A Thing for Moving

June 11, 2019 8:02 AM

507 Mechanical Movements
posted by storybored (17 comments total)

I love this. I've been the pulley animations and trying to understand how the mechanical advantage works--some of them counfound me, but then it's been a long time since I studied this stuff.

Thanks very much.
posted by Orlop at 8:09 AM on June 11, 2019 [1 favorite]

Double, but from 6 years ago.
posted by GenjiandProust at 8:10 AM on June 11, 2019 [4 favorites]

Mod note: I'm calling it okay
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 8:11 AM on June 11, 2019 [2 favorites]

Well this is awesome. I'm particularly grateful to #185 Link-motion valve-gear of a locomotive.. This is the thing that lets a steam train driver control the valve timing. It lets you regulate which direction you travel in, also power. (I think this is the thing the Johnson Bar is connected to?) I've stared at 100s of steam trains in museums without ever really understanding how it works. Now I think I get it!
posted by Nelson at 8:17 AM on June 11, 2019 [3 favorites]

Neat. I used to own the dead tree version, and the animations were terrible.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 8:22 AM on June 11, 2019 [9 favorites]

I so wished this existed when I was in engineering school, it would have made visualizing this stuff much easier. Thanks for the link!
posted by codewheeney at 8:49 AM on June 11, 2019

I so wished this existed when I was in engineering school, it would have made visualizing this stuff much easier.

The original is from 1868! When did you go to school, and do you have any good dirt on Isambard Kingdom Brunel?
posted by GenjiandProust at 9:15 AM on June 11, 2019 [6 favorites]

This website has animations of variants of the valve-gear of a locomotive.
posted by Nelson at 9:20 AM on June 11, 2019 [1 favorite]

Boston Museum of Science has (or at least, had; it's been a while) a bunch of these in metal that you could turn the crank on and watch the motion.

So delighted to have a digital version, with a few more!
posted by fragmede at 10:10 AM on June 11, 2019

WHOA. This is SO cool!

Just on my initial click-through I especially like 38. A means of converting rotary motion, by which the speed is made uniform during a part, and varied during another part, of the revolution.

I have added this to my list of Cool Internet Things to Poke Through When I Need a Break.

This is wonderful. Thank you so much, storybored!
posted by kristi at 10:15 AM on June 11, 2019 [4 favorites]

I love this. Back when I was in grade school, Dad opened up an antique store in central Oregon, and there was no end of cool mechanical toys and tools to play around with after school. Best of all were the old player pianos and pump organs, especially when we got to take them apart to fix something or other that Dad had no business trying to fix. Kids learn a lot when they get to play with parts.
posted by vverse23 at 11:02 AM on June 11, 2019 [1 favorite]

I found this very moving.
posted by kinnakeet at 11:23 AM on June 11, 2019 [6 favorites]

I love these.
I went looking for my favorite, the geneva, but could not find it. :(
(although there was a geneva stop)
posted by MtDewd at 2:59 PM on June 11, 2019 [1 favorite]

Hah, I know a Johnson bar as a big jemmy bar with wheels for moving large things small amounts. I wonder where the name comes from.
posted by deadwax at 5:02 PM on June 11, 2019

We used Johnson bars to move mainframe stuff around sometimes. One time one one of the operators completely cracked up at the term Johnson.
(Per Wiki- it sounds like the term derives from the bar on a locomotive, but "Historians have not identified the reasons why engineers called the reversing lever a Johnson Bar")
posted by MtDewd at 5:09 PM on June 11, 2019

Mostly I look at these and thank the existence of easily-programmable microcontrollers and cheap servos.
posted by happyinmotion at 8:11 PM on June 11, 2019 [1 favorite]

Related: Herbert Herkhimer's Engineer's Illustrated Thesaurus. Sadly, there are no animations.
posted by Barry B. Palindromer at 2:05 PM on June 13, 2019