It’s true that a lot of the projects we feature here (and build ourselves) are created to accomplish some sort of goal. But, many times the project itself is the goal. That’s the case with [Proto_G’s] self-oscillating pneumatic machine, which he built with no particular use in mind.
Continue reading “Oscillating Pneumatic Mechanism Doesn’t Need A Purpose”
[Nguyen Duc Thang]’s epic 2100 Animated Mechanical Mechanisms is one of the best YouTube channels we’ve ever seen. A retired mechanical engineer, [Nguyen Duc Thang] has taken on an immense challenge: building up 3D models of nearly every imaginable mechanism in Autodesk Inventor, and animating them for your amusement and enlightenment. And, no, we haven’t watched them all for you, but we’re confident that you’ll be able to waste at least a couple of hours without our help.
If you’re actually looking for something specific, with this many mechanisms demonstrated, YouTube is not the perfect lookup table. Thankfully, [Nguyen Duc Thang] has also produced a few hundred pages of documentation (PDFs, zipped) to go along with the series, with each mechanism classified, described, and linked to the video.
This is an amazing resource as it stands, and it’s probably a good thing that we don’t have access to the 3D files; between the filament cost and the time spent shepherding our 3D printer through 2,100 mechanisms, we’d be ruined. Good thing we don’t know about the Digital Mechanism and Gear Library or KMODDL.
Thanks [alnwlsn] for the tip!
Continue reading “2,100 Mechanical Mechanisms”
Reader, [klemens], suggested DMG Lib to us when we posted about a similar site. DMG-Lib is an amazing source of information. It’s primary downside is that a great portion of the text is in a language other than English, though in some ways this is a plus. Latin, Italian, German, and many other languages held the position of being the chief scientific language of the world long before English, and this repository holds entire books about mechanisms in those languages. Some of the books range all the way back to the 1500s. The mechanism animations are very good on this site and play smoothly. While it’s a little harder to search than KMODDL due to the language oddities, it’s still an extremely useful and interesting site to add to the hacker’s information toolbox.
Computers are relatively new still, but we’ve had mechanics for a very long time. KMODDL keeps us from reinventing the wheel. It contains collections of mechanisms with descriptions, pictures, and even videos. We were working on a arbalest design not too long ago, and we were having trouble coming up with a clever ratchet design for one of the parts. We spent a few moments in KMODDL looking through the ratchet section of the Reuleaux collection, and soon after we had the basic building blocks of our design. Sure there are books you could buy that do a similar thing, but KMODDL is completely free, very in depth, and easier to search. Plus, with a useful tool like this you might not even have to take apart all your appliances anymore to see how they work. My first sewing machine might have lived a longer life had I seen this first. Anyone know of more resources like this?
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvplpWJ9CcI]
Sticklers for the definition of “robot” should simply avert your gaze for the opening title of the video. [Randofo] has posted this beautifully simple inch worm mechanism using only a ruler, some connectors, a switch, a servo, a comb, some batteries, and a couple Tupperware containers. It inches, as it was designed to do, quite well. We’re especially fond of the use of a comb as an easily modifiable switch activator.
