1939 Gravity Power - multiply power by 1200%

[shylo]

The input is only required for 90* of rotation , the other 270 feeds back ,the most feed back is at 135.
I think that is why there are four. While one is drawing power the other three are adding. They are all at 90*  separation.
Detours, When I work on something and begin to get frustrated I will switch to a different exp. It lets me reflect. Maybe that's stupid?
artv

[ARMCORTEX]

Why dont you show a video of that.

[Dev]

Hi everybody, I'm a newbie on the forum but not to OU in general.  Before I babble about Skinner I just want to say thanks to everyone who is posting their work on this device. I've been following this thread with interest and I hope people are still working on it because it seems clear the machine is not fully understood yet. 

It may well be a lathe-powered gang of flywheels.  But maybe not, and the inconvenient truth of the matter is that we won't know until someone builds a really good replica, preferably at full scale.  I've done the Lego model thing, to help me understand the movement and linkages.  When I feel like I also have a solid grasp of the forces involved, I'll start on something like a complete 1/5 scale model. 

For the record:  I thought for a long time that there was a crossbar/camshaft/agitator thingy swinging the tops of the upper shafts in ellipses.  I now know that the crossbar is an illusion created by the motion of four arms swinging the tops of the upper shafts in circles.  Like many optical illusions, once you 'unsee' the crossbar it becomes obvious there isn't one.  There are beams from center to the outer frame, but they don't move.  The youtube versions of the video will never resolve the circle/ellipse debate, the vid quality is just too low.  It's crucial to download the vid and play it on your local machine with a good player like VLC or Gom Player to get the most out of the lousy resolution.  That's what changed my mind about ellipses vs circles.

While I'm on the subject of the upper shafts, here is a point of interest:  The arms that swing the upper shafts are much longer than necessary, extending well beyond the shaft.  I suspect they were either mounting points for a lighter set of weights, or the extra steel *is* the lighter set of weights.  There may be some other purpose for that extra metal but the one firm conclusion that can be made is, they are there on purpose -  there's nothing sloppy about Skinner's construction of his device.  He didn't just leave some pieces untrimmed.

In my opinion we need to view this machine as a stack of 3 gyroscopes, and sort out the forces on that basis.  The axis of the top gyro is the upper shaft, with a set degree of precession.  Second gyro is the smaller weight that Skinner swings by hand to show it's degree of freedom, and third is the heaviest weight  mounted at the bottom of the lower shaft.  The precession angles of the lower gyros change until they are up to speed, so a static analysis is of limited use.

For example, at full operating speed the shorter pipe weights rise until they approach 180 deg from their static position.  That's why there's a downward bend on their mounting arms - the bend ensures that the weights don't strike the horizontal frame member above them when they are at their uppermost orbit.  (they could probably still strike the frame if too much power is applied)

So there is a very dynamic, transitional stage of operation when Skinner's device is spooling up.  Even in my lego model it takes time to settle into a groove, easily half a minute or more.  People testing their devices will need to allow settling time after they make a change like applying a load - for big machines it could easily be a couple minutes or more before any resonant condition is re-established.

The counter-intuitive nature of gyroscopes in general, combined with the complexity of their relationships in the Skinner machine, makes this thing a brute to figure out.  I don't think we'll crack it until we nail down the gyro interactions.

@ Gotoluc, your build and vids are great, thanks for sharing.  I just wanted to mention the possibility that your concrete weights may be too heavy.  If we assume there is an amplification process at work in the system, then it's possible to overwhelm the driving signal with too much feedback force.

I'm not sure yet how to establish correct masses but I think a good starting point might be to use Arto's dimensions and assume Skinner used Schedule 40 pipe in his device.  From there we can do a guesstimate calculation of the masses involved, based on a typical density for steel.

I nominate armcortex to do that calc and post it here, so he can make his first useful contribution to this thread.

[ARMCORTEX]

Shylo, I guess everything you say is not serious, like fishing stories.

non-useless people like Webby1 are so rare these days.

Dev: You have got some nerve calling me out like that, the purelyprimitives Skinner-esque redesign derivative I posted is actually better suited to harvest gravity than Skinner's, take that as useless, your useless.

Skinner device was useless, a fraud. Prove me otherwise. The machine was not even patented, how can anybody believe with reasonable doubt claims of 1200%... I know, blame it on a conspiracy.

You are not in a position to call others useless, you are a newbie. Take a backseat and let me and Webby1 do the explaining, and I_ron, your only job is to listen.

[gotoluc]

Hi Dev,

at first I thought this device was easy to understand.  I even believed someone well known from another Forum to have real results.
I found none to be true.  There's so many unknowns that I now think a replication is not possible.

I'll keep an eye on the topic in hopes to see your replication attempt and wish you success.

Kind regards

Luc