At the beginning of the semester I visited Boston’s Museum of Science and found a whole wall of Mechanical Movements from Clark’s Collective. A lot of the mechanisms looked familiar as I had looked at the online links given to us for the assignment, but being able to see them in person helped me to understand much more than a drawing or even an animation could. I took videos of my two favorites but am having issues uploading them so unfortunately I inserted images instead:
54-Intermittent from Continuous Rotary Motion
56- Wave Wheel for Oscillating Motion
Both mechanisms contain constant rotary, however one utilizes it to create entirely different movements, while the other causes the next gear to move in the same way but on a different axis.
Number 56 uses constant rotary to create intermittent vertical movements, connected by an oscillating lever. It is very interesting to see three seemingly simple components convert something rotating the x-axis into motion going up and down the y-axis. I could see this mechanism working at a very high speed with smaller ‘waves’ in the rotary piece within an impact drill. Drills obviously have a rotary component, spinning the bit around. The way impact drills have been explained to me is that it is the same but with a small hammer repetitively hitting, causing helpful bursts of pressure that get screws in with less effort.
Note: I googled around a bit and this mechanism is not what makes impact drills different than normal drills, but thinking about it still helped me understand the mechanism so I’m choosing to include the thought process in this post.
