A Useless Contraption

[bryan]

Thought this was very neat, two trillion years to make one revolution.

https://blog.makezine.com/2012/04/25/arthur-gansons-machine-with-concrete/

 

[Ian Rogers]

Talk about watching paint dry!!!

 

[canadaelk]

Hopefully the artist got the extended warranty on the motor!

 

[tcmtech]

Given that it has twelve 50:1 reduction sets and a 200 RPM input I get that it would take roughly 2,320,904,869,000 years to make one revolution.

If all the gear sets were indexed to have their maximum slack taken up going opposite that of the systems rotation the odds are that even with a tiny bit of slack at each gear reduction set it would still take a few thousand years before all the slack is taken up and it actually starts trying to turn the concrete block.

Granted that may be a cheat of sorts for display purposes but it would in fact allow for the device to run continuously from our perspective without ever actually doing anything on the end stage.

Or the shaft key on the last stage could be conveniently omitted. That would work too. Like anyone would ever notice if the last stage gearset is slipping on its shaft.

 

[Ian Rogers]

After two trillion years.. I very much doubt the metal will be left let alone the concrete...

 

[bryan]

There was a post on a blog that with 1 foot pound input there would be 244.14 quintillion foot pounds of torque at the end.. I assume that's just in theory, no known material could manage that amount of torque. Kryptonite maybe..

 

[bryan]

After two trillion years.. I very much doubt the metal will be left let alone the concrete...

Or the planet, which will likely be gobbed up by the sun in 5 billion years when it becomes a red giant

 

[MrAl]

Hello,


The torque developed even before the last gear would rip the teeth off the gear before anything at the end EVER moved. It's still an interesting illustration of a very slow process however. You can weld the last gear to the frame because it will never move anyway within any reasonable eon of time give any real life gear slop.

On another related note, if you could turn the last gear instead of the first gear the first gear would turn so fast the teeth would rip off and fly outward. Of course you'd never be able to turn the last gear anyway, and that is assuming the gearing is reversible, which for this particular machine, it is not...but another similar machine could be made where it is reversible.

Would make one heck of a crank light generator

 

[atferrari]

PID anyone? At least, sure you will have time to.

 

[bryan]

Hello,



On another related note, if you could turn the last gear instead of the first gear the first gear would turn so fast the teeth would rip off and fly outward. Of course you'd never be able to turn the last gear anyway, and that is assuming the gearing is reversible, which for this particular machine, it is not...but another similar machine could be made where it is reversible.

Assuming it was possible, what would the RPM of the first gear be if the last gear was rotated at 1RPM. Would it be 1^12 ?

 

[Pommie]

Assuming it was possible, what would the RPM of the first gear be if the last gear was rotated at 1RPM. Would it be 1^12 ?

I think it would be 50^12 or 244,000,000,000,000,000,000 rpm, give or take the odd squillion!

Mike.

 

[misterT]

Assuming it was possible, what would the RPM of the first gear be if the last gear was rotated at 1RPM. Would it be 1^12 ?

1^12 is not very much.