What kind of material and size limitations are there?
this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2024
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Any material, the software i'll be using has some basic material properties built-in, but theres room for customisation.
Size limitations - any sort of dimensions. Complexity - i could probably do a few mechanisms that are less than maybe 5-10 parts. Or else one large, say less than 50.
Well, there are regulations governing the materials they can be made of.
What materials?
Well, cardboard's out.
And?
No cardboard derivatives.
Like paper?
No paper. No string. No sellotape.
Rubber?
No, rubber's out. Umm, they've got to have a steering wheel.
I've been pondering a gear cutter setup. This is usually done with a mill and a rotary table, but I was thinking of something simpler.
The blank would sit on a rotating table, that spins about the Z axis. The shaft for the cutter sits parallel to the Y axis, and moves along the X axis to contact the blank.
So I'm not sure this would qualify, it may be too simple. I'd been thinking about trying to build a solar forge (I got to learn forging from a really good blacksmith who worked with coal for a couple years, though I am very much an amateur). I've seen videos of people using old fresnel lenses from rear projection TVs to burn through skillsaw blades and if you can melt steel, you can certainly forge it. It might just be slow, or too focused on one spot, requiring some movement to distribute the heat, something I'd have to mess with. It'd also be a bit of a safety hazard overall, but at least it'd be outside on a paved driveway instead of of inside a shed like my old coal forge.
I was picturing something similar to this smelter but with a reused TV lens, and a fire pot where his crucible is. The mechanical parts would be for rotating it to keep the sun shining through the lens, and possibly for adjusting the focus. Stability and safety would be a big consideration, don't want the wind blowing it around too much.
Again, not sure if it's what you're looking for, but I'd like you to get some usable answers here. Best of luck with your project, thank you for reaching out to involve the community!
For work in Malawi I am thinking of introducing a bricket press to make brickets from biomass. One person must pull a lever and a piston is pressing biomass into a cylinder and compresses it. The end of the stroke should be stronger and less fast. And with returning of the lever the pressed bricket or pellet is pushed out and new biomass is inserted. It can be an interesting design from scratch and nice context? It would be challenging to make it convenient for the person while large pressing forces are reached (5000n)
I think I'll see what I can do with this, Does something like this look suitable? From my back-of-envelope calculations, this gives 17000N force (about 1750kg-force like they've said).
And then the challenge is to release the pellet, and refill from a hopper containing more biomass material. Can you tell me what biomass material you would be using?
A cool. That is a known wide spread design. This is a very high force, I'm impressed. But it will come at a cost of displacement correct? We aim to make brickets for cooking fuels and we have a lot of groundnut shells. These groundnut or peanut shells have a a lot lignin so it is possible with wetted mass (softening)and perhaps heating with fire (lignine becomes like a glue at 200degC). After that the brickets are sundried. The bricket shape could be like icehocky pucks or at least the shape to cook with.
I think the wooden design is not that interesting to generate, but with a pellet release and refilling in one lever go (or two steps). That would be an interesting puzzle, yes?
Only I would expect the design would not be 3 dimensions as you asked but mostly all forces in one plane 😁