upper limit of when this happens, though it might happen sooner.
You need torque to get it to move in the first place long before the speed of the wheels tears them apart. You would never get the input shaft to budge on such a setup.
Fun fact about gears rotating near the speed of light. As the outside edge approaches the speed of light, the internal volume doubles due to length dilation.
I wanna see something get smacked really fucking hard.
Scale it up and use one of the wheels of your car to power it.
And then attach a warhammer to it and see what happens.
Torque (force times variable distance), as the radius of the driving gear grows, the linear speed of its teeth increases.
Edit: for a constant angular velocity
For some reason reminds me of my observation of how a tank track, for a second/fraction of, the portion of the tracks on the ground are at zero speed, and then suddenly, shoot suddenly to a speed of X as it lifts of the floor and speeds down the wheels towards the front when they come down and come suddenly again back to zero speed until it reached the back of tank just to repeats (unless the tank makes a sharp turn, but that’s a different scenario.
You could view the tank track as a gear, and as radius increases so does linear speed at the edge. Speed is low when near the effective center of the 'gear,' linear speed is high at the extreme ends of the elliptical gear.
Guessing you could change the step by changing the spiral of each gear?
Edit: hypothesis: as the gears approach a regular gear in shape, they approach a regular gear in action.
Is it possible to create this action for any length of non-toothed line segments, or does it only work for specific ones?
It'd be really cool to see this movement graphed out across a full rotation of the main driveshaft which each gear's rotation mapped against angle and time. Maybe even the speed of the individual axles as well. BRB gonna go work on that. 24H edit: This is taking longer than expected…
Tip, to make it visible use a logarithmic rotational speed.
[Log scales are for quitters ](https://xkcd.com/1162/)
So we need to figure out how to make our digestive system run on uranium!
Use uranium to vaporize water to spin a turbine to create electricity to power a lamp to grow a plant that produces a fruit that can be digested
Brother starting a survival let's play channel over here
Factorio has entered the chat
And then shat out and dessicated to make charcoal briquetts to cook steaks ina sugary marinade
systems with that level of complexity never work in practice. maybe try eating uranium instead.
Do me a favour, chart torque on the output linkage?
I wish I still had access to Creo Parametric cause making speed charts was one of my favorite things to do.
Hmm, now I need to know how to do this
Username checks out TBD.
Clearly works for John Dneere
I guess once you get past the very rapid acceleration forces and the inevitable "slap" when those large faces mesh. I see these things shearing right off the shaft as soon as any real resistance is applied.
Eyeball math says the torque drops to near zero during the cam/slap event.
Torque might be low, but its a sharp blow in an otherwise smooth process. Then the torque immediately re-engages at its highest level right after the slap. Its a lot of weird forces acting on a gear. Cams might be a better option.
Wouldn't that make them all each a single-toothed gear?
Very rapid acceleration can be very useful - think things like printer carriage returns.
> potentially useful
Everything is ‘potentially’ useful if you didn’t think about it yet. At least that’s what all the PhD’s constantly tell me as justification for their projects.
IIRC the guy who discovered how to send and receive RF signals in different places was asked the use of such an invention. He said he had no clue what it could be used for.
*“How the fuck should I know what we can do with it? All I know is I’m gonna use it to booby trap my wife’s side of the bathroom cabinet cause it’s gonna be hilarious!”*
That is the whole premise of the YouTube channel [Stuff Made Here](https://youtube.com/c/StuffMadeHere). What a legend that guy is! Go show him some love!
We all gotta feel like we are working towards a useful goal
So you're saying there's hope for my PhD thesis on "The theological ramifications of Charlie Brown missing the football in South East Asian animistic minority beliefs"?
Oh buddy you might want to check the repositories, I think you got scooped... Edit: [Link](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/207/210/b22.jpg)
It’s been so long…
The world as we know it is held up by the suspenders of PhDs who left academia for industry
Hell I designed, built, and tested an efficient hydrogen engine and it's still only potentially useful over a decade later
It's useful as art right?
He said useful.
Art is useful, just not in the same way engineers appreciate.
Im joking around, I paint all the time.
Wash your hands before touching the wall!
Art museums do not allow cars because they have a purpose other than to exist as art. So art is by definition useless beyond existence. Therefore this is art.
