some more work on Ferguson's orrery

This is an animation of the first A-B wheel simulation. I was not expecting the wheels to lose their integrity the way they did. You can see they initially bow out.

I believe this was because they were placed too close together. Initially I was worried about them being spaced too far apart which lead to the awful looking seam in the casing as I kept removing SiC layers to get them closer.

In the first simulation the point of closest approach is .94A. I decided to rebuild the casing to separate the wheels a little more, to 2.26A.

I also added a full left wall to the casing, and I am working on adding two front struts as well.


This is the new casing with the left wall and one of the front struts. I have also shortened the wheels a little too to make them less flexible.

I am really starting to hit a performance wall with my computer. It takes 15-20 seconds just to bond two atoms together, a step that would be near instantaneous with a low atom-count part. I am not sure if I can finish this project with out first upgrading some hardware.

For about $300 I can buy an ATI X1950 Pro video card and another half gig of ram, or I can put all my hope in an impulsive email sent god only knows where, someplace in the Toshiba Corporation, to god only knows who but definitely someone four or five levels down the hierarchy from someone that can make those decisions.

Hmmmm...