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18:01 as you probably discovered, gravity is much easier to work with, since the force is constant. With rubber bands the force increases the further you wind them up so either you crank it for long and the force is just too big to really use it or the machine has too much resistance to use anything but the first bit of energy saved in it before the torque becomes too little.
I'd like to see the hand crank replaced with a well geared foot pedal, charging your phone while being anxious seems like a good use of that state of mind.
You can also use rubber bands for (super inefficient) refrigeration. No, I am not kidding you, stretch a rubber band and feel it with your lips, it gets noticeably hotter as you stretch it. Then hold it stretched for a few seconds to let it cool to ambient temperature, and let it go back to its relaxed state, it will be noticeably colder than ambient.
@@BenAlternate-zf9nr it's true, there's a guy who built a "refrigerator" making use of this effect. It sucked but no surprises there lol. The cooler temp was visible on a thermal camera though
@@BenAlternate-zf9nr"Mechanical energy to stretch the coiled molecules breaks the intramolecular bonds while supplying energy so the temperature is not lowered. The stretched polymer chains are forced together and INTER-molecular bonds form between the stretched chains. This process releases heat and also stresses the molecules near the double bonds. Releasing the tension forces the breaking of the intermolecular bonds, this requires energy from the rubber itself so the rubber cools"
11:39 I realize you're a lego channel, but lego is the limiting factor when you've got massive forces like elastic band or *twisted rope*. Use fitness bands. Scale up. Lose the plastic. Increase the gear ratio even further so it takes at least a minute. Figure a lever for a human to stand on every minute that resets the internal rubber band. Boohoo, you have to take a step once a minute to charge your phone and run safety lights when the power goes out :P
You're 100% right, Lego is a major limiting factor. I've made a great many generators, and Lego always turns out to have severe limitations on how much torque can be handled - both on the input, and the rotor. Though I'd like to experiment more with some aluminium Lego pieces 😉 Then we can put it under much more stress
I get the assignment is to use rubber bands, but to twist rubber bands in a spiral, or to roll them up is actually a really inefficient way to store rubber band energy. Their energy is far better served with being extended out freely. While yes, this will create a lot of force and short movement, its the ideal way to power something with an escapement mechanism like a weight would, that swings a pendulum or spins up a large wheel. If you really want to stick to the windup, add a rope to the rubber bands and wind up the rope, stretching out the rubber band, As you wind up rubber bands it will bind and the inner spool isnt as stretched out as the last winds.
Agree, getting a good long stretch definitely feels like the best way to do it. That was the idea behind the pulley concept - to stretch the rubber linearly over a significant distance. Admittedly, I did a pretty crap job of designing it, so I'd love to revisit that idea in another design at some point!
@@JamiesBrickJams I'd recommend revisiting the pulley concept, but I would love to see the lever used as the ratchet instead of a little spinny handle, to allow you to store more human power.
@@JamiesBrickJams I'd love to see something a bit more heavy duty that will allow a person to transfer more of their power to it. Instead of a small crank that you spin by turning your wrist around, maybe running or even better one of those big pedal things that let you use your arms to swing 2 arms on the machine too.
You should probably come up with a flywheel and some kind of wind up mechanism which would allow you to simultaneously crank up the weight and still be able to power the load.
@@JamiesBrickJams I came up with that idea after watching Wintergatan's tight music test in which he used the exact mechanism along with a flyball governor to stabilize the speed.
Picture this: Four thick rubber bands each on their own separate gear and axis, sharing the same plane and joined together by a central winding gear. This eliminates the axle interference allowing more windings, and increases torque. Next, play with gear ratios on the output for longer spin times.
Or capturing electrons from a decaying alpha radioactive material (weakest one is safe enough to use it in your room as long as it's in an enclosure (this includes plastic bags).
I like that you can hear the AC wave produced by the coils when running diodes. When the diodes conduct therefore draw power the magnet encounters some resistance due to the current flow, then it swaps and the diodes go into blocking stopping the current (for the most part), and the magnet spins a little freer, until it swaps again and they start conducting. Very interesting demo....
I'm guessing why the caps don't smooth out the brightness more is due to the lack of current limiting resistors. When you have an led straight parallel with the caps, the moment the voltage rises much over the forvard voltage of the leds, they will draw a huge current, limiting the voltage the caps can charge to. When the pulse of input current diminishes, the caps are already right at the limit that can light the leds at. The voltage/current plot of diodes is very steep! What you want in addition to the smoothing caps is either current limiting resistors, or, for more efficiency, a switch mode constant current source of some kind. The latter will greatly improve both the duration and evenness of the light. I would also consider ditching the few big magnets in favor of many small magnets. When that thing rotates, most of the time it is not doing anything, just spinning away energy to friction. Had you a ring of smaller magnets passing by a smaller coil (With an Iron Core!), would the field at the coil look more like a constant sinewave, rather than a bunch of passing peaks. Nicer to work with, too, much less scary.
Yeah, the flow and storage of energy is fascinating. Think about this: the Earth loses more energy than the sun gives it and yet we're coming *out* of an ice age? Just goes to show how complex and hard to grasp the earth and its cycles are.
a gravity contraption will be smooth but limited runtime. you might need a way to disengage for the flywheel contraption. if I was making it, I will use many small magnets and coil around the entire spinning zone with the magnetic pulls alternating and facing the coils. sometimes the best is simple.
As Joergsprave from the Slingshot Channel will tell you, there's no point pulling rubber over a pulley, what you gain in length you lose in friction. More recently though Shoottech released a slingshot with pulleys (though it looks a lot more like a bow than a slingshot at this point) where the tricks turns out to be having multiple short bands (they go from like 8cm to like 20cm pulled by a string on a pulley) in parallel to increase the force pulled by the string using a pulley. Twisting them around themselves is only a good idea for model planes because it saves a huge amount of weight since you don't need as much structural rigidity to deal with the torque or gearing to increase the speed. (Most rubber band planes would actually go further if you just launched them from your finger using the elastic band but the ability to stay in the air longer and slower is their whole selling point) But for a ground storage mechanism you don't have weight limitations which is why gravity works so well, so the reasons to use rubber at that point are basically gone, *except* for compactness and working at different orientations, thus why clocks used springs for so long.
It's crazy to think there exists an invisible force linked to an object, that can grab and hold onto another force like itself, and be so difficult to make them let go. If magnates didn't exist we be living in a very different world.
Could you please make a video in which you use gravity instead of rubber bands? This way, you can store a lot more energy, and it would be interesting to see how much.
I have a tip or two. For one, use a flywheel to store more kinetic energy. Your ripcord design with a flywheel is definitely worth a try. My second tip is obvious. Instead of rotating the heavy magnets, make them stationary and spin the much lighter coils through their fields.
I'd love to see a concept design of the final attempt, where a hand-crank generator was created once the bands were removed, using gear ratios to increase the revolutions! This is brilliant!
