Roll on the 20th June

[sm0ky2]

in addition to torque-proofing, and reglueing the linear bearings,
theres some other things im going to be doing over the next day or so. i welcome any thoughts on this, as i haven't quite figured out how im going to go about it. (again with my rediculously crude sketches) #1, i want to decrease the center-mass of the rods.
#2 is self explainatory, this must be done any time major changes are made. mine haven't been balanced right since i remounted the arrays.
#3 theres not a lot of play here, otherwise you go outside of the operational parameters. but i think i want an extra 1/4-inch or so in either direction.
#4 this ones is tricky, the bolt holding this wheel is tiny, and only supported by an intricate stack of washers. basically i want to make this sturdier. its kind of a weak mount.

[exxcomm0n]

Hey smoky,

As always, I wanted to comment on your design improvements.

1.) This has great potential. As well as moving more of the mass to the edge of the wheel, this design has the advantage of bringing all the arms into better alignment w/ the 7:00 array.
I mean that all the outer wheel arrays can all be on the same plane w/ the middle interconnecting rods being layered on different planes as the rods in your present design are now.
This could significantly reduce the torque/torsion effect you're experiencing in the magnet mounts of your present design.
IIRC, redriderno22  or Dusty had a wheel built this way.

2 & 3 I have no comment on, but will be interested in the results.

4.) This one I do have some thoughts on.
Since the time this concept was proposed by Archer, the "open faced sandwich" design of it has never sat quite right w/ me, and I think I now know why.

What suffers if we add another "slice of bread" to the design?

What I mean is that all present representations have had only one mount to hold the wheel, and one wheel face.
What if you sandwiched the mechanics between 2 wheel faces, each attached to an independent mount in sort of a bicycle wheel arrangement?
Then you could mount the wheel faces on bearings attached to a spindle. This might be far enough away from the magnetics to not influence them so you could use steel bearings and spindle (for wear ability).
If not, you can still use the brass and some ceramic bearings that should do almost as well.

This all hinges on one thing though. How much of getting the wheel to work is in the tweaking of bearing assem. placement?
If it's often necessary, this could make it a deal breaker.

Having a sandwiched wheel has the advantages of:
- 2x the rotational mass of 1 face (but this means entire reformulation of mag strengths and shapes)
- 2x the anchor points for the bearing assem.
- 2x the mount points for the entire wheel
- easier to level

Just an idea bud. Take it for what you've experienced my thoughts to be.

P.S. Did you ever read any of the mondrasek wheel thread that was active around the same time as this one? The "Mass Switch" idea had some merit.

[sm0ky2]

@ Exx, 

thanks for your comments.  im with you on everything you said there. unfortunately, to implement these things at this point, would mean rebuilding the entire thing, to the "new design"

what im wanting to do is try and make the small changes necessary to this existing one. a total remake would take me forever finding all the parts.

moving the location of the linear bearings is impossible. attempting to do so would destroy the face (and the back) of the wheel.

i can however, make those changes to the rods. and thus making the rods Re-Usable in a future, more compact design.

as far as "adjusting" the main bearing. the only thing i ever have to do to that one, is tighten it up when the wheel starts to sag.

[mscoffman]

@ Exx, 

...
thanks for your comments.  im with you on everything you said there. unfortunately, to implement these things at this point, would mean rebuilding the entire thing, to the "new design"

what im wanting to do is try and make the small changes necessary to this existing one. a total remake would take me forever finding all the parts.
...

@sm0ky2,

I fully support your thinking on this. Unless one can run a mental
simulation like Tesla supposedly could, it makes no sense to start
the design over. Not only can I not understand how it would work,
I am suprised enough that it does. 

I do think you should make changes to enhance it's stability to
accept new parts without destroying those that are to remain
constant. Adding a "prony brake" might be an eventual possibility
as output power maybe diagnostic for wheel operation, but we
don't even know if that is true yet.

This a very exciting but "touchy" time for this design.

:S:MarkSCoffman

[sm0ky2]

@MarkSCoffman

i watched archer quinn come to this very point in the machines progression, that i find myself at now.
I dont want to make the mistake of discarding my past successes, in hopes of creating more consistant, more economical future ones.
I saw how he dropped everything, and started chasing "bigger", "better" things throughout the development of this thread..... And now, i think i understand why.

i didnt understand how this machine worked at all in the begining, because what i pictured in my mind, from what i already knew about magnetics, and gravity, was nothing like what actually occurs when the proper conditions are present.
To be honest, im still not entirely sure about how exactly this works the way it does.   Theres only a few things that i am 100% sure about at this point. The rest is just my theory, conjecture, or my interpretation of the experience.

What i know is this:::

1) There is a condition in which, the force of gravity, acting on a leveraged mass can generate enough inertia to overcome the entry-field of a magnetic array.

2) There is a condition in which, the force of a magnetic field, acting on a mass can overcome the force of the gravitational field and lift said mass a given distance.

and 3) There is a set of conditions that can exist in which both 1 and 2 are true. - which is the basis of the functionality of this device.
That's it.

--------------------------------------------------------------
i've sat here and calculated the fall times of a single arm, and all the vector forces from gravity at every angle along its fall at every half-degrees around the arc.  i can't make any sense out of it from an engineering perspective.
The rythmic speed of the wheel, and the fact that my particular build has dozens of extra variables, due to its primitive construction, make such an analysis nearly impossible. and while these explicit details may indeed become very important down the road, its quite clear to me that  specific dimensions, linear constants, construction material, and hundreds of minor construction details we've duscussed over the years: do not play a very large role in the devices operation, because i've changed many of these things in-between times i have achieved operational conditions.
thats why i have concluded that it is all about the magnetic field vs gravity's effect on the mass its lifting.
---------------------------------------------------------------
one thing i did discern, at least mathematically, is that either side of the 45-degree angle may have some important information about "how it works". what informatoin that may be, is hard to tell without a build that has a more consistent motion. but there was a common trend for the two forces to be scaled oppositely.
meaning the magnetic force decreases while the gravitational force increases. i imagine (assume?) that a similar situation occurs at the point of entry, and through the entire magnetic array. Although, with my build, the speed changes so drastically, and even varies from arm to arm. I attempted to tackle that once, and only once. It was like trying to do convection currents in a room with 3 opposing heat sources of different temperatures. Then throw a ceiling fan into the equation. i basically lost my mind and gave up on that for now.. so going into the field and through it, not entirely sure....  but, looking at the 1:30 region, around the face of a clock  ( at least with my current build, there are other working angles), as it approaches the threshhold, the magnetic field decreases, and as it crosses the line, the gravitational force becomes stronger than the magnetic force and thats about the point when it starts to fall, then gravity gets stronger and stronger to a maximum acceleration, somewhere around 5-o'clock. once the next arms starts getting close to field interaction i cannot be entirely (mathematically) sure what takes place.

i can look and see what its doing, and make judgement on it.
but as far as writing a scientific paper on this thing, i'll leave that to the people who get paid to do so."could i?" i suppose,.. "will i?" probably not...

i spend enough man-hours working on the phisycalities of this thing, that "Mathematical Principal and Theory" aren't even remotely my concern right now......

what im interested in is the magnetic theory. the magnetic interaction of this device is much different from the magnetic interactions found in the geared-lever, or many circular/spiral magnetic arangements. My ultimate goal is to discern how we can create these same magneto-gravitic conditions, and apply it to a completely different type of device.   something actually "useful", and perferably something thats not the size of a small ball-field, using oldsmobiles are counterweights....