So basically you'd have to use the crude hand carved threads to make "machined" threads that then replace the originals to make the second iteration more precise.
Yeah, I was hoping to see them actually replace the original set of lead screws in this, because that's how precision is really achieved. Using machines to make more and more precise machines iteratively.
Feel free to make some minor modifications if needed. Da Vinci often deliberately drew pictures with errors in them that rendered them useless. This was to protect his work from being copied in the days before patents. But his drawings DID illustrate the IDEA for his own reference. The crank that drove his "tank" was an example-- It would not work as drawn.
Except da Vinci’s notebooks weren’t shared… his errors were most likely actually errors. He was sketching things up to get them out of his head. The notebooks weren’t a manual for publication like the swordsmanship manuals of the time, they were his own aide de memoire. He didn’t write in mirror script because it was some diabolical secret code; it’s just that as a left hander he wasn’t dragging his hand across the wet ink.
@LoneEagle2061 as a left handed person, I agree this is more likely than a copyright protection, I have used fountain pens in the past and it's incredibly boring writing letter by letter. Also the reason I don't use it anymore. I'll write with pencil, or just do it digitally because I hate smudges (especially with ink)
@LoneEagle2061 shared, no. Had the potential to be stolen, yes. Sometimes things go public without the authors permission and many scholar and trades used codes to keep secrets secret.
@@GuilhermeCarbonetti It depends on what you mean be "better". The errors in the 2 guide screws will be averaged out when carving the profile of the screw you are making. So if you thread two rods with the existing setup, replacing the original rods with those new rods *will* give you a more precise (but not necessarily accurate) result, as it will wobble less. You could then theoretically repeat this process, although I imagine it would give diminishing returns, and there would be no point beyond 2 or three total iterations.
You could also make larger diameter lead screws which wouldn't wobble as much, and as some pointed out, since this will average out errors, you can make three screws, and run combinations of them front ways and backwards to get closer and closer to the norm (similar to how they use three flat plates ground against each other in turn to remove all the high points).
Another trick you could use to extract more uniformity; flip one of the screws end for end. That would allow you to create two screws that have different error distributions starting from only two original screws. Then uses them to get a 2nd generation product form only 2 hand cut screws rather than 4. That said, I agree there's a limit, but I suspect (at least if you were to use metal) it would be more like 3-5 generations of screws down the line. I think I've heard suggestions for improving beyond that based on lapping a screw with a long nut. That will tend to require that the pitch of the nut match the screw over its full length regardless of where it's positioned. That will tend to remove variation over the length of the screw. (But it would also likely end up with a thread that's only accurate loaded/feeding in one direction.)
@@GuilhermeCarbonetti The origin of precision all boil down to figuring out how to make more precise products from less precise tools. Optical quality surface plates from 3 rocks and polishing powder is the classic example, but I've read it can be done with screws as well (like to the sub micron level with strictly mechanical tools), thought I've yet to find documentation on a detailed process.
Fun fact, your setup for making a nut is basically how rifling was cut into gun barrels until hammer forging became widespread in the early 20th century. If you want to power it from a water wheel, look up 19th century rifling cutting machines. They have all the linkages you’d need to upgrade your machine. They also typically had a ratchet that would automatically advance the depth of the cutter after each pass.
Nails are still used more in structural wood constructions. Nails can move a bit with the wood and still bear load. Screws shear off and can cause building collapse. They have their different uses.
FYI, according to one of my history profs, back in college (50 years ago) screws were often made by wrapping a small rope around a round piece of wood a couple of times in a spiral, sprinkling it with sand, and then drawing it back and forth until the groove was sanded deeply enough. Then the spiraled rope was moved up the wood, and the process was repeated. The grooves thus made were quite smooth and uniform --- especially if they were following a pre-scribed line - like what you made.
I love how these guys went to all the trouble to re invent the wheel.for gosh sake why do we call them screw threads. I am an old machinist. they could have talked to me and this video would be a hell of allot different. but i got a good laugh out of watching these egg heads.
If you have access to iron and forging, you can create a screw by tightly hot winding one round iron thiner rod "turn-to-turn" around another (little bit more fatter), then forge welding the ends with flux. This will form a uniform, strong thread - my father and I repaired old vice in the Chernozem'ye Region far from civilization this way - and it was works. Sorru for bad english)
You should do a few iterations of "master screws" made on the machine. I think it would average out any remaining imperfections in your partially hand carved master screws, and allow for better precision. You've got a consistent automated method for making screws now, use it to make itself better.
Very glad to see you all reference the screw-cutting lathe from the Mittelalterlisches Hausbuch von Schloss Wolfegg. It's far more advanced than what Da Vinci sketched, and was a tool actually in existence at least 20 years before Da Vinci sketched his. The innovation of the Da Vinci screw-lathe is the ability to change gear ratio for different thread-pitch rather than multiple master screws with matching guide poppets.
As a machinist it’s wild to me how people figured out making precise reference tools with imprecise tools. I can’t imagine what it’d take to start with a block of stone and end up with a surface plate.
@@PrebleStreetRecords it takes three blocks of stone, an alternating pattern of rubbing different pairs of two of the three together in sequence to average out their relative errors, and then absolutely soul-destroying amounts of time and patience repeating the sequence over and over and over to gradually chase desired flatness. But then if you do it right at the end of the process you have three surface plates.