1:15 if you were to use mechanical advantage, for example a 1:5 ratio, the car could run much more but slower, about 50 meters but in quarter the speed the original one went 20 meters,
I remember in a mousetrap car competition I tried that, using a huge ratio to in theory make it slow but long-running, but it actually lost to one with a much lower ratio that just accelerated and coasted
gravity batteries have massive potential. They are used by some utility companies to load shed. During peek usage they utilize the gravity storage to help keep up with demand and during slumps in need that use the excess to pump water back into a elevated reservoir.
6:50 honestly curious if they have a way to make an escapement hook thing that they have in pocket watches. Would help control the release of power. Edit: some ways to improve the design would be to increase the amount of area in the coil that the magnetic field breaks through. Can be done by decreasing the bend in other parts, like in a serpentine coil. Also curious as to where the magnets were bought from, as I have been struggling with finding N52 magnets that are bigger than a quarter (at least in LxW, while H is roughly a quarter inch). Also, there was a college student that made a gravity generator that the pulley setup reminded me of; the students build consisted of a hand crank that would rotate an assembly with a heavy weight sliding down all thread or the like, and the rotational energy from the allthread would drive an unknown generator and power 3 large LED lights.
We have some of those exact magnets in my lab. Best option we found was to use a long piece of wood and have one person hold the wood while the other pushes the magnets apart, sliding one down the wood.
9:54 if you used springs to allow the gears to go under tension towards the center of that block it would significantly increase the power of that design. kinda how old sailing ships used blocks and tackle to lift very heavy objects.
Use the pullies as the source of mechanical advantage, instead of gearing it. I have a feeling this, combined with the ripcord idea, will be at least interesting.
For gravity-powered, try making one that uses liquid flowing from an upper reservoir through a pipe system involving a valve for throughput control to a lower reservoir, which can be reset by pumping the liquid back up to the top one.
I think you could try to use a bunch of small rubber bands in parallel and then just stretch them linearly, no winding then up. then gear up the output massively. That way you use a small amount of space to store the energy and it allows for easier expansion of storage by just adding more small bands
i'm up for some gravity pulls, but i would also like to see those monster magnets up to manual labor. with a proper gear ratio you can get them into a consistent high speed.. perhaps adding 2 more coils per side (6 instead of 4) would smooth even more the curves too...
I dunno why but this made me think of a future where for some reason we never discovered steam or combustion engines and instead all our extremely light weight cars were powered by making super tense rubber bands inside and letting them unwind slowly when we want to accelerate.
Have you ever thought to use an Archimedes' Wind Turbine? If you point the turbine down, and have a funnel to guide the wind up into it from any direction, it's pretty effective, so I hear.
To get those caps to filter anything at all, you really should have a current limiting resistor in series with your load. LEDs will draw as much current as is given to them (like any diode, they drop a relatively constant voltage across), so they should be protected in some way. A decent rectifier, huge amount of bulk capacitance and the right current-limiting resistor ought to do the trick. You could, of course, also completely remove the load and just leave the caps to charge. That'll give you an idea of how much electrical energy this thing is releasing. You can then size your resistor accordingly.
If you use a bit more advanced electronics, you can make better use of the coil output. Just connecting a rectifier and a few capacitors doesn't do much, as we can see
The thing about the wound up bands is that it's an oscillating system, much like a pendulum. Most of the potential energy it has goes to winding in the other direction. That means most of your time is spent with the system about the same thing as shunting charge back and forth between two batteries, the energy stored keeps getting fully discharged and recharged. In this case it's a mechanical potential battery (the elastic) and a kinetic/momentum battery (the spinning magnets) rather than two electrical batteries, but hopefully the analogy makes sense. Why that is a problem should be obvious: Thermodynamics demands a tax on every conversion or movement of energy. The energy in the bands gets taxed by the axel friction, the gear friction, the air resistance on the magnets, some loss while establishing the magnetic field, etc. Once the bands are hit zero potential the energy starts going to wind them up again, doing much the same list of frictions and resistances. As a bonus to the whole process, the contraction and extension causes a cooling/heating cycle from the mechanical deformation, more losses appear. Ideally you want all the energy to be released in a single cycle, likely by converting it to electrical and storing it. For that you're going to how much charge the caps hold vs the power coming from the coil... you might want to get magnetic resistance to slow the rotor, slowing the whole thing down so that the voltage matches the caps you use. It'll cost you some current but there's no point in having higher voltage and current if the circuit can't do anything with it.
if you do start experimenting with gravitational potential energy, I'd suggest using a hygens chain drive, similar to what a weight driven clock uses to store energy while also allowing for you to raise the weight without changing the energy input to a generator
I think it would be a good idea to measure the energy efficiency. You might not be getting a lot of electrical energy out, but it's good to know what you could theoretically get anyways to see how much you're capturing. Should be a very easy calculation for the gravity generator atleast!
What's the easiest way to start a collection? Do you buy the technic as individual pieces or is it from sets? I remember when I was a kid back in the 90's that my school had technic packs which had a ton of pieces to make whatever but I can't find them anywhere now.
Hey, my typical recommendation if you're looking to get back into technic would be to buy one large set to get started. Something with a lot of lift arms, pins, and connectors. Lego is pretty expensive these days, but a single set of between 2000 and 4000 parts is a great place to start. I'd also recommend building the set first to get a feel for the building techniques used, as technic has changed a lot over the years! Then if you're looking for more parts, either buying more sets or using Bricklink to buy individual parts is the best way forward
@@JamiesBrickJams Thanks heaps, I was thinking that would be the answer. I looked into both and found that the sets seemed the best route for variation.
when rectifying some custom generator you can use few tricks: If it has separate windings then you can rectify each using doubler on 2 Schottky's and 2 capacitors - that way you loose alot less power on diodes. Those doublers you can connect in parallel or in series depends on what voltage you want. Also you can measure voltage without load and then setup dc-dc converter to convert that voltage into voltage that is exact for your load. That way you can draw less current at higher voltage, and current in a winding is what causes magnetic brake in generator, so you want it lower unless your "engine" is effective at high torque.
If you get alot of rubber bands you could probably burn them in a small steam generator. I wonder how much more energy is stored in the rubbers chemical bonds than it can store when stretched.
I do suggest diving into gravity batteries and gravity generators. I've done my own experiments, and found it quite satisfying to design, work out, and play with during the process.
