Hi Eric:
Magnets will add nothing typically to rotation. As you approach a magnet, it does pull, but as you leave it
an exactly equal amount of energy is subtracted. Magnets will never give you energy, BUT they can influence the
non-intuitive motions of connected vanes etc.. which we'll discuss soon on release of kinetics.
Your rotation speed typically in a vane system is a result of angular inertia and thrust of the spring. This inertia is a combination of the weight of the wheel and the centering placement of that weight.
Gravity cares not a whit if you weight a ton, or an ounce. It will affect you the same. BUT, it matters if that ton or ounce is off center, as it does in all pendulums and most vanes. You will find that no matter what you do in terms of weight and balance, your time will be mostly the same, but your speed will vary. As a mass becomes more off center from its pivot the inertia increases by the square of the distance. Inertia is the reluctance to turn, but also the reluctance to slow. In other words its a measure of how much energy it will take to change the rotation speed. So lets say your vanes do 4 rotations in 15 seconds, then slows to a stop. In an effort to increase that time, you increase the mass so it slows down due to increased inertia. What you'll find if you slow it down by half, if that you'll do 2 rotations, but it will still take 15 seconds. Worse yet, if you off center the mass in that effort to get it slower, the gravitic losses will increase. It will begin to act like a pendulum and youll get no full rotations, but the time will exasperatingly remain about the same. A pendulum 36" long will take a second to swing a cycle,
and it doesn't matter if you use a car as a bob, or a car battery, or a feather.
Now we all want the vanes to be off center masses, we typically need that swing at the end, we know it will start from near the top, and swing down to the bottom with kinetic power equal to its mass properties, but its a balance. Too much and the vane losses any real speed.. so finding that balance is an important part of the vanes you choose, the speed due to inertia, and the time due to the laws of gravity are intrinsic in how you design the arms, as it impacts heavily on the visual interferance
components of the design. As you can imagine, two cool looking vanes turning too fast no longer look cool. Too slow and the same thing happens. Its a range of end speeds one wants to compliment the visual elements.
Now Im one that finds it very hard to imagine effects such as these. How arms will look as they pass each other can
actually be considered as a frequency equation and based on human perception times, something Ill be investigating in the future, but I digest ( breakfast ).
To increase the number of rotations, assuming you don't have too much friction in bearings and such, requires
either lowering the weight of the vanes ( though total time of rotations will stay near identical) or adding power by
increasing spring or weight, which will also increase end run time of the cycle ( and lower total run time of the device. )
So its all a balance. Not a very intuitive one, but a balance none the less. The more you understand about angular
momentum, inertia and mass, the more intuitive it becomes.
In the new module, ( weeks away or less I hope), you can specify a material ( like 1/4 plywood, or 1/2" steel..etc...)
to get an idea as to how they differ. You can drag center of mass to a new location to observe the effects that creates
in terms of total time and speed. I did this that way to try to create not only a sense of realism, but to try to educate
on how all these things combine to control your sculpture. I will be adding magnets and such so you can observe
how no matter how clever you consider yourself you just cannot get energy from them. Ill be allowing dxf's of various
shapes, sizes, materials and properties to be used with as realistic a gravity simulation as my talents allow me to make.
I'm doing all this because I too find it hard to think in 4th dimension space. Considering time isn't something humans
do well except those very lucky artistic types I admire so much. So soon you can play with all these factors to try to
imagine how to get more run-time and how to make that run-time not go too fast, or too slow for your design.
I cant promise reality, its the nature of simulations that you get only so close, but I think such a tool is probably
very valuable to others who want to be as artistic as possible but just cant imagine what monarch will look like
till it spins.
Long answer I know, but in summary, you can slow your vanes, or speed them up with mass manipulation, but total run-time will be much the same unless you increase power. Or so the numbers tell me, they never lie, but I often misunderstand what they say.
Art