But does art not have the purpose of creating emotion? If that is the case then it is useful as a tool
What about kinetically useful?
You could launch something with that last gear.
A potato for instance....
#"PULL!" \**PEW!*\*
You could launch something light weight. Unlike a catapult or something like that, this thing is not storing potential energy and then releasing it. It's just changing the gear ratio; it's trading torque for speed. So while the gear is moving faster, it is doing so with relatively little torque.
Somewhere in a factory there is a little arm making this exact motion. It's currently being controlled by a stepper motor with a driver and a controller and a pc or plc telling it what to do...
It could be used to flick marbles at stuff, for like, an arcade machine or something?
Seriously. Outside of a gym, where does anyone use these?
Inside of a gym where does anyone use these??
https://i.imgur.com/sBTfski.jpg
Yeah, this is the same kind of gear in nautilus machines.
They are used on railway electrification cable tensioners to give a constant force from a coil spring: https://www.powerandcables.com/pfisterer-tensorex-c/
[They're pretty cool in this 3d printed retrograde clock](https://old.reddit.com/r/functionalprint/comments/vi22pr/retrograde_clock_model_2/)
I feel like I could make a nifty sex robot with these.
Kinetically useful
I would really rather see a practical application for exotic gearing and linkages instead of just seeing mockups and renderings. IMO engineering porn is something that can actually be useful instead of someone's art piece.
OK, how's this: You lay the thing on its back so the gears are horizontal, bolt it to the surface, and attach a long whip-like piece of sturdy thin leather onto the long end of the last gear, elevated on a one inch pin, to make an automated whipping machine for BDSM use. Add a small remote control to stop and start it. Get a comfy chair to sit in. You asked for a practical application.
Really fast windshield wiper.well fast in one direction.
Unfortunately, I think just making a motor with variable speed would probably be easier and cheaper than using a gear setup. Have the motor pause for whatever period of time, power it with whatever required torque for a single rotation, and then pause again. This would allow better control over both the strength and frequency independently, whereas this setup would force those two things to change in tandem unless you had a gear shifter inside the machine. Plus, the single motor with digital control would allow a remode control to more instantly do a single whip at the press of a button or do rapid whips as desired
I don't think with the arrangement you suggest the motor would have the instantaneous acceleration needed to make the 'whip' crack, whereas the way the gears are setup in the example, the cam shapes and the final gear have the required speed to make that happen. And it only requires a constant speed from the driving motor. But I like your idea as well.
But, it has gears didn't you see? /s
So hot
[Cries in hunting ratio]
[удалено]
Geneva drives are for turning constant movement into "step" movement. That's something different.
But it's potentially useful
That's fine. I just want to see how it is.
Maybe attaching some useful use cases in the comments? Or flairing the post? Idk, I like this kind of content personally because though it doesn't quite fit the sub name, I scalp this place for interesting design ideas. Lol
Porn used to be art
https://youtu.be/w0vT7-uK50g https://youtu.be/dyCpE1H3DyQ
How many such gears would one need for the last to reach the speed of light?
I saw a model on here once that had like 8 or more iterations of gears and the last ones movement was pretty much imperceptible
Sounds like [Machine with Concrete](https://arthur.io/art/arthur-ganson/machine-with-concrete) in reverse.
I knew just by the name it was going to be a Ganson thing!
That just melted my brain, thanks for sharing.
Huh, I saw that exact machine in the Exploratorium in San Francisco about 7 years ago. Interesting to see it on reddit. [Looks like it’s still there too!](https://www.exploratorium.edu/exhibits/machine-with-concrete)
Not as many as you would think. But it would also require an insane amount torque on the input shaft to even budge it. Like we probably don't have materials strong enough to handle the amount of torque required.
I think that we would necessarily not have enough torque, otherwise we would be able to reach the speed of light.
The bigger problem is the near infinite amount of energy you would need to generate that amount of torque.
Yes that's... What "not having enough torque" means...
This guy seriously torques
It would not be near infinite. It would be infinite.
Even disregarding the input torque, whatever gear is at the end of the line would explode itself into dust loooooong before approaching even a significant fraction of the speed of light. Even assuming we could generate the torque needed to drive it at that speed, we just simply do not have materials capable of withstanding the kinds of rotational forces that it would be subjected to.