@@JamiesBrickJams It's all in the math between the weight of the object, the distance it can lower to produce energy, and the gear ratios between the different parts. Too much gear ratio, and the weight doesn't turn the mechanism / turn it fast enough. Too little ratio, and the mechanism runs out too quickly. You're looking for the gravity load to just "tick down" slowly, keeping the mechanism spun at a steady speed the entire time to maintain output voltage. The gearing is the key component, and you'll be figuring this out on paper. Potential Energy = MGH, where M = mass, G = gravity, and H = the height of the fall. Unrestricted objects accelerate in fall at 9.81 m/s/s, so the energy of 1kg of gravity load is 9.81 Joules X the height in meters. Power in watts = Energy in joules / time in seconds. If our total energy is 9.81J per meter of height, we can scale the Time in Seconds to figure out our gear ratio and how it affects our Power Output Rate. More gearing extends the time, but divides the Power Rate by a larger period, making less power per second for longer. The inverse also applies. Example: If we put in a 16:1 gearbox, we'd be dividing the Time in Seconds by 16 to give us an estimate of the new Power Output Rate. Friction etc skews the data, but it's enough to make estimates for prototyping. I suggest building at the largest scale you realistically can. A tiny load's force of gravity can easily be eaten up by friction losses, where starting with a scaled up load / setup gives more margin to work with. Efficiency matters. Proper bearings and stronger materials may be required. Every watt matters in a process like this, and friction losses translate directly into power losses. I suggest a target voltage of around 5v output if possible, as it's a practical and useful voltage for USB devices (especially if regulated). I recommend using a high anchor point, as more height means better runtime and better data. You'll also lose some height between the anchor point and the center of the gravity load to connections and load height etc. If you're doing this with Lego, this might be interesting to achieve. Feel free to reach out if you have specific questions, but this is basically what I self-learned from playing with gravity energy / energy storage. Hopefully it helps.
Some more advanced ideas I've played with are using centrifugal clutch mechanisms to have the gearbox ratio change on the fly. Basically, at a certain speed the centrifugal forces engage the clutch and the gearing on another stage of the gearbox. My thoughts were that this would take advantage of any "over-acceleration" at the load, slowing the descent and increasing the energy capture. Think of it as shifting through gears in your car. You get up to a certain RPM, then you adjust the gear ratio to get to a higher speed and overall energy level. Yeah, basically an automatic transmission lol.
@@JamiesBrickJams I posted a whole big thing on the theory of this, the physics equations, estimating and scaling gear ratios vs descent speed, etc. I'm not seeing this comment now though, so I'm not sure what happened. The basics are this: Potential Energy (PE in Joules) = MGH, where M = Suspended Mass, G = 9.8m / s (acceleration of gravity), and H = height of fall. Converting Joules to Watts looks something like this: Power (W) = Energy (Joules) / Time (Seconds). Your goal is to make the gearbox do 2 things: Spin the generator at an average (or better yet, constant) speed that makes your desired voltage range; AND slow the descent so that the device can run for longer. The gearing is the most important part. My basic recommendations were: - Run tests with a starter gearbox ratio that can be multiplied. Get the peak and average voltages from those tests and use them to scale the gear ratio to correct the generator RPM / peak voltage. - A steady descent means a steady voltage. I was still working on this point when I moved to other projects (see other comment). - Use the highest anchor point you can. More height = more runtime / energy = better data. - Efficiency matters. Friction and other losses translate directly into power losses. Bearings etc will help. - Target an average (rectified) voltage of 5V if possible, as this can used in a practical sense and is an easy / harmless voltage to hit. If it seems impossible to slow the RPM down enough to maintain this, go to a higher voltage like 12V (again, rectified). I had more, maybe it's somewhere that I can't see it. The gearing makes or breaks the thing. You don't want your load just dropping to the floor in 1 second, nor do you want it to hang without generating any / much RPM. The gear ratio is slowing the descent. If we use a 2:1 ratio, we can expect the resistance holding the load suspended to be doubled. Once you have some data, you'll be able to estimate your final gear ratio vs gravity load vs generator drag vs voltages. You can only really change the gravity load weight and the gear ratio, so at least that part is simplified.
Hi there! Heres an idea (Ive always wondered if it would work): Use a LEGO motor to power the contraption, but have it generate power to power the motor... Reusable energy!
If you're going with gravity, then perhaps something like a small water tower "pumped hydro" would be worth looking into. Don't know if Lego/technicts has anything piston or pump like. But low pressure air could also be interesting
Love that idea! I'm definitely into the idea of negative pressure powering some kind of vacuum piston engine. And then powering the vacuum using running water. Unfortunately Lego makes this quite challenging, but love the idea!
The gravity thing could be fun. But now you need a way to mount a pulley on the ceiling that can stand up to 40lbs or so. And maybe some wood blocks with screws or other brackets to anchor down the Lego assemblies with that kind of loading. Also likely you could go a little crazier with gear multiplication to get a good spin on the generator part and increase the time it's making power. All that seems like it should be simple enough given all the stuff you appear to have already.
hey, so I love the video, but something that may help generate more power or power over more time would be to think of the mechanical load is the inverse as the electrical load. What I mean by that is in mechanical systems resistance or in this case force from displacement can be summed in parallel but is equivalent to the parallel combination of resistors in electrical terms. Waht I'm saying is in order to store more energy you can have several subunits of elastic stretched to the exact same length and they will share the load equally. From there you can dampen the rate of displacement to get longer more consistent force production leading to more power over time. Like if you were to take what you made and just replicate it several times and put them all in parallel and hook them all up to drive one shaft with a magnet, and then you tuned the resistance either with electrical impedance or a dashpot you can really get some power going. A good example of this is actually a ride at theme parks. I'm not sure what it's called but it uses hundreds of springs in parallel in an acordian like mehcnism to launch a ball with riders inside very high into the air. The issue with springs or rubber bands is that because the force they produce is a product of their displacement, getting any power out of them makes them weaker, so in reality they are not a good source of any form of reliable power, but they are fun. I hope you read this and I hope it makes sense. I'm very tired and know I didn't do the best job explaining that first bit. great video
Use a disk with the magnets (singles) on the edge and wind it up using beefy rubber bands then make the kinectic to elctric conversion with the rubber bands are connected to each side with an axle goong through and bars running sideways through the axle to store more torque in the output
I want to own a gigantic flywheel with a massive 2-man sized crank and 2x 500k neodymium super magnet balls, surround them in one big coil and then spin the crap out of those bad boys to generate some crazy voltage. Owning an actual working generator that just makes energy from pretty much nothing is just super cool and should 100% be more of a thing.
what if the aluminum shaft would have a free rotating wheel/disc in the middle? So the rubber bands would not touch the aluminum rod and letting the bands to store even more energy?
In the same way you noticed the axle getting in the way of the rubber band and turned it sideways and would it round the axle I thought you were gonna do the same with the sling rubber ?
I may still be in High school, but what is you made a bunch of copper rings and stuck them all around the contraption, generating electricity every few degrees?
