I'm totally immersed in this project and finding it difficult to take time to write this blog, so apologies if you miss my pearls of wisdom, but I have to finally find a way to finish it - the wheel that is, not the blog! I shall reappear periodically with another trite piece of literary garbage in a vain attempt to stoke some interest afresh, in the life and legend of Bessler's wheel and my/our attempts to solve the ingenious puzzle he bequeathed to later generations - how to cause a wheel to spin continuously requiring nothing but the force of gravity inplace of fuel.
My wood disc, which I use as a kind of platform for attaching the various bits of mechanism that I devise, has been replaced recently because the old one was in danger of becoming a large wooden circle with nothing inside the rim; this being due to my need to drill numerous holes in incalculabler numbers all over the face of the disc, each of which was designed to hold one of the supporting pivots for the forest of levers bearing weights, which formed the mechanisms, but which was found to be in the wrong place according to the resulting state of frozen immobility.
So I begin work anew using my pristine MDF disc, and have carefully measured the dimensions of the levers and drawn their correct positions on the face of the disc and have begun again to drill those accursed holes which are sometimes driven by some iniquitous urge to move slightly off position, thus preventing the success I so desperately seek.
Just kidding guys! I have drawn in the angles the levers are intended to follow, the weights are ready and attached to the levers. I'm making this latest version with the intention of trying it with just one mechanism - or one cross-bar as Bessler put it. I'm not convinced that it will work with only one and Bessler said in Apologia, "If I arrange to have just one cross-bar in the machine, it revolves very slowly, just as if it can hardly turn itself at all, but, on the contrary, when I arrange several leverss, pulleys and weights, the machine can revolve much faster.." but it should work sufficiently to prove the principle.
It's so frustrating to know the principle behind the wheel and it's so easy to understand that anyone who learns about it will know with the same certainty as I do that it is the key to success. I was thinking of calling it the "Bessler-Collins principle of ..." - sorry guys but that would give it away!
Somebody pointed out that the heading of the blog 13th September, Never, Ever, Give Up.originated from a fragment of a Churchill speech which went like this:-
“Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never – in nothing, great or small, large or petty – never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force, never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”Who might the enemy be? Why, the world of sceptics out there who deride our every word.
Anyway back to work and I hope I can give you some good news soon.
JC
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtTzGJd2oNc
ReplyDeleteAntonino
Interesting video but not convincing. We should have been able to see all of the wheel all of the time to prec'lude someones hand giving the rim a nudge from time to time. It seemed to me that the wheel varied in its speed now and again - but I could be wrong :-)
DeleteJC
in fact it is not yet functional and written in the notes, after giving the boost, its revolution lasts for 15/20 minutes. bidirectional.
ReplyDeleteAntonino.
A decent bicycle wheel will spin roughly the same amount of time, so if the wheel has a good set of bearings, then likely it is just a break-even device with friction eventually bringing it to a stop. It would not take much OU to overcome friction and keep the wheel turning.
ReplyDeleteJohn, I for one would really, really, really like to see the old one, now that it is retired and can no longer impart anything of it's former secrets. How about a view?
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately the old disc has imploded due to the excessive number of holes, James. The mechanism has already been rcycled to form part of the new ones so there isn't much to see - and anyway I couldn't show it even if it was still complete in case I gave something away! I am making this one and when I have proved it's a runner, then I'll make the more polished version, and as suggested etain the current one as it would be the first ever since Bessler's. But perhaps I'm just dreaming?
DeleteJC
@ John, Zoelra & Vibrator,
ReplyDeleteI haven't got a clue how it happened, but I just checked my e-mail, and found a few comments from you all.
Just like they would appear on this BlogSpot.
A faux pas John?
P.S. John,
Deletebe careful with the M.D.F. , it gives off dangerous fumes when machined.
Something to do with the glue holding the particles together I believe.
Stevo, sounds like you received notifications that replies were made to your posts.
DeleteCrossbars, crossbars... the possible interpretations limited only by the throttle on one's imagination...
ReplyDeleteThe first one i looked up though was "latch" - like a sliding bolt through a lock, or wooden a beam across a door...
The radial-spokes-sliding-through-the-axle scheme shown in MT135 would seem to fit this usage rather well...translation hiccups notwithstanding..
On that last point; "latch" is often miss-spelt "lath" in the literature... presumably this is just a recurrent typo, not a 1:1 translation?
Thanks for the warning Stevo, noted.
ReplyDeleteYes the interpretation of the term 'cross-bar' or 'Creuz', is only limited by your imagination,Vibrator.
JC
This comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteHi Michel. I don't know the answer unfortunately. 'Creuz' is used although the modern spelling is 'Kreuz'. I wondered if the word 'cross' simply referred to the number of 'junctions' or 'crossings' his weights made.
DeleteJC
Radial crossings are a potentially interesting dynamic - in searching for an asymmetry i've kept half an eye on loss mechanisms, since a non-dissipative loss might easily be overlooked, but would be precisely the kind of disunity we're looking for, albeit reversed.
DeleteWhat i noticed was the fairly obvious fact that if a weight falls from one side of the wheel to the other - from 11 o'clock to 5'oclock, say, on a CW wheel - this removes a lot of RKE from the system.
One of my 'loose ends' ATM is to conclusively determine the thermodynamics of this loss mechanism, as i have a sneaking suspicion it may be non-dissipative. I know that's probably wrong and all the energy goes straight to heat, but i mean to check this at some point...
Every single word of what you wrote above, Vibe, makes perfect sense to myself.
DeleteSurely, as all-summed, such an assemblage of such high intellect and insight should result in auto-rotatory success very soon, if not sooner even.
(To this reasonable proposition, might we not all agree?)
For it therefor, respectfully, I (we) offer my (our) most hearty pre-congratulations.