Friday 10 June 2011

Wheel update and Karl's comment

I'm working on the wheel again and I think (I hope) I know what was wrong with the last design and I'm reconfiguring the mechanism accordingly. I've found a way of making the correct weight rise upwards very quickly, at the right moment. This is something that is crucial in my design and also something that Bessler commented on.

There are other aspects to this design which have to be taken into account when arranging the actual range and position of the parts and this is something that Karl would have seen but almost certainly not recognised for its importance. Hence his comment that it was very simple. I have taken on board my own comments about sphexishness and tried not to make any assumptions in designing the new mechanical arrangenment, with the result that I have discovered that there is a variable which I had not appreciated before. I don't want to talk about it yet, but I will bring it up on the forum at a later date to get some feedback.

Finally to answer a couple of questions emailed to me, this rearrangement or reconfiguration of the mechanics does not mean I have abandoned the concept I have been working on, quite the opposite. The original concept is valid and unarguably the same as Bessler's, but there are variations possible within the design which improve the way it works and that is what I'm engaged on at the moment.

Regarding Karl's view of the machine's simplicity, I think someone commented similarly to my own view on the besslerwheel forum, that perhaps he had not appreciated how complex the design had to be; not complex in appearance, but requiring some very specific arrangement of the mechanism.  This I believe I know from my own work on this design and from the helpful hints given by Bessler.

I gave a small clue recently with my comment about opening windows.

JC

13 comments:

  1. Some of the comments about freefalling on John's last post reminded me of something I've looked at:-

    A container freefalls in gravity. A weight can be raised with respect to the container, and no net energy is needed to do that. Later on both objects are decelerated. The weight is then allowed to fall to its original position in the container, delivering energy.

    This seems promising at first, but the act of raising the weight cannot ever shift the combined center of gravity of the weight plus the container, which is what must occur for a net energy output.

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  2. Arktos,..If that senario can be intergrated with an oscillating system then the ammount of energy required would be only enough to maintain the oscillation.
    Your on the right track.

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  3. But surely, to raise the weight with respect to the container requires a slowing of the weights fall, therefore energy IS required to do this?
    RM

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  4. Only a smaller ammount of energy.Remember what Bessler said,and he meant it for a reason.He said,'If you can work out how to raise one pound with four ounces,or four pounds when sixteen ounces fall,'then the motion will maintain itself.

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  5. "The original concept is valid and unarguably the same as Bessler's,"

    Now there's a typical sphexish perpetual motionalist ego!

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  6. Re Bessler's statement about raising one pound with four ounces etc, I assume he meant, without spelling it out, that the heavy weight has to be raised through the same height as the light weight falls. Otherwise it's trivially simple (and useless): just put both weights on a lever arm with the fulcrum much closer to the heavy weight.

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  7. Thats right!..In fact a lever was also my first thought.He obviously had found another way that made all the differance.
    I think the pendulum swing made the differance,
    don't you?

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  8. I wouldn't want to rule out anything, including pendulums. In another statement by Bessler, (see Das Triumphirende P.M. Orffyreanum p46) addressing God, he says "...I began work on the lowliest of Your tools which nevertheless, for their own part, those famous wise men of the present day have declared to be of the most outstanding uselessness." What did he mean? My own guess for the lowly tool would be a spring.

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  9. It could have been a hammer but on second thoughts,he said it was known and used by famous men of the day although not in it's present form because he modified it.
    It could even have a pair of lazy tongs.They were also known as jacob's ladder.I see they were also used in some of his wheel drawings.
    I'm not sure you could clasify a spring as a lowly tool,what say you?

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  10. Arktos,..it's jut occured to me that maybe Bessler was referring to the the wheel itself because many of famous learned men of the day questioned the wheel's usefulness and some even doubted whether it was genuine.

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  11. Trevor- Bessler's original Latin was "abjectissimo Tuo instrumento" which is most literally translated "the most abject of Your instruments." Your guess is as good as mine about hammers, lazy tongs etc, although I doubt he meant the wheel itself. That was a big deal in his day, as it would be in ours.

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  12. John, to my understanding, with the concept you follow, weights are moving back and forth while others are moving in and out. When a weight moves back ('the sudden fall', against the wheel's rotation direction) after it passes the six o'clock position, another one shifts inwards. To make this happen as soon as possible after the mentioned position it has either to be very heavy (which will create more negative torque) or it has to travel a greater distance (which will also create more negative torque). AFAIK the most efficient way to do that shifting would be to allow the one weight falling back at 9 o'clock while it moves the other weight inwards at 6 o'clock. Of course this is not all to take care about. I don't want to know it better than you and I also don't want to criticize you but I believe it could help to get your wheel to work. So I suggest you to connect your weights over a distance of a quarter! Keep working on, you can do it!
    All the best,
    SOPM

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  13. Thanks for the advice SOPM. I have s small card up my sleeve ;-)

    JC

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