What if you built an inner ring with the magnets riding a rail and an outer ring of coils to generate electricity, which will power a motor that's used to keep the magnets moving on the rail indefinitely? It should power itself... maybe; as long as the magnets move fast enough I think. Then set up a system that uses rubber to get it started before it becomes self-sustaining. I think it would be cool to see
Definitely possible! I actually made a video a while back on a generator that used an escapement mechanism to slowly release energy. Deserves an update though at some point. I'm sure it's possible to get something low-powered to run for ages using an escapement
That's actually a great idea! I'm sure something like that would be doable. Would be cool to be able to both store energy or just hand crank when you need more juice. Nice suggestion
Wind power uses a gearbox and lubricant to turn an electric motor. I think you could use a gearbox to keep a better constant energy flow. After all, electricity is a wave.
Notes and thoughts: You are not “making power”. You are simply converting power. Technically destroy power but lets not dwell on entropy too much. Second, try a gravity battery. From 3 to 6 metres, a mass falling could release energy over time in a controlled way. Naturally you want gearing to prologue this process. Enough mass means you can have enough torque for the steep gearing.
Some people have made Lego compressed air engines which provide a small amount of electricity, but admittedly it's much less conventional or cost effective
Ok, so now lets get into it. I think your uncoupling idea was the best, as it gives the longest runtime overall. Then i think the leverage idea is way smarter than twisting, since you have a more stable output and you need to put less work into loading the generator. And lastly i like the gravity idea in the end, so lets combine now. First try to build a magnet rotor that has as less friction as possible. Ball bearings, silicon oil, you name it. And make the rotor long with the magnets on the end, to get a flywheel effect. Then put this on a base that can be uncoupled from the leverarm, so you can load the arm without rotating the magnets, and as the rubberband is released completely it uncouples itself so the magnetrotor can rotate further, using the flywheel effect to get es much energy out the system as possible. Combine the Leverarm with a weight, that pulls more downward the more the lever is loaded. As the lever goes up the rubberband is pulling less, but by bringing the weight more near to the top the less weight is pulling on the arm, making it easier to be pulled. This way you can get a very consistent movement out of the slingshot rubber, first it will pull force on the very heavy lever, as it looses energy to pull the lever gets easier to pull so the pull speed/force doesnt change on the rotational axle. Also try to gear it up in a way it runs longer by needing more pull to get to work. Now for the circuit, smooth out the pulses by placing more coils around the magnets, putting a few caps in and with that based on the scale you build this monstrosity you should be able to get around 10 seconds of smooth noodles or 30 seconds of small LED-Chain out of one slingshot band.
Some very good advice here, thanks for taking the time to describe this! Those hearings do a good job, so I ordered more. I'm feeling more and more that gravity is a better means of running something for longer than 10 seconds. Though still it doesn't have a huge amount of output unless you use very heavy weights. But I'll certainly continue playing around with some of the ideas you've suggested here. Cheers!
We already use gravity to store energy in the power grid of cities! We pump up huge loads of water up a mountain and then if we need energy let it all plumet down thru a turbine and boom, huge battery.
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Try doubling the magnet🤔
Could you try use lego motors to power a lego motor like this with magnets and coils 😂😂❤❤ please😊
can you link where you got your magnets @Jamie's Brick Jams
Could you try springs?
Compression spring next? (Not a main coil spring)
I'm eager to see a gravity battery now that you bring it up.
No pun intended
@@maxiewawa This is certain to not let us down :P
Same I've been having an idea for a fairly large one using a rope reduction system to transfer vertical to circular motion
There are a ton of pendulum clocks out of lego on YT, for inspiration
Super simple. Just lift a weight with a motor. When the weight falls it makes power
Legend has it if you say 'Full bridge rectifier' 3 times into a mirror, ElectroBoom appears 🤔
Full bridge rectifier, full bridge rectifier, FOOOOOOOOL BREEEEEJ RECTIFIEEEEEER
I am boom electric
Its not a legend! I tried it last night, hes still here spraying his LATITY in my face, non stop.....
...I KNOW WHAT I SAID!!!!
Why would youtube recomend me to look uo "bridge rectifier" like its a shopping app 😭😭😭
Without stabilizer it's just (not) garbage 😂
18:01 as you probably discovered, gravity is much easier to work with, since the force is constant. With rubber bands the force increases the further you wind them up so either you crank it for long and the force is just too big to really use it or the machine has too much resistance to use anything but the first bit of energy saved in it before the torque becomes too little.
Yet in the same time, rubber powered planes exist and some of them go for a long time.
@@CenReaper. Doesn't mean that they can use the energy stored in the rubber band ideally. Changing torque is always hard to deal with
Yeah but it still worked i did build one of these with the rubbers Powered planes
I did make about 12 to 15 volts
Those magnets are no joke....glad you still have all your fingies 😁
Haha something tells me you're speaking from experience
I'd like to see the hand crank replaced with a well geared foot pedal, charging your phone while being anxious seems like a good use of that state of mind.
Ooooh I like the idea of a foot pedal
@@JamiesBrickJams i like it too
You can also use rubber bands for (super inefficient) refrigeration. No, I am not kidding you, stretch a rubber band and feel it with your lips, it gets noticeably hotter as you stretch it. Then hold it stretched for a few seconds to let it cool to ambient temperature, and let it go back to its relaxed state, it will be noticeably colder than ambient.
Really? I would think relaxing the band would also heat it since the stored energy has to go somewhere. I'll have to try it.
Applied Science actually made a refrigerator using rubber bands. Obviously completely impractical, but cool as a proof of concept.
@@BenAlternate-zf9nr it's true, there's a guy who built a "refrigerator" making use of this effect. It sucked but no surprises there lol. The cooler temp was visible on a thermal camera though
@@BenAlternate-zf9nr"Mechanical energy to stretch the coiled molecules breaks the intramolecular bonds while supplying energy so the temperature is not lowered. The stretched polymer chains are forced together and INTER-molecular bonds form between the stretched chains. This process releases heat and also stresses the molecules near the double bonds. Releasing the tension forces the breaking of the intermolecular bonds, this requires energy from the rubber itself so the rubber cools"
@@DarkAttack14 that's really cool! (Ha!)
I love that your one of the only “LEGO” RUclips making those types of things
Aw thanks, appreciate your comment ☺️ I do love exploring concepts that are rarely done with Lego
11:39 I realize you're a lego channel, but lego is the limiting factor when you've got massive forces like elastic band or *twisted rope*. Use fitness bands. Scale up. Lose the plastic. Increase the gear ratio even further so it takes at least a minute. Figure a lever for a human to stand on every minute that resets the internal rubber band. Boohoo, you have to take a step once a minute to charge your phone and run safety lights when the power goes out :P
You're 100% right, Lego is a major limiting factor. I've made a great many generators, and Lego always turns out to have severe limitations on how much torque can be handled - both on the input, and the rotor. Though I'd like to experiment more with some aluminium Lego pieces 😉 Then we can put it under much more stress
I get the assignment is to use rubber bands, but to twist rubber bands in a spiral, or to roll them up is actually a really inefficient way to store rubber band energy. Their energy is far better served with being extended out freely. While yes, this will create a lot of force and short movement, its the ideal way to power something with an escapement mechanism like a weight would, that swings a pendulum or spins up a large wheel.