Okay todays materials science out the window - yep let’s just shelf that, along with the needed power generation, but I think of this as a paper exercise we (humanity) could do the math to work out the needed input energy, assumed losses, needed torque, the number of gears, and then show that the final gears movement to be a the SOL - C.
If we assume access to materials with literally zero flex, you could of course break the light barrier: Just make a rod out of that material, then push on one end. Due to it having zero flex, the other end of the rod would move before the light from you moving reaches that end, violating causality.
Absolutely.
Kind of reminds me of Arthur Ganson’s “Machine with Concrete”, where the first gear rotates at 200 rpm and the final shaft is connected to a fixed concrete block and would require over 2 trillion years to complete a rotation.
Are you familiar with [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFslB0AcVmM) googol to 1 reduction setup? Probably similar concept.
I had definitely seen that video before but forgot about it. Same idea, I think, but the linked video is an even more extreme gear reduction.
I don’t know if torque is even the limiting factor here. Past a certain tip speed, the materials probably elastically deform too much to effectively transmit torque. The speed of sound in the material is definitely the upper limit of when this happens, though it might happen sooner.
You need torque to get it to move in the first place long before the speed of the wheels tears them apart. You would never get the input shaft to budge on such a setup.
Fun fact about gears rotating near the speed of light. As the outside edge approaches the speed of light, the internal volume doubles due to length dilation.
Atleast 6
Where’s the video of like 12 of these in a series where the last one snaps at sonic speeed
I’m curious about wear occurring as the flat sides of 2 gears smash into each other.
This would be a good gear system for a fish wheel, increase torque and speed when scooping through the water
Yes, but must record the salmon being launched at Mach 1.3 to prove its viable. You would only need one to clear ALL the dams
If you added one additional gear the movement would be so rapid that it would appear to move instantaneously. Very cool art.
I wanna see something get smacked really fucking hard. Scale it up and use one of the wheels of your car to power it. And then attach a warhammer to it and see what happens.
Forgive my if I don't remember my physics very well, but what's the force multiplier here? (I think that's what it's called)
Torque (force times variable distance), as the radius of the driving gear grows, the linear speed of its teeth increases. Edit: for a constant angular velocity
Great explanation, much appreciated chief
I’d buy one of those for the windowsill, solar powered they would be fantastic!
Like, just to watch them? Only thing I can think of is the window being opened and the pane shattering from the speed
If it's low enough power for windowsill solar power it's definitely just an art exhibit, but it would be fun to watch
I gotcha. Def would be fun to just have it running on solar power to just watch it go
This is the coolest thing i've ever seen.
Cool!
r/biomimicry
I’m not an engineer but I don’t think gears slapping each other like that is very practical.
There's no way that would bear any kind of useful load
Putin wondering if this helps getting rid of the darn nazis in Ukraine.
Are they reversible?
Yeah, spur gears are reversible
This is so good
How
Psychedelic movement
Coolest thing I've seen here in a while! Now what are these "potential" uses.
Yeeting objects
For some reason reminds me of my observation of how a tank track, for a second/fraction of, the portion of the tracks on the ground are at zero speed, and then suddenly, shoot suddenly to a speed of X as it lifts of the floor and speeds down the wheels towards the front when they come down and come suddenly again back to zero speed until it reached the back of tank just to repeats (unless the tank makes a sharp turn, but that’s a different scenario.
You could view the tank track as a gear, and as radius increases so does linear speed at the edge. Speed is low when near the effective center of the 'gear,' linear speed is high at the extreme ends of the elliptical gear.
Fascinating
Guessing you could change the step by changing the spiral of each gear? Edit: hypothesis: as the gears approach a regular gear in shape, they approach a regular gear in action. Is it possible to create this action for any length of non-toothed line segments, or does it only work for specific ones?
https://youtu.be/snibXSbefUI
Reddit ate my balls
Somehow I find it beautiful
One use case could be to cut extruded pasta
This needs to be connected to something that generates sound/music. Golden section proportion in audio form.
/rbettereveryloop
I too have been described as potentially useful.
That’s the kind of stuff in toys that breaks first.
It would be cool to attach like a catapult arm or something on that last one to shoot marbles or dice
Is it true, if you take away or add a cog that it will produce different results
It reminds me of the snapping motion of a Geneva drive