Kinetic sculpture designed by Clayton Boyer

[Kineticrazy]

Art,
  I did not want you thinking I was a "free energy" nut 

In the words of a movie astronaut recently stranded on Mars...."You scienced the shit out of it!"

[ArtF]

lol.. there's worse types of nuts about..


Art

[Dan Mauch]

Dan,
   The friction reduction you've found, I'm trying to picture exactly where the friction occurs. Is it the pin passing over your plastic pawls that flows more smoothly?

I found that even the slightest drag of the spring rubbing against the flanges of the spools was one place.  The dogs slide better than the wooden ones and they are a bit heavier so the actuate better. It's been at least a year since I built it but at age 74 I am sure there were other reasons why the acrylic run better than the wood.
Dan Mauch

[Kineticrazy]

Thanks Dan,
    I'm questioning the use of bearings in my machine. I use skateboard bearings, shields removed, cleaned and lubricated...but they don't spin like the bearings I remember as a kid.The caged balls in skateboard bearings seem to slow them down. They don't "free wheel" but seem to have more friction than a sleeved hole and shaft would have. What sort of bearings have you been using? Your sculptures are beautiful and run well, I would love to know some of your methods...counter rotating wheels has got me a pulling out what little remaining hair I have left, and you seem to have them mastered. I would be overjoyed if you shed some light on their design.

74 is the new 50 !!

Thanks for your time,

Eric

[Dan Mauch]

Yesterday after looking at the side of my version of Zinna I then remembered that the pin that the storage spring spool  also had a slight drag which was another reason to make that spool also out of acrylic. I also installed bearing on the other spool. BTW I only wind my Zinna 18 turns and get about 15 minutes of run time with  stock spring Boyer recommends. I am using shielded bearings but I run them for a time before installing them. When I use to work on Submarines one of the jobs was to assemble the SV radar gearbox. After it was assembled I place thermometers on the cases where the bearing were and it was surprising. When I ran the gearbox in the shop the temperatures rose on the bearing housings but after about a 1/2 hour of running the bearing temps would drop to ambient. I never forgot that and thus always run my bearings either by a electric drill or some bearings I take out to the shop and use a compressed air nozzle with the bearing on an arbor and spin it up. You be surprised at how fast they run that way. Possibly 100000 RPM !!!!
Dan Mauch

[John T]

Hi Dan,
I was wondering if you ever used Glycerine for a lubricant?  Its about the slippyiest stuff I know if you get it on your hands but I have no idea if it would work on slow moving items such as a kinetic art piece.

John

[Kineticrazy]

Dan,
  That's a great idea to loosen up your bearings!! I've got a fresh box of bearings awaiting treatment.

Thanks for the tip,


Eric

P.S.  I've rung quite a bit of seawater out of my socks as well !!

[Amazon [Bot]]

Scares me! 

[Dan Mauch]

Here is a short video that I just made to demonstrate the difference between a non spun up bearing and one that is. Be careful if yoy try this as I would estimate the speed at 100K RPM  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MW3Emgh ... e=youtu.be

Dan

Dan,
   That's a great idea to loosen up your bearings!! I've got a fresh box of bearings awaiting treatment.

Thanks for the tip,


Eric

P.S.  I've rung quite a bit of seawater out of my socks as well !!

[Kineticrazy]

Dan,
    Thanks for taking the time to make the video. Good stuff.

Appreciated,

Eric