If you really want to stick to the windup, add a rope to the rubber bands and wind up the rope, stretching out the rubber band, As you wind up rubber bands it will bind and the inner spool isnt as stretched out as the last winds.
Agree, getting a good long stretch definitely feels like the best way to do it. That was the idea behind the pulley concept - to stretch the rubber linearly over a significant distance. Admittedly, I did a pretty crap job of designing it, so I'd love to revisit that idea in another design at some point!
Maybe you can design a cam-shaped lever so there's more leverage as lower extension to try to even out the force.
@@JamiesBrickJams I'd recommend revisiting the pulley concept, but I would love to see the lever used as the ratchet instead of a little spinny handle, to allow you to store more human power.
@@JamiesBrickJams I'd love to see something a bit more heavy duty that will allow a person to transfer more of their power to it. Instead of a small crank that you spin by turning your wrist around, maybe running or even better one of those big pedal things that let you use your arms to swing 2 arms on the machine too.
"THERE'S NO FREE ENERGY"
electroboom-
There sure isn't! My wrist can feel the aftermath of all this...
@@JamiesBrickJams lol
@@JamiesBrickJamsai detected
“FULL BRIDGE RECTIFIER” - also electroboom
@@CyberTechUniverse???????
You should probably come up with a flywheel and some kind of wind up mechanism which would allow you to simultaneously crank up the weight and still be able to power the load.
A few folks have suggested the Hyugens mechanism which sounds better than just using a differential. Worth a try!
@@JamiesBrickJams I came up with that idea after watching Wintergatan's tight music test in which he used the exact mechanism along with a flyball governor to stabilize the speed.
Picture this:
Four thick rubber bands each on their own separate gear and axis, sharing the same plane and joined together by a central winding gear. This eliminates the axle interference allowing more windings, and increases torque. Next, play with gear ratios on the output for longer spin times.
That's actually really clever, thanks for the suggestion. I'm itching to try this now...
@ I’ll have my eyes peeled! But no pressure haha. I only live vicariously through you
FUUUULL BRRRIIIDGE REEEEEEECTIIIIFIERRRRRR - ElectroBOOM
more like Diode gone Wild 😂
FULL BRIDGE RECTIFIER
Next up : Lego fission Energy: making power from uranium 235
Or capturing electrons from a decaying alpha radioactive material (weakest one is safe enough to use it in your room as long as it's in an enclosure (this includes plastic bags).
Uranium is shit at nuclear power compared to thorium
@@greatestfrogeuranium is more stable I think I’m not too sure
I like that you can hear the AC wave produced by the coils when running diodes. When the diodes conduct therefore draw power the magnet encounters some resistance due to the current flow, then it swaps and the diodes go into blocking stopping the current (for the most part), and the magnet spins a little freer, until it swaps again and they start conducting. Very interesting demo....
7:28 add more of those potential batteries next to each other, with gears to spin each magnet, charging ALL of them at once.
I'm guessing why the caps don't smooth out the brightness more is due to the lack of current limiting resistors.
When you have an led straight parallel with the caps, the moment the voltage rises much over the forvard voltage of the leds, they will draw a huge current, limiting the voltage the caps can charge to.
When the pulse of input current diminishes, the caps are already right at the limit that can light the leds at. The voltage/current plot of diodes is very steep!
What you want in addition to the smoothing caps is either current limiting resistors, or, for more efficiency, a switch mode constant current source of some kind.
The latter will greatly improve both the duration and evenness of the light.
I would also consider ditching the few big magnets in favor of many small magnets.
When that thing rotates, most of the time it is not doing anything, just spinning away energy to friction.
Had you a ring of smaller magnets passing by a smaller coil (With an Iron Core!), would the field at the coil look more like a constant sinewave, rather than a bunch of passing peaks.
Nicer to work with, too, much less scary.
It really makes you think about how much energy the smallest of processes require. No wonder we're causing our plant to overheat
For sure! I'm always amazed when thinking how much mechanical work is being done to power something like an oven or stovetop
Yeah, the flow and storage of energy is fascinating. Think about this: the Earth loses more energy than the sun gives it and yet we're coming *out* of an ice age? Just goes to show how complex and hard to grasp the earth and its cycles are.
a gravity contraption will be smooth but limited runtime. you might need a way to disengage for the flywheel contraption. if I was making it, I will use many small magnets and coil around the entire spinning zone with the magnetic pulls alternating and facing the coils. sometimes the best is simple.
As Joergsprave from the Slingshot Channel will tell you, there's no point pulling rubber over a pulley, what you gain in length you lose in friction.
More recently though Shoottech released a slingshot with pulleys (though it looks a lot more like a bow than a slingshot at this point) where the tricks turns out to be having multiple short bands (they go from like 8cm to like 20cm pulled by a string on a pulley) in parallel to increase the force pulled by the string using a pulley.
Twisting them around themselves is only a good idea for model planes because it saves a huge amount of weight since you don't need as much structural rigidity to deal with the torque or gearing to increase the speed.
(Most rubber band planes would actually go further if you just launched them from your finger using the elastic band but the ability to stay in the air longer and slower is their whole selling point)
But for a ground storage mechanism you don't have weight limitations which is why gravity works so well, so the reasons to use rubber at that point are basically gone, *except* for compactness and working at different orientations, thus why clocks used springs for so long.
If you Add ferromagnetic (iron, ferrite, etc.) cores to your coils you can get a lot more power output from them
I would put a flywheel on it to maintain momentum as well a clutch mechanism so the rubber bands don’t fight against the spinning when overturning
When you do the gravity one, try gearing it REALLY high like a clock and having a differential so it can be rewound without interrupting its output.
It's crazy to think there exists an invisible force linked to an object, that can grab and hold onto another force like itself, and be so difficult to make them let go. If magnates didn't exist we be living in a very different world.
The force
Could you please make a video in which you use gravity instead of rubber bands? This way, you can store a lot more energy, and it would be interesting to see how much.
I'll definitely experiment with that more soon!
9:30 - Another youtuber who is oblivious to how we pronounce "FULL BRIDGE RECTIFIER"!? Oh, dear… 😂
Haha I'm well aware .. but I won't disrespect Mehdi by even trying to get it right 😄
I have a tip or two. For one, use a flywheel to store more kinetic energy. Your ripcord design with a flywheel is definitely worth a try. My second tip is obvious. Instead of rotating the heavy magnets, make them stationary and spin the much lighter coils through their fields.
8:32 What kind of light strips are these "noodlie doo's " called? Like if I wanted to buy them.
Flexible LED Filament!
I'd love to see a concept design of the final attempt, where a hand-crank generator was created once the bands were removed, using gear ratios to increase the revolutions! This is brilliant!
