507 Mechanical Movements

(507movements.com)

299 points | by helloplanets 3 hours ago

31 comments

  • andrewcl 4 minutes ago
    You know the Museum of Science in Boston has a bunch of these made in real life iirc for the World Fair in Chicago. They are so fun to see since there's a button you can toggle to activate them. My kid loves watching them go.

    For ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Clark_Collection_of_Mechan...

  • wowczarek 2 hours ago
    It's a great collection and exploring it is fun, but it misses on titles / names of the given linkage or movement. It makes sense when you are reading the book [0], but on a site like this where you see the individual item in isolation, a title or name would be helpful.

    0: https://archive.org/details/fivehundredseven00browiala

  • emacdona 2 hours ago
    Many of these aren't animated... which gives me a great(?) idea for a new AI benchmark: "Animate the mechanical movement at this URL: ..."

    Way more telling that "draw a pelican on a bicycle"

    • worldsayshi 2 hours ago
      Also, set up formulas for calculating speed, torque, forces etc, of each system.

      Then create a modular simulation library and point and click simulator where all the component variants are covered so that the user can piece new systems together using those components.

      • bonestamp2 1 hour ago
        Also include sliders so parameters can be adjusted to see how it affects the mechanism (ex. wheel radius).
    • scrollop 1 hour ago
      Ironically, before coming to the comments I was thinking this would be a good dataset for llms to learn real world mechanics.
      • MisterTea 1 hour ago
        For me it's a great dataset to train my own brain. This way when I'm in the field and need to come up with a fix for something I can query my intellect and come up with a solution. No accounts, internet connection, or compute needed!
  • kazinator 33 minutes ago
    What is the purpose of using bearings to build a crank mechanism as in 39? https://507movements.com/mm_039.html

    Maybe it's for bearing efficiency? Note that the spur gears are rigidly attached to, respectively, the crank and the shaft. So they don't require bearings at their centres. There is a link arm which pulls the gears together, and that rotates. But the key is that this arm is not transmitting the cranking power; it just holds the parts together. So its bushings/bearings don't have to be so hefty. (Their load is going to be proportional to the transmitted power; obviously the bigger the crank and more horsepower going through it, the more tightly you have to hold the gears together. But it's going to be some fraction compared to a bearing that is directly driven.)

    The note only alludes to this mechanism being used to elude a patent claim, not mentioning any advantages. Someone had patented cranks in such a way that you can weasel your way out with this arrangement. I'm guessing that the patent's drawings and descriptions specifically indicated a rotating bushing on the crank wheel where the arm is attached, and this has no such arm attachment.

  • WillAdams 2 hours ago
    One of my favourite sites! and an interesting example of that class of sites which are book made into sites with animations/interaction --- the another classic and notable example is:

    https://mathcs.clarku.edu/~djoyce/java/elements/elements.htm...

    Really wish that the folks doing the 507 Mechanical Movements would finish the balance of the animations.

    Curious if folks are aware of other similar text/website combinations which are still extant (many others such as Bembo's Zoo are no longer available, and of course at one point in time, this sort of thing was the province of CD-ROMs such as Leonardo).

  • mkl 2 hours ago
    Past discussions:

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10374436, 27 comments 11 years ago.

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26373539, 30 comments 5 years ago.

  • rkagerer 55 minutes ago
    This is great, but repetitive. A lot of them are minor variances on a previous example. Is there a shorter list that distills it down to novel examples of the major concepts?
  • jihadjihad 2 hours ago
    It makes me want to find a way to boot up The Incredible Machine [0], so many hours spent on TIM and TIM2 back in the day.

    0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Incredible_Machine

  • agrue 1 hour ago
    Plugging a yt channel that posts lots of these sort of models:

    https://youtube.com/@thang010146

  • twobitshifter 1 hour ago
    Robert Murray Smith made many videos on mechanisms like these https://www.youtube.com/@ThinkingandTinkering/videos
  • cestith 21 minutes ago
    I’ve had this book for a few years. It’s nice to see it in this format.
  • frnz 2 hours ago
    The first two examples I looked at (https://507movements.com/mm_016.html and https://507movements.com/mm_015.html) have the ropes partially going in the wrong direction.
    • jackpirate 5 minutes ago
      They both look fine to me. But I do notice some weird aliasing effects in the animation that makes it difficult to identify the direction of fast moving rope. Maybe that's the problem?
  • stoneman24 2 hours ago
    Well, there’s a book from my past. Got the book to see if I could find a clever way to get high speed, low displacement and high torque from small motors without huge gearing.

    The side project was dropped as life got in the way, but I really enjoyed looking at all the different mechanisms.

  • victorbjorklund 1 hour ago
    Don’t most of these have ”names”? At least I would assume they have names so people know what they are talking about.
  • akshay_akula 1 hour ago
    This site is a treasure for anyone who has ever tried to get useful motion out of a small motor. The wish for them to finish the remaining animations is very real.
  • mklyachman 2 hours ago
    Honestly, I miss old-style internet sites like this. Nothing fancy, just good niched out information. No 300 MB loads for something that should be simple.
  • jjkaczor 2 hours ago
    As a "wannabe" DIY engineer/maker and also in the 3d-printing hobby world, this is a wonderful resource...
  • fifilura 2 hours ago
    Also, Christopher Polhem was a Swedish inventor who created the "mechanical alphabet"

    https://sketchfab.com/Tekniskamuseet/models

  • warpech 44 minutes ago
    I was expecting a new HTTP status code
  • pkilgore 1 hour ago
    414 is just 1 with extra steps.
  • amelius 1 hour ago
    Can these be generated automatically from a small set of primitives?
  • ThatOneSong 52 minutes ago
    It reminds me of a YouTube channel where I found the best song ever made.

    Does anyone know

  • herodotus 2 hours ago
    I would love to see good animations of a differential gear and a detente escapement.
  • stmw 1 hour ago
    Ineed, it's a very good book. Someone should make an animated website version, though.
  • bilsbie 2 hours ago
    This would be cool AI training data.
    • colinhb 2 hours ago
      It is already in current training data. Both the book and website.
  • mohamedkoubaa 2 hours ago
    Now imagine if each of them got the ciechanow.ski treatment