Sjack Abeling Gravity Wheel and the Worlds first Weight Power Plant

[Omnibus]

@Jubjub,

I got it -- through Reactor. You the man. Now we have to analyze this very very carefully. It's close to unbelievable. The 30 degree offset may be something very important. Where do you put the initial conditions? Let's play first with them, increasing the accuracy.

Also, can you redo the grooves on the wheel to be as in @Dusty's wheel? Be interesting to see if it'd make any difference.

[Omnibus]

@Jubjub,

So, I see, the dumbbells are 200kg each and the wheels with the grooves are each 1kg. Concave Mesh is the simulation geometry but there are other geometries. Why did you choose this? Friction and elasticity are set to zero -- ideally non-rigid both the dumbbells and the wheels. So, while friction is modeling ideal conditions one would expect ideally rigid to be the ideal condition of, at least, the dumbbells. Probably we should change that just to see what happens. This was from first glance.

EDIT: I ran it w/ friction set to 0.3 and elasticity to 0.5 on all parts which are the default values in wm2d. Rendering gets excruciatingly slow on my laptop at that. Maybe you can try it on your computer if it's faster than an average laptop.

[ruggero]

Is it too much to ask if you could provide the rest of us with your amazing simulations in some standard movie formats like AVI, QUICKTIME, SWF etc.â€" please...?

ruggero  ;-)

BTW: Beautiful job on the 3DMax (rough version)

[erickdt]

Due to the site being down for maintenance yesterday I was unable to upload anything until today.

Here's the link for the video of my rough version -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3skVetNsbZY

As for the Max-file you'll have to wait until I get home from work (Yes, I'm at work right now...)

I finally got the chance to see your video (my work machine is 64 bit which doesn't support flash player). Very nice. If you need help rendering an animation of these I've got 16 processors and a licensed copy of MAX 2009 at my disposal.

E

[Dusty]

Okay, I'm back with another report.  I know this is getting positively ridiculous to have this many video's of this gravity wheel, but I just want to show the step by step progress on the ideas as they develop.

As an over view of this project, after the patents were posted I proceeded to build a 3D model of the basics that were given.  After building the machine I had something real for testing which led to making changes for the purpose of seeing what might be better.  If an idea was worse then I went back to what worked better.  So far I made one change to the lower track and just recently I made one change to the upper track.  On the wheels themselves I tried four different slot layouts.

Now I'll explain each video test, and keep in mind I'm looking for the most rise in the dumbell and also the rotation of the wheels. 

In this video I'm showing new hockey slots that are aiming straight towards the axle from both sides. 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pH6Wgr9H-k&feature=channel_page     video 0763

In this wheel I flipped the two wheels and cut a new hockey end to test the opposite slot angle as compared to the original slots.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L71bZRCOJBc&feature=channel_page      video 0764

Here I've added the curved slots.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbc1kStM9Wg&feature=channel_page     video 0765

This was real interesting, I'm showing a test I thought up, showing that the wheel going past the 360 degree point by having the dumbell fall and follow the track.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZ4i9leznEk&feature=channel_page        video 0766

In this video I removed the dumbell and attached a five lb weight and just had it fall and rotate, not following the track, and it went 16 inches less than the previous video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qjStWmfvnI&feature=channel_page       video 0767

In this video I'm showing just one dumbell fall and follow the track.  This hockey slot track was the original slots on the wheel.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74G_kSf5cS4&feature=channel_page      video 0768

Then this last video is showing the new upper track layout, with super fast acceleration.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pmdExy6xsQ&feature=channel_page     video 0769

One thing I haven't showed is that I have used 2.5 lb, 5 lb and 10 lb weights for the dumbells.  More weight actually slowed down the rotation and too little weight didn't provide enough torque.  It looks like 5 lbs. is just right.

So now I'm just about finished with this first wheel.  I have one or two more tests with the track layout for optimization of bumbell rise.  Then it's time to build a bigger wheel.  It will be six feet in diameter and will have all eight dumbell weights installed.  A bigger wheel will make more room for all weights and give a longer hockey stick for extra leverage.  On the lift side of the wheel the distance from the slot to axle will remain the same as you see in the current wheel, but the outer torque distance will increase almost twice the distance.  I'm going to use the curve shape on the bigger wheel.

Thanks