1:15 if you were to use mechanical advantage, for example a 1:5 ratio, the car could run much more but slower, about 50 meters but in quarter the speed the original one went 20 meters,
I remember in a mousetrap car competition I tried that, using a huge ratio to in theory make it slow but long-running, but it actually lost to one with a much lower ratio that just accelerated and coasted
Would adding a flywheel allow for the magnet to spin for longer, or would the increased weight just mean more drag?
That's a good point, a flywheel could preserve some of the energy that otherwise goes to waste
I got that “here’s what I came up
With reference” 😉
Ha amazing, I wasn't sure anyone would catch it 😄🙌
What’s the reference referring to? 🤔
Yes, gravity yes yes. Put the weight over the balcony, or a bridge. Very satisfying I'd imagine
Try stretch winding the rubber, as when it is wrapped around the axle, part of it is unstretched to its potential.
gravity batteries have massive potential. They are used by some utility companies to load shed. During peek usage they utilize the gravity storage to help keep up with demand and during slumps in need that use the excess to pump water back into a elevated reservoir.
6:50 honestly curious if they have a way to make an escapement hook thing that they have in pocket watches. Would help control the release of power.
Edit: some ways to improve the design would be to increase the amount of area in the coil that the magnetic field breaks through. Can be done by decreasing the bend in other parts, like in a serpentine coil. Also curious as to where the magnets were bought from, as I have been struggling with finding N52 magnets that are bigger than a quarter (at least in LxW, while H is roughly a quarter inch). Also, there was a college student that made a gravity generator that the pulley setup reminded me of; the students build consisted of a hand crank that would rotate an assembly with a heavy weight sliding down all thread or the like, and the rotational energy from the allthread would drive an unknown generator and power 3 large LED lights.
We have some of those exact magnets in my lab. Best option we found was to use a long piece of wood and have one person hold the wood while the other pushes the magnets apart, sliding one down the wood.
9:54 if you used springs to allow the gears to go under tension towards the center of that block it would significantly increase the power of that design. kinda how old sailing ships used blocks and tackle to lift very heavy objects.
Ah do you mean like using some kind of pulley system to amplify the force on the string?
@@JamiesBrickJams yes.
Use the pullies as the source of mechanical advantage, instead of gearing it. I have a feeling this, combined with the ripcord idea, will be at least interesting.
You stored more energy as kinetic energy in those magnets than elastic in the rubber bands
0:38 The casual "Uh-oh..." makes me giggle.
For gravity-powered, try making one that uses liquid flowing from an upper reservoir through a pipe system involving a valve for throughput control to a lower reservoir, which can be reset by pumping the liquid back up to the top one.
That's actually a really cool idea, would love to try that
I think you could try to use a bunch of small rubber bands in parallel and then just stretch them linearly, no winding then up. then gear up the output massively. That way you use a small amount of space to store the energy and it allows for easier expansion of storage by just adding more small bands
i'm up for some gravity pulls, but i would also like to see those monster magnets up to manual labor. with a proper gear ratio you can get them into a consistent high speed.. perhaps adding 2 more coils per side (6 instead of 4) would smooth even more the curves too...
I dunno why but this made me think of a future where for some reason we never discovered steam or combustion engines and instead all our extremely light weight cars were powered by making super tense rubber bands inside and letting them unwind slowly when we want to accelerate.
Have you ever thought to use an Archimedes' Wind Turbine? If you point the turbine down, and have a funnel to guide the wind up into it from any direction, it's pretty effective, so I hear.
To get those caps to filter anything at all, you really should have a current limiting resistor in series with your load. LEDs will draw as much current as is given to them (like any diode, they drop a relatively constant voltage across), so they should be protected in some way.
A decent rectifier, huge amount of bulk capacitance and the right current-limiting resistor ought to do the trick.
You could, of course, also completely remove the load and just leave the caps to charge. That'll give you an idea of how much electrical energy this thing is releasing. You can then size your resistor accordingly.
If you use a bit more advanced electronics, you can make better use of the coil output. Just connecting a rectifier and a few capacitors doesn't do much, as we can see
The thing about the wound up bands is that it's an oscillating system, much like a pendulum. Most of the potential energy it has goes to winding in the other direction. That means most of your time is spent with the system about the same thing as shunting charge back and forth between two batteries, the energy stored keeps getting fully discharged and recharged. In this case it's a mechanical potential battery (the elastic) and a kinetic/momentum battery (the spinning magnets) rather than two electrical batteries, but hopefully the analogy makes sense.
Why that is a problem should be obvious: Thermodynamics demands a tax on every conversion or movement of energy. The energy in the bands gets taxed by the axel friction, the gear friction, the air resistance on the magnets, some loss while establishing the magnetic field, etc. Once the bands are hit zero potential the energy starts going to wind them up again, doing much the same list of frictions and resistances. As a bonus to the whole process, the contraction and extension causes a cooling/heating cycle from the mechanical deformation, more losses appear.
Ideally you want all the energy to be released in a single cycle, likely by converting it to electrical and storing it. For that you're going to how much charge the caps hold vs the power coming from the coil... you might want to get magnetic resistance to slow the rotor, slowing the whole thing down so that the voltage matches the caps you use. It'll cost you some current but there's no point in having higher voltage and current if the circuit can't do anything with it.
if you do start experimenting with gravitational potential energy, I'd suggest using a hygens chain drive, similar to what a weight driven clock uses to store energy while also allowing for you to raise the weight without changing the energy input to a generator
A few folks have recommended the Hyugens mechanism, and I love the idea! I'll definitely try to replicate that with Lego
I think it would be a good idea to measure the energy efficiency. You might not be getting a lot of electrical energy out, but it's good to know what you could theoretically get anyways to see how much you're capturing. Should be a very easy calculation for the gravity generator atleast!
What's the easiest way to start a collection? Do you buy the technic as individual pieces or is it from sets? I remember when I was a kid back in the 90's that my school had technic packs which had a ton of pieces to make whatever but I can't find them anywhere now.
Hey, my typical recommendation if you're looking to get back into technic would be to buy one large set to get started. Something with a lot of lift arms, pins, and connectors. Lego is pretty expensive these days, but a single set of between 2000 and 4000 parts is a great place to start. I'd also recommend building the set first to get a feel for the building techniques used, as technic has changed a lot over the years! Then if you're looking for more parts, either buying more sets or using Bricklink to buy individual parts is the best way forward
@@JamiesBrickJams Thanks heaps, I was thinking that would be the answer. I looked into both and found that the sets seemed the best route for variation.
@@Matty12787 Awesome, best of luck getting started again - I'm sure it'll be worth it
when rectifying some custom generator you can use few tricks:
If it has separate windings then you can rectify each using doubler on 2 Schottky's and 2 capacitors - that way you loose alot less power on diodes. Those doublers you can connect in parallel or in series depends on what voltage you want.
