507 Mechanical Movements

It's a great collection and exploring it is fun, but it misses on titles / names of the given linkage or movement. It makes sense when you are reading the book [0], but on a site like this where you see the individual item in isolation, a title or name would be helpful.

0: https://archive.org/details/fivehundredseven00browiala

One of my favourite sites! and an interesting example of that class of sites which are book made into sites with animations/interaction --- the another classic and notable example is:

https://mathcs.clarku.edu/~djoyce/java/elements/elements.htm...

Really wish that the folks doing the 507 Mechanical Movements would finish the balance of the animations.

Curious if folks are aware of other similar text/website combinations which are still extant (many others such as Bembo's Zoo are no longer available, and of course at one point in time, this sort of thing was the province of CD-ROMs such as Leonardo).

If you ever happened to go through Karlsruhe, Germany, there is a collection of mechanical transmission models from Redtenbacher. Some models were on display in the mechanical engineering building at the university.

I could only find this link (in German) about the collection. https://redtenbachersteyr.com/redtenbacher-in-karlsruhe/

One student from Redtenbacher was Reuleaux and there is another collection of transmission from Reuleaux at Cornell university. https://engineering.library.cornell.edu/kmoddl/

Two more great books to have in the mechanical world:

"Manufacturing Processes for Design Professionals" - amazing photos, diagrams, explanations, etc. of every major manufacturing process - great coffee table book.

https://www.amazon.com/Manufacturing-Processes-Design-Profes...

"Materials Selection in Mechanical Design" - great book with "Ashby Charts" that let you compare materials against their material properties - e.g. strength vs. weight.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0750661682

Past discussions:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10374436, 27 comments 11 years ago.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26373539, 30 comments 5 years ago.

Plugging a yt channel that posts lots of these sort of models:

https://youtube.com/@thang010146

What is the purpose of using bearings to build a crank mechanism as in 39? https://507movements.com/mm_039.html

Maybe it's for bearing efficiency? Note that the spur gears are rigidly attached to, respectively, the crank and the shaft. So they don't require bearings at their centres. There is a link arm which pulls the gears together, and that rotates. But the key is that this arm is not transmitting the cranking power; it just holds the parts together. So its bushings/bearings don't have to be so hefty. (Their load is going to be proportional to the transmitted power; obviously the bigger the crank and more horsepower going through it, the more tightly you have to hold the gears together. But it's going to be some fraction compared to a bearing that is directly driven.)

The note only alludes to this mechanism being used to elude a patent claim, not mentioning any advantages. Someone had patented cranks in such a way that you can weasel your way out with this arrangement. I'm guessing that the patent's drawings and descriptions specifically indicated a rotating bushing on the crank wheel where the arm is attached, and this has no such arm attachment.

This guy has quite a lot of videos of various mechanisms if you’re into that sort of thing

https://youtube.com/@thang010146?si=b91XElCL_-TgGMte

This is great, but repetitive. A lot of them are minor variances on a previous example. Is there a shorter list that distills it down to novel examples of the major concepts?

It makes me want to find a way to boot up The Incredible Machine [0], so many hours spent on TIM and TIM2 back in the day.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Incredible_Machine

The Book of Ingenious Mechanical Devices was published in 1206.

https://historymedieval.com/ismail-al-jazaris-marvelous-mach...

You know the Museum of Science in Boston has a bunch of these made in real life iirc for the World Fair in Chicago. They are so fun to see since there's a button you can toggle to activate them. My kid loves watching them go.

For ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Clark_Collection_of_Mechan...

Cool site. I started training seriously and the first thing that came to mind when seeing these movements was... Why did it take us so long to make weight machines (19th century) if we knew the effect of resistance training for millennia AND had the mechanical understanding?

The answer appears to be free weights did the job and people only became sedentary recently.

The first two examples I looked at (https://507movements.com/mm_016.html and https://507movements.com/mm_015.html) have the ropes partially going in the wrong direction.

I wonder if 3-d printing will extend this... There are some weird things you can make nowadays.

EDIT: now I find stuff like "walking table" and I wonder if that kind of thing predates 3d printing.

Many of these aren't animated... which gives me a great(?) idea for a new AI benchmark: "Animate the mechanical movement at this URL: ..."

Way more telling that "draw a pelican on a bicycle"

Well, there’s a book from my past. Got the book to see if I could find a clever way to get high speed, low displacement and high torque from small motors without huge gearing.

The side project was dropped as life got in the way, but I really enjoyed looking at all the different mechanisms.

I feel like this is a website that needs to be made available with one of those swiss army USB sticks for collecting useful knowledge in case of apocalypse. Very cool.

Robert Murray Smith made many videos on mechanisms like these https://www.youtube.com/@ThinkingandTinkering/videos

Please lock this submission at 507 points…

Honestly, I miss old-style internet sites like this. Nothing fancy, just good niched out information. No 300 MB loads for something that should be simple.

This site is a treasure for anyone who has ever tried to get useful motion out of a small motor. The wish for them to finish the remaining animations is very real.

Don’t most of these have ”names”? At least I would assume they have names so people know what they are talking about.

As a "wannabe" DIY engineer/maker and also in the 3d-printing hobby world, this is a wonderful resource...

Also, Christopher Polhem was a Swedish inventor who created the "mechanical alphabet"

https://sketchfab.com/Tekniskamuseet/models

I don't approve. I can't find a donation link.

I'd love to play a game that uses these as building blocks. Is there anything that approaches it?

414 is just 1 with extra steps.

I’ve had this book for a few years. It’s nice to see it in this format.

I would love to see good animations of a differential gear and a detente escapement.

Can these be generated automatically from a small set of primitives?

I was expecting a new HTTP status code

Can we request animations? I want to see #27 working:

https://507movements.com/mm_027.html

It reminds me of a YouTube channel where I found the best song ever made.

Does anyone know

Ineed, it's a very good book. Someone should make an animated website version, though.

Somewhat similar by the epic Bartosz Ciechanowski:

https://ciechanow.ski/gears/

226 is the coolest. Doubles the speed without changing the number of teeth.

This would be cool AI training data.

Now imagine if each of them got the ciechanow.ski treatment

"507 Mechanical Movements" is a rare HTTP status code, usually only used when the request can't be fulfilled due to an earthquake