I might be an idiot, but those couplings you linked appear to assume two shafts. The gears I'm looking at have no shaft at all -- just a round hole. There is no hole for a set screw and there's no angular shape to allow ratchet/wrench style coupling. Is the idea that the round axle/shaft needs to be machined either in some angular shape or that the gear needs to be machined to have a setscrew hole?
I did glean from your other post that it might be a good idea for some heavy parts to be connected to the windmill itself. I've pretty much discounted plastic parts altogether and will probably use a quarter or 3/8 inch axle or something thereabouts. I don't expect there to be much load required in the sculpture. There's nothing heavy involved and no high speeds requred.
Awesome advice. Thanks. I suspect that for the first few iterations, the gear ratios will stick pretty close to 1:1. Perhaps the worst might be 4:1. We might consider some other ratios later
. I think I understand your equation. Assuming you hold the power steady, and we get 20 rotations out for every single windmill rotation, we have a dramatically decreasing torque but much higher speed. It's coming back to me now...right hand rule...
Keep in mind I'm new to this. I'm no greasemonkey. I've been googling all afternoon and am only just getting acquainted with the possibilities.
A small engine repair shop is starting to sound like a great option. It's just a kinetic sculpture, not a mack truck.
Yellow pages sounds like a good idea -- as soon as I get a better idea of what I'm after. I'm finding it hard to believe there aren't kits or standard gear collections for this sort of thing.
My brother might be up for the machine shop approach, but I'm gunning for the prefab gears thing. I checked smallparts.com and they do have a few gears, but the selection is pretty limited -- mostly very small bore sizes. They do have some larger bore (.625 inch) but those gears is PRICEY...$30 and up. I'm thinking 1/4" bore, need some spur gears and bevel gears with various tooth counts and a couple of mounted bearings.
Hmmm...These are probably way overbuilt for this task. I doubt we'll have even one horsepower. Also, I'm not exactly the transmission-disassembling-uber-greasemonkey that you might think I am. I was rather hoping for something smaller, lighter, cheaper, and easier.
I checked the wikipedia link but there's no mention of a forum or community. Any idea how to get in touch with these folks? I see the race is this weekend. It's my girlfriend's birthday though...maybe I can talk her into going...
Thanks for the thoughtful post. I had seen sdp-si.com. That was one of the links in my original post. Mdmetric looks good but I'd have to call them I guess.
Motionindustries.com looks super handy -- a nice orderly search by gear parameters. I'm puzzling over the means by which these gears get coupled to the shaft. There's no setscrew and the shaft hole is perfectly round. Would that be a weld? Do you have to machine it? How do you keep the shaft coupled to the gear?
My bad. My physics muscles have atrophied. I took the 550 ft*lbs from the definition of horsepower, having forgotten that there was a time element in power that is absent from torque.
It would be considerably less than that. I'm imagining at max a 10-ft diameter windmill driving this thing. Any estimates about how much torque this represents would be welcome. Any discussion on the relation between torque and power that don't involve equations would also be welcome. I can get the equations from wikipedia.
Excellent suggestion. He's already working this and will be going junking this weekend. Bikes offer a nearly infinite range of gear ratios and are readily available and cheap. The downsides for me are that 1) transmitting power must be done via chain...the big wide chain enclosure might force some limitations on the shape of the sculpture that axles wouldn't; 2) We haven't figure out how to get a lengthy shaft connected to a bicycle gear yet...this will probably be fairly obvious when he starts taking the bikes apart.
I had run across that site before but had to dismiss it. As you can see it has little to offer in the way of specific gears. They're all plastic and they don't seem to have any relation to each other. I need something where I can get a bit more specific. I'll need to be able to gear things down by exact amounts, get bevel gears or worm gears, etc.
That site does look useful. However, it looks a bit pricey. Am I right in understanding that spur gears start at $8.61 EACH and go up from there? That seems a bit pricey for tinkering.
I'm also puzzling over the plain bore. It might well be machinable but I don't want that. I want gears that are easily mounted using a setscrew or which attach to a hexagonal or square shaft. I want to avoid using taper pins, welding, etc.
I know what a metal shop is. I am working under the (perhaps mistaken) notion that custom-made parts will cost a lot of money whereas some kind of prefabricated, standardized parts would adequately satisfy my need to transmit lower power to some lightweight components. The plastic gears I've found that come in a kit aren't quite up to the task. All the various car gears are overkill and come in a billion variants. Surely there is something prefabbed, cheap, and adequate for the task.
The baseline cost for a Mac Desktop from the online Apple store looks pretty good, but try adding some RAM. Upgrading from the baseline 2GB of 800MHZ FB-DIMMs to 4GB will cost you $500. You can buy 2x2GB of mushkin FB-DIMMs (800 mhz, cas latency of 5, heat spreaders, fully compatible) from newegg.com and pop them in your mac for a total of 6GB of RAM for only $130.
