Recently, Sweetness demolished me in three consecutive games of Hi Ho Cherry-O. It's a very simple board game, but I never even sniffed victory. To help myself feel a little smarter, Sweets and I took apart the decade old and no longer needed can opener. I got to show her a gear train. Here's a snippet of video where she shows me how it works:
As you can see, we have a perfectly good (if slightly noisy due to wear) electric motor, and a torque multiplier to step down the speed and give some useful umph at the output end. Since we have a newer model, the question now is: what do we use this fantastic device for? If anybody actually reads this blog, I WANT YOUR IDEAS. It could drive rigged to do almost anything: drive a clothesline, open/shut the kitchen garbage can, operate the drain plug on the sink... basically anything within the horsepower/work limits of the existing motor and gear train.
The frustrating thing for me is that this technology has been around since about the 1830's, it's still very difficult to implement them into military designs at work. While my expertise on the sparky end of things is limited, I am growing convinced that the problems lie in developing the controller, which means dumb "push the button and go" mechanisms are the way to go, even if they draw high current. It's cheaper in the long run. I'll have to see if we can tear apart any other fascinating obsolescent devices around the house.
No comments:
Post a Comment