Also you can measure voltage without load and then setup dc-dc converter to convert that voltage into voltage that is exact for your load. That way you can draw less current at higher voltage, and current in a winding is what causes magnetic brake in generator, so you want it lower unless your "engine" is effective at high torque.
If you get alot of rubber bands you could probably burn them in a small steam generator.
I wonder how much more energy is stored in the rubbers chemical bonds than it can store when stretched.
I do suggest diving into gravity batteries and gravity generators. I've done my own experiments, and found it quite satisfying to design, work out, and play with during the process.
That's awesome, you got any tips to bear in mind?
@@JamiesBrickJams It's all in the math between the weight of the object, the distance it can lower to produce energy, and the gear ratios between the different parts. Too much gear ratio, and the weight doesn't turn the mechanism / turn it fast enough. Too little ratio, and the mechanism runs out too quickly. You're looking for the gravity load to just "tick down" slowly, keeping the mechanism spun at a steady speed the entire time to maintain output voltage. The gearing is the key component, and you'll be figuring this out on paper.
Potential Energy = MGH, where M = mass, G = gravity, and H = the height of the fall. Unrestricted objects accelerate in fall at 9.81 m/s/s, so the energy of 1kg of gravity load is 9.81 Joules X the height in meters. Power in watts = Energy in joules / time in seconds. If our total energy is 9.81J per meter of height, we can scale the Time in Seconds to figure out our gear ratio and how it affects our Power Output Rate. More gearing extends the time, but divides the Power Rate by a larger period, making less power per second for longer. The inverse also applies. Example: If we put in a 16:1 gearbox, we'd be dividing the Time in Seconds by 16 to give us an estimate of the new Power Output Rate. Friction etc skews the data, but it's enough to make estimates for prototyping.
I suggest building at the largest scale you realistically can. A tiny load's force of gravity can easily be eaten up by friction losses, where starting with a scaled up load / setup gives more margin to work with. Efficiency matters. Proper bearings and stronger materials may be required. Every watt matters in a process like this, and friction losses translate directly into power losses.
I suggest a target voltage of around 5v output if possible, as it's a practical and useful voltage for USB devices (especially if regulated). I recommend using a high anchor point, as more height means better runtime and better data. You'll also lose some height between the anchor point and the center of the gravity load to connections and load height etc. If you're doing this with Lego, this might be interesting to achieve.
Feel free to reach out if you have specific questions, but this is basically what I self-learned from playing with gravity energy / energy storage. Hopefully it helps.
Some more advanced ideas I've played with are using centrifugal clutch mechanisms to have the gearbox ratio change on the fly. Basically, at a certain speed the centrifugal forces engage the clutch and the gearing on another stage of the gearbox. My thoughts were that this would take advantage of any "over-acceleration" at the load, slowing the descent and increasing the energy capture. Think of it as shifting through gears in your car. You get up to a certain RPM, then you adjust the gear ratio to get to a higher speed and overall energy level.
Yeah, basically an automatic transmission lol.
My prototypes were at a point where they would produce energy well, but I hadn't fully worked out "steady rate of descent" part.
@@JamiesBrickJams I posted a whole big thing on the theory of this, the physics equations, estimating and scaling gear ratios vs descent speed, etc. I'm not seeing this comment now though, so I'm not sure what happened.
The basics are this: Potential Energy (PE in Joules) = MGH, where M = Suspended Mass, G = 9.8m / s (acceleration of gravity), and H = height of fall. Converting Joules to Watts looks something like this: Power (W) = Energy (Joules) / Time (Seconds). Your goal is to make the gearbox do 2 things: Spin the generator at an average (or better yet, constant) speed that makes your desired voltage range; AND slow the descent so that the device can run for longer. The gearing is the most important part. My basic recommendations were:
- Run tests with a starter gearbox ratio that can be multiplied. Get the peak and average voltages from those tests and use them to scale the gear ratio to correct the generator RPM / peak voltage.
- A steady descent means a steady voltage. I was still working on this point when I moved to other projects (see other comment).
- Use the highest anchor point you can. More height = more runtime / energy = better data.
- Efficiency matters. Friction and other losses translate directly into power losses. Bearings etc will help.
- Target an average (rectified) voltage of 5V if possible, as this can used in a practical sense and is an easy / harmless voltage to hit. If it seems impossible to slow the RPM down enough to maintain this, go to a higher voltage like 12V (again, rectified).
I had more, maybe it's somewhere that I can't see it. The gearing makes or breaks the thing. You don't want your load just dropping to the floor in 1 second, nor do you want it to hang without generating any / much RPM. The gear ratio is slowing the descent. If we use a 2:1 ratio, we can expect the resistance holding the load suspended to be doubled. Once you have some data, you'll be able to estimate your final gear ratio vs gravity load vs generator drag vs voltages. You can only really change the gravity load weight and the gear ratio, so at least that part is simplified.
You should see the difference by adding back the thermal energy lost from letting the rubber cool after stretching.
Homemade LEGO Generator, an epileptic patient's worst nightmare :D
Hi there! Heres an idea (Ive always wondered if it would work): Use a LEGO motor to power the contraption, but have it generate power to power the motor... Reusable energy!
@4:23 Bermuda triangle!
If you're going with gravity, then perhaps something like a small water tower "pumped hydro" would be worth looking into. Don't know if Lego/technicts has anything piston or pump like. But low pressure air could also be interesting
Love that idea! I'm definitely into the idea of negative pressure powering some kind of vacuum piston engine. And then powering the vacuum using running water. Unfortunately Lego makes this quite challenging, but love the idea!
The gravity thing could be fun. But now you need a way to mount a pulley on the ceiling that can stand up to 40lbs or so. And maybe some wood blocks with screws or other brackets to anchor down the Lego assemblies with that kind of loading. Also likely you could go a little crazier with gear multiplication to get a good spin on the generator part and increase the time it's making power. All that seems like it should be simple enough given all the stuff you appear to have already.
Thanks this got me A+ on my school competition XD, sorry for copying without permission 😭
That's awesome, delighted to hear it! Always happy for ideas to be recycled and improved by others 😄 And congrats on the A 💪
add a resistor between the leds and the capacitor, it can help it flicker less
you need a kind of flywheel (to increase the inertia of the magnet and make it spin slower but for longer)
Use the led ribbon tower in a carnival moc, then build like 10-20 of the final generator to power them using 2 per tower
hey, so I love the video, but something that may help generate more power or power over more time would be to think of the mechanical load is the inverse as the electrical load. What I mean by that is in mechanical systems resistance or in this case force from displacement can be summed in parallel but is equivalent to the parallel combination of resistors in electrical terms. Waht I'm saying is in order to store more energy you can have several subunits of elastic stretched to the exact same length and they will share the load equally. From there you can dampen the rate of displacement to get longer more consistent force production leading to more power over time. Like if you were to take what you made and just replicate it several times and put them all in parallel and hook them all up to drive one shaft with a magnet, and then you tuned the resistance either with electrical impedance or a dashpot you can really get some power going. A good example of this is actually a ride at theme parks. I'm not sure what it's called but it uses hundreds of springs in parallel in an acordian like mehcnism to launch a ball with riders inside very high into the air. The issue with springs or rubber bands is that because the force they produce is a product of their displacement, getting any power out of them makes them weaker, so in reality they are not a good source of any form of reliable power, but they are fun. I hope you read this and I hope it makes sense. I'm very tired and know I didn't do the best job explaining that first bit. great video
Use a disk with the magnets (singles) on the edge and wind it up using beefy rubber bands then make the kinectic to elctric conversion with the rubber bands are connected to each side with an axle goong through and bars running sideways through the axle to store more torque in the output
If you put a charge through the coils would the magnets spin?