Upgrading your hard drive from 320GB to 1TB at the apple store will cost you $300. You can add a whole new 1TB hard drive on top of the existing drive for $130 at newegg.
If it's not a Mac Tax then perhaps it's an Apple Tax. It's definitely an Ignorance Tax.
Good thing you have that ring that makes you invisible, gollum. Make sure you hang onto it.
But seriously, I love my privacy too. I just think you should be aware that privacy admits of degrees. In the extreme, it becomes unhealthy misanthropy and in some cases can ruin lives. I saw a tv show about a guy who had obsessive compulsive disorder. He spent 2 years in his parents bathroom, showering 8 hours a day. That's hardly a decent way to live, IMHO.
Excessive privacy can also exacerbate social ills. and protect criminals. Serial rapist Max Factor heir Andrew Luster comes to mind, as does Dick Cheney when he refused to cooperate with J. William Leonard.
I could care less if you are homosexual, atheist, democratic, or some sweaty hot-lanta dweller. Given that you live in Atlanta, it's likely that you're black too and I don't care about that either.
You might be modded to -1 for posting a comment that fails to make a point. Or I might mod you to -1 for whining about feeling outcast. Or I might mod you to -1 for not liking F/OSS just because I love F/OSS.
As it turns out, I'm not modding you at all because I can see your point (and because the site mechanisms to prevent me modding comments to my comments).
I'd like to think that most people are like me and can tolerate other viewpoints and don't fear a flame war. Pick up yourself, man. Don't be such a wimp. Speak out for your beliefs.
I share a lot of your concerns but I think you might be going so far as to be antisocial. If you have nothing to hide, there's no reason to be hidden. Don't be afraid to participate in society.
On the other hand, I do worry about Orwellian tendencies among government and business. E.g., If I buy cigarettes for my friend using my bank card, will my health care be canceled?
I have found a hosts file (http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm) to be very useful in protecting myself from malware and nosey ad tracking stuff.
I have signed up on facebook.com. It's nice to hear from old friends. I don't spend any time there though. I have never once been to twitter.
Given the higher population found in east coast states, this is hardly surprising. It's easier to build out quality broadband profitably if you don't have to run cable across some huge empty state like Alaska.
Slashdot Mirror
Awesome tip. Thank you.
I might be an idiot, but those couplings you linked appear to assume two shafts. The gears I'm looking at have no shaft at all -- just a round hole. There is no hole for a set screw and there's no angular shape to allow ratchet/wrench style coupling. Is the idea that the round axle/shaft needs to be machined either in some angular shape or that the gear needs to be machined to have a setscrew hole?
oh curmudgeon i reckon you'll just have to wait and see.
I did glean from your other post that it might be a good idea for some heavy parts to be connected to the windmill itself. I've pretty much discounted plastic parts altogether and will probably use a quarter or 3/8 inch axle or something thereabouts. I don't expect there to be much load required in the sculpture. There's nothing heavy involved and no high speeds requred.
I appreciate your guidance though.
I've been reading that 'how to'. Some useful info there on bike chains and sprockets specifically. Motorcyle parts! That may be the ticket.
A "grab bag" of gears doesn't make any commercial sense, not even for the hobbyist.
I can appreciate that. I'm leaning toward lawn mowers / motorcycles / small engines. Thanks for your post.
Awesome advice. Thanks. I suspect that for the first few iterations, the gear ratios will stick pretty close to 1:1. Perhaps the worst might be 4:1. We might consider some other ratios later
.
I think I understand your equation. Assuming you hold the power steady, and we get 20 rotations out for every single windmill rotation, we have a dramatically decreasing torque but much higher speed. It's coming back to me now...right hand rule...
Keep in mind I'm new to this. I'm no greasemonkey. I've been googling all afternoon and am only just getting acquainted with the possibilities.
A small engine repair shop is starting to sound like a great option. It's just a kinetic sculpture, not a mack truck.
Yellow pages sounds like a good idea -- as soon as I get a better idea of what I'm after. I'm finding it hard to believe there aren't kits or standard gear collections for this sort of thing.
Thanks for the tips!
My brother might be up for the machine shop approach, but I'm gunning for the prefab gears thing. I checked smallparts.com and they do have a few gears, but the selection is pretty limited -- mostly very small bore sizes. They do have some larger bore (.625 inch) but those gears is PRICEY...$30 and up. I'm thinking 1/4" bore, need some spur gears and bevel gears with various tooth counts and a couple of mounted bearings.
Hmmm...These are probably way overbuilt for this task. I doubt we'll have even one horsepower. Also, I'm not exactly the transmission-disassembling-uber-greasemonkey that you might think I am. I was rather hoping for something smaller, lighter, cheaper, and easier.
Good suggestions. Mowers sound about right.
I checked the wikipedia link but there's no mention of a forum or community. Any idea how to get in touch with these folks? I see the race is this weekend. It's my girlfriend's birthday though...maybe I can talk her into going...
Thanks for the thoughtful post. I had seen sdp-si.com. That was one of the links in my original post. Mdmetric looks good but I'd have to call them I guess.
