first part of the nanotube Pascaline

Click the pic to see the start of the Pascaline. However, any regular visitors to this site might not be that impressed, just another variation on the "gears turning" theme. Look close and you will notice the tens gear (bottom middle) rolls through a 10th of a revolution on its own. At first I thought this was from thermal agitation, this simulation was at 77K, but now I think that the one-ten connecting gear (upper right) is rubbing on the ones gear, causing it to turn a little. Still precise starts and stops are going to be a problem. Right now I think the rotary jig cannot function like a stepper-motor, once you turn it on, it just keeps running. Also you might ask why not have the ones gear turn the tens and have the tens turn the hundreds directly; why the extra gears? Well, I started out with just such a direct connection, but I thought it would be too hard to build a casing that holds the three gears that close and still keep them separate. This way I can always attach the two connecting gears to the casing walls like with the speed reduction box if I have to. Also if you look really close towards the end, you will see a hydrogen atom come flying out from somewhere; I don't know what is causing that yet.

how not to make a nanotube Pascaline

Click the pic to see nothing impressive. This was an experiment and I did learn something, so it was not a complete waste of time. The lesson- balance your forces. First let me explain what this is. The red carbon nanotube will be part of the ones display, blue is tens, yellow is hundreds, and green are connectors. All the tubes are rotating on rotary jigs, and the red tube is driving the whole system. This is a close up of the gears I built:


The ring of teeth on the right side keeps a 1:1 ratio, the single benzene tooth on the left creates a 10:1 ratio. The ones shaft rotates 10 times for every 1 rotation of the tens shaft and 100 times for the hundreds shaft, as it should. The problem happen because I thought the rotary jigs would have held the gears aligned more; they didn't. I am actually happy they don't because it makes for "realism". This is the first time I ever tried to put the teeth of the gears off center. The gears will eventually be held in a casing, like the SRG box, and I am sure that will help to keep these gears aligned, but I am going to re-work it all so the torques are applied through the center of mass plane.

almost ready...

I think unless something else comes along I am going to build a carbon nanotube Pascaline. Here is a link to a pretty neat little animation of what I'm going to do first. Not quite a Difference Engine, but this will be a good project for the computing resources I have. Speaking of which I was able to upgrade computers again, so that will help out. Now that I have decided what to do, I'll start on it tomorrow. Posts to come...

catching up

Sorry, It's the end of the semester for me, and I have a few school projects to wrap up, so I haven't had much time to work on the important stuff, like nano-machines! Also I am still trying to think of what to build next; dare I go for broke on a mechanical calculator?

four carbon nanotube shafts turning off the srg!

It took 154 hours, 29 minutes and 12 seconds to finish this simulation, but it turned out pretty good. Click the pic to see the movie. I am not sure what project I am doing next. I was thinking of maybe a ball bearing with a ring of C60 fullerenes trapped between two rings; I just think that would look cool.

speed reduction box with nanotube shafts - update

After 81 hours the simulation is 54% finished. Over the last couple of days there has been some stormy weather here, and that has made me a little nervous. Normally I really like storms and invite their presence, but the thought of losing power, even just for an instant, has me wishing for nothing but sunny skies for the next 80 hours. Otherwise it's three and a third days down the drain.