If you can create a mechanical or electric timer, yes!
I want to own a gigantic flywheel with a massive 2-man sized crank and 2x 500k neodymium super magnet balls, surround them in one big coil and then spin the crap out of those bad boys to generate some crazy voltage. Owning an actual working generator that just makes energy from pretty much nothing is just super cool and should 100% be more of a thing.
Would it have been useful to use a coil to smooth not only the voltage but also the current?
what if the aluminum shaft would have a free rotating wheel/disc in the middle? So the rubber bands would not touch the aluminum rod and letting the bands to store even more energy?
Where did you get those aluminum technic beams with bearings on them?
They're from a company called 'Metal Technic Parts'. I'd recommend - they're super robust and very well machined!
how do people even figure this stuff out 🤯
Yessss! Please experiment with gravity, im super curious as to what you might come up with. Just started watching, love your ideas ill stay tuned!
Aw thanks a lot, appreciate it 😁 I'm super curious what gravity can do too, so will continue messing about with it
So what was the power going in and how much was you losing going out
I'll try to find a way of measuring it. But to give a lazy answer - loads of energy in, pathetic energy out 😅 These designs are terribly inefficient
In the same way you noticed the axle getting in the way of the rubber band and turned it sideways and would it round the axle I thought you were gonna do the same with the sling rubber ?
I may still be in High school, but what is you made a bunch of copper rings and stuck them all around the contraption, generating electricity every few degrees?
the LEDs are a great visual, but it would be nice to see it hooked to a DMM or Oscilloscope to see it more accurately
music box windup system?
Or that gravity thing.
15:20 i suggest putting it on it's small side so gravity isn't acting on the magnets slowing them down
If you are considering using gravity for power storage you should look into something called pumped storage hydroelectricity
I don't know... I think I'm gonna hold out for the Lego Nuclear Isotope Starter Kit... You know it's coming... Lego rocks.
You could make hand crank flywheel mode more efficient by adding a gear ratio.
why you didn't put the magnet in one place and make the coil rans it is ligter and more eficient
I like the idea in principle. But making a commutator with Lego is pretty challenging. Still worth a try though for a future video
What if you built an inner ring with the magnets riding a rail and an outer ring of coils to generate electricity, which will power a motor that's used to keep the magnets moving on the rail indefinitely?
It should power itself... maybe; as long as the magnets move fast enough I think. Then set up a system that uses rubber to get it started before it becomes self-sustaining. I think it would be cool to see
Mechanical batteries are so cool. You could also try something with spring steel, mimic a watch mainspring but larger?
That's a cool idea!
@@JamiesBrickJams it's one I've been thinking about but unable to try, I'd love to see other people's interpretation of it
Might I suggest using one of these to unspool wire into a coil?
could you not try like a old fashioned clock mechanism ( i forgot the name ) to ensure output speed is consistent?
Definitely possible! I actually made a video a while back on a generator that used an escapement mechanism to slowly release energy. Deserves an update though at some point. I'm sure it's possible to get something low-powered to run for ages using an escapement
Gravity would be really cool. Also the pulley design could be better if you stacked the wheels on the side?
Could you add an freewheeling ratchet so you can wind it without having to also drive the output?
That's actually a great idea! I'm sure something like that would be doable. Would be cool to be able to both store energy or just hand crank when you need more juice. Nice suggestion
if you add sleeves on the axle between the rubber bands, you can solve the problem of the rubber band winding unevenly
That's a great suggestion! Not sure it'll entirely solve the issue, but it could certainly improve it. Will give it a shot
Wind power uses a gearbox and lubricant to turn an electric motor.
I think you could use a gearbox to keep a better constant energy flow.
After all, electricity is a wave.
You could hook this up to a relatively simple stream engine to crank and keep it moving so you dont have to hand crank it
Notes and thoughts:
You are not “making power”. You are simply converting power. Technically destroy power but lets not dwell on entropy too much.
Second, try a gravity battery. From 3 to 6 metres, a mass falling could release energy over time in a controlled way. Naturally you want gearing to prologue this process. Enough mass means you can have enough torque for the steep gearing.
What are the noodly wires that emit light?
Some people have made Lego compressed air engines which provide a small amount of electricity, but admittedly it's much less conventional or cost effective
Ok, so now lets get into it. I think your uncoupling idea was the best, as it gives the longest runtime overall. Then i think the leverage idea is way smarter than twisting, since you have a more stable output and you need to put less work into loading the generator. And lastly i like the gravity idea in the end, so lets combine now.
First try to build a magnet rotor that has as less friction as possible. Ball bearings, silicon oil, you name it. And make the rotor long with the magnets on the end, to get a flywheel effect. Then put this on a base that can be uncoupled from the leverarm, so you can load the arm without rotating the magnets, and as the rubberband is released completely it uncouples itself so the magnetrotor can rotate further, using the flywheel effect to get es much energy out the system as possible. Combine the Leverarm with a weight, that pulls more downward the more the lever is loaded. As the lever goes up the rubberband is pulling less, but by bringing the weight more near to the top the less weight is pulling on the arm, making it easier to be pulled. This way you can get a very consistent movement out of the slingshot rubber, first it will pull force on the very heavy lever, as it looses energy to pull the lever gets easier to pull so the pull speed/force doesnt change on the rotational axle. Also try to gear it up in a way it runs longer by needing more pull to get to work.
Now for the circuit, smooth out the pulses by placing more coils around the magnets, putting a few caps in and with that based on the scale you build this monstrosity you should be able to get around 10 seconds of smooth noodles or 30 seconds of small LED-Chain out of one slingshot band.
Some very good advice here, thanks for taking the time to describe this! Those hearings do a good job, so I ordered more. I'm feeling more and more that gravity is a better means of running something for longer than 10 seconds. Though still it doesn't have a huge amount of output unless you use very heavy weights. But I'll certainly continue playing around with some of the ideas you've suggested here. Cheers!
We already use gravity to store energy in the power grid of cities!
We pump up huge loads of water up a mountain and then if we need energy let it all plumet down thru a turbine and boom, huge battery.