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Subject: 
Re: Discontinuous motion.
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.robotics
Date: 
Wed, 3 Apr 2002 20:20:05 GMT
Original-From: 
Steve Baker <sjbaker1@+nospam+airmail.net>
Reply-To: 
sjbaker1@NOMORESPAMairmail.net
Viewed: 
579 times
  
Robert Limbaugh wrote:

I meant using wheels with rubber treads.  Rubber treads won't have a meshing
problem.  Instead of the problem being gear mesh, the new problem should be
speed vs. friction.

OH! I see!  Very clever.

I guess I should explain why I wanted this thing in the first place.

All the talk last week about building a Turing machine using Lego - and
building primitive mechanical computers in general led me to try to build
a simple adding machine using gears and stuff.  (I'm aware of the awesome
pneumatic adder someone presented recently).

So, the first step was to build a counter - like a car odometer - where you
spin one axle and when it's spun a complete revolution, a second wheel moves
1/10th of a revolution.  When the second wheel has undergone a complete
revolution, a third wheel moves forward a tenth of a revolution.  This
gives you the 1's, 10's and 100's numbers based on how much the wheels
have moved.  It didn't need to be a base 10 system though.

The first step of that was to get a reliable mechanism that would allow
one revolution of the input axle to rotate the second wheel by 1/10th of
a revolution.  A 10:1 gear ratio would do that - but car odometers don't
do that.  The 10's digit stays absolutely still until the 1's wheel is
just about to clock over from '9' back to '0' - and then it moves quite
quickly onto the next 10's digit.

So, your suggestion certainly does do what I actually asked for - but it's
not accurate enough for what I actually *want*.  If the system doesn't use
some kind of solid gear-based mechanism, it'll gradually accumulate error
which will be hopeless for what I ultimately want to do.

If the drive wheel arm rotates to quickly, the drive wheel may not grip the
2nd wheel enough.  Or, it may grip too well and make the 2nd wheel spin more
than desired (depending on the load on it's axel).

Yes - that problem exists with the gearwheel solution too.

Maybe I should just build an example of what I mean...  The idea came from
how the Pirate Ship carnival rides move the ship back hull back and forth...
sets of wheels push the hull right or left.

That's interesting.  I didn't know they worked like that.  By an *amazing*
coincidence, my son has just finished building one of those in Lego - but
he used RCX software to alternate the direction of drive on the wheels to
sync with the speed he wants the ship to swing.  Your way is *much* better!

----------------------------- Steve Baker -------------------------------
Mail : <sjbaker1@airmail.net>   WorkMail: <sjbaker@link.com>
URLs : http://www.sjbaker.org
       http://plib.sf.net http://tuxaqfh.sf.net http://tuxkart.sf.net
       http://prettypoly.sf.net http://freeglut.sf.net
       http://toobular.sf.net   http://lodestone.sf.net



Message has 3 Replies:
  Re: Discontinuous motion.
 
Steve, Here's an "all gear" based solution (minus the chain I used from the drive shaft): (URL) not sure how much gear lash is in the design I came up with, but the thing runs very well (much better than I thought it would). It's been quite some (...) (23 years ago, 4-Apr-02, to lugnet.robotics)
  Re: Discontinuous motion.
 
Steve, I don't know if this will help you at all, but I certainly had fun with it. I put together a (quite bulky) version of the Geneva Wheel. (URL) Baker" wrote in message news:3CAB63F5.7A5CF2...ail.net... <snip> (...) you (...) moves (...) I don't (...) (23 years ago, 5-Apr-02, to lugnet.robotics)
  Re: Discontinuous motion.
 
(...) <snipped very interesting description> Just to chime in here quickly, you could use the lego small chain links instead of tons of gears to create gear trains. Advantages: gearing ratios are retained as in trains, backlash/chatter is reduced (...) (23 years ago, 5-Apr-02, to lugnet.robotics)

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