Motionindustries.com looks super handy -- a nice orderly search by gear parameters. I'm puzzling over the means by which these gears get coupled to the shaft. There's no setscrew and the shaft hole is perfectly round. Would that be a weld? Do you have to machine it? How do you keep the shaft coupled to the gear?
My bad. My physics muscles have atrophied. I took the 550 ft*lbs from the definition of horsepower, having forgotten that there was a time element in power that is absent from torque.
It would be considerably less than that. I'm imagining at max a 10-ft diameter windmill driving this thing. Any estimates about how much torque this represents would be welcome. Any discussion on the relation between torque and power that don't involve equations would also be welcome. I can get the equations from wikipedia.
Excellent suggestion. He's already working this and will be going junking this weekend. Bikes offer a nearly infinite range of gear ratios and are readily available and cheap. The downsides for me are that 1) transmitting power must be done via chain...the big wide chain enclosure might force some limitations on the shape of the sculpture that axles wouldn't; 2) We haven't figure out how to get a lengthy shaft connected to a bicycle gear yet...this will probably be fairly obvious when he starts taking the bikes apart.
Great idea though.
I had run across that site before but had to dismiss it. As you can see it has little to offer in the way of specific gears. They're all plastic and they don't seem to have any relation to each other. I need something where I can get a bit more specific. I'll need to be able to gear things down by exact amounts, get bevel gears or worm gears, etc.
That site does look useful. However, it looks a bit pricey. Am I right in understanding that spur gears start at $8.61 EACH and go up from there? That seems a bit pricey for tinkering.
I'm also puzzling over the plain bore. It might well be machinable but I don't want that. I want gears that are easily mounted using a setscrew or which attach to a hexagonal or square shaft. I want to avoid using taper pins, welding, etc.
I know what a metal shop is. I am working under the (perhaps mistaken) notion that custom-made parts will cost a lot of money whereas some kind of prefabricated, standardized parts would adequately satisfy my need to transmit lower power to some lightweight components. The plastic gears I've found that come in a kit aren't quite up to the task. All the various car gears are overkill and come in a billion variants. Surely there is something prefabbed, cheap, and adequate for the task.
The baseline cost for a Mac Desktop from the online Apple store looks pretty good, but try adding some RAM. Upgrading from the baseline 2GB of 800MHZ FB-DIMMs to 4GB will cost you $500. You can buy 2x2GB of mushkin FB-DIMMs (800 mhz, cas latency of 5, heat spreaders, fully compatible) from newegg.com and pop them in your mac for a total of 6GB of RAM for only $130.
Upgrading your hard drive from 320GB to 1TB at the apple store will cost you $300. You can add a whole new 1TB hard drive on top of the existing drive for $130 at newegg.
If it's not a Mac Tax then perhaps it's an Apple Tax. It's definitely an Ignorance Tax.
Good thing you have that ring that makes you invisible, gollum. Make sure you hang onto it.
But seriously, I love my privacy too. I just think you should be aware that privacy admits of degrees. In the extreme, it becomes unhealthy misanthropy and in some cases can ruin lives. I saw a tv show about a guy who had obsessive compulsive disorder. He spent 2 years in his parents bathroom, showering 8 hours a day. That's hardly a decent way to live, IMHO.
Excessive privacy can also exacerbate social ills. and protect criminals. Serial rapist Max Factor heir Andrew Luster comes to mind, as does Dick Cheney when he refused to cooperate with J. William Leonard.
I could care less if you are homosexual, atheist, democratic, or some sweaty hot-lanta dweller. Given that you live in Atlanta, it's likely that you're black too and I don't care about that either.
You might be modded to -1 for posting a comment that fails to make a point. Or I might mod you to -1 for whining about feeling outcast. Or I might mod you to -1 for not liking F/OSS just because I love F/OSS.
As it turns out, I'm not modding you at all because I can see your point (and because the site mechanisms to prevent me modding comments to my comments).
I'd like to think that most people are like me and can tolerate other viewpoints and don't fear a flame war. Pick up yourself, man. Don't be such a wimp. Speak out for your beliefs.
I share a lot of your concerns but I think you might be going so far as to be antisocial. If you have nothing to hide, there's no reason to be hidden. Don't be afraid to participate in society.
On the other hand, I do worry about Orwellian tendencies among government and business. E.g., If I buy cigarettes for my friend using my bank card, will my health care be canceled?
I have found a hosts file (http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm) to be very useful in protecting myself from malware and nosey ad tracking stuff.
I have signed up on facebook.com. It's nice to hear from old friends. I don't spend any time there though. I have never once been to twitter.
I have road runner service and would really like to turn those damn pages off. Any tips on how to do so would be much appreciated.
They should be forcing Sarah Palin to resign instead.
Given the higher population found in east coast states, this is hardly surprising. It's easier to build out quality broadband profitably if you don't have to run cable across some huge empty state like Alaska.