@@PrebleStreetRecordsThe three plate method. You can use it to make a reference place, internal and external squares. plus a straight edge. Then from a reference plate you can dress a grinding wheel into a surface grinder. That gives you parallelism. You can create a measuring system with dividers and a straight edge. You can get lots of angle measurements with a dividing plate, which you make with your reference plate, straight edge and dividers. You can replace layout fluid with soot. With reference plates you can make ways and start working towards a modern lathe.
From what I remember even all the way back in the stone age, using tools to make better more precise tools was a massive factor. Like a primitive "anvil".
Can’t wait to see the lathe video! Clickspring did an awesome video on how a Greek brass-turning lathe could be made from only a few pieces of wrought iron and wood, and the. used to build a clock (Antikeithra mechanism)!
Regarding vices, Clickspring did a video on a leg vice that could have been made in ancient greek times for his antikythera project, so, while not exactly like a modern vice, it is entirely possible for people to have had vices before the screw was perfected.
There are a few ways I could think of to make a vise without needing a screw thread. You could have a locking plate with regularly spaced holes or notches where the remaining slack is taken up with a wedge (this could be made with basic forging tools, or even out of wood), or you could use a steel holdfast type design, where a slightly springy curved steel "L" shaped bar can be used to lock and unlock the vise with a tap of a mallet. Clickspring's vise was pretty cool to, especially for holding small parts.
I ask because that was a pressure base vase not a tension vase, as it works almost the same you can't really use it to like carve in any direction cos some direction may lose the grip as a tension vase its stronger on its grip and it can hold on better a betting with a mallet
@@fergardla that's true, although I guess similar principles (using wedges etc), could be applied to larger vices with higher grip strength, and the jaws could be made out of wood or metal textured in such a manner as to provide higher friction.
that's awesome! btw i don't think you need to carve the screws in metal. what might be more useful is a screw cut in wood that could be used as a shaping tool for the mold. then you could just make a lot of screws by just casting them in brass.
Depends on what their goals are. If its for fastening that might be true, but if its for power driving the exact profile might be more important (like for a lathe?)
You aren't going to be able to sand cast a screw, so they would have to use a more advanced form of casting. But even still that's just not really practical for making small screws like they are going to need. Casting is always going to be an imprecise manufacturing method.
@@UMADBRO64 yes, and that "finishing" you are talking about has to be done on a precise machine if you want the finished product to be precise. The precision comes from the finishing machining and not at all from the casting. Hand finishing will not give you particularly repeatable or precise results. There's a reason every machine had to be hand fit and finished up until the mid 19th century when advanced machining practices allowed people to make parts with consistent, repeatable dimensions, i.e. replaceable parts.
Wow, this looks like it's one of your most successful projects to date! It can even be used to increase its own precision (by making new leadscrews with tighter threads). Very cool indeed!
4:23 could use a chisel and a guide , probably a trailing guide, to keep the tool and the right place, and just rotate and cut, then deepen rotate and cut and deepen, rotate and cut etc
This might be my favorite video that you have done. This project really illustrates how humanity and technology really moved into the ‘modern’ era of machining, by iterating machines that can be used to improve themselves and improve precision
Thank you for posting this and doing a deep dive into the mechanics. I have decided to build one to make an injection screw and without a CNC machine, this is perfect.
I'm impressed. This is the first time I've seen you making something which is genuinely precise. Your lack of precision has been a constant source of struggle as you've been making more complex machines, hopefully you can start to improve on that now. You have a whole lot of work ahead of you if you ever want to get enough precision to make a steam engine though.
I love what this channel has grown into. I dabble in various crafts myself on top of woodworking for a living and I remember laughing at some goofy metalwork and woodworking mistakes, it's amazing to see this stuff I'd never even think of figuring out myself and how well it comes out now!
Awesome work! I saw a similar replica of this machine at a Science World exhibit once. I rarely see it mentioned in the history of screw-cutting lathes. Quite an ingenious invention. One of the great things about this machine is that it can improve its own accuracy, by making two screws to swap out the outer ones and reversing them, averaging out errors.
To file a screw by hand is time consuming but I had to make a screw for a antique firearm that did not match any modern screw. They do turn out very precise anyway.
What a cool device. The drawing shows the thread being cut with something similar to a wooden rabbit plane. The method for cutting you chose or suggested for a metal screw does not work very well because it has no way to clear the waste from the cut. A saw or file clogs very quickly when held in the same spot on a lathe where a single point cutter can easily clear its self. A relatively simple solution would be to use a wood chisel as your cutting tool.
i think the better way of getting a smooth and good evenly spaced master screw would actually be to use two long rods or soft iron wires twisted together from the very ends. this will have them automatically form a double helix with two very consistent and evenly spaced grooves running along the entire length. this is something a seasoned blacksmith can do in a day. heck you could probably even do a plaster cast of a rope under tension in an easy to cast metal like copper the problem with this machine is that while wonky cut threads will even out, any inconsistencies in pitch of the master screws will still be transferred to the new screw. you can average out the pitch inconsistencies by offsetting the new screw between passes but that makes the process more tedious. the master screws based on the twisted double helix of rods, ropes or wires that i suggest should be way more consistent in pitch across their entire length with way less effort than the twist scribe and then handcut wooden masters
I think this machine is not just cutting screw but also averaging the errors in the two motion screws, thus giving you a smoother, more regular, more precise finished screw. If you can iterate, cut new screws that then replace the old motion screws to cut a new generation, you can progressively improve on differential errors between the two screws. And if you can skew the two screws (or their nut), you can transform "common mode" error in one section into differential errors that can be corrected. I'd say you should have sqrt(2) gain in precision for each pass. After a dozen iterations, you are cutting 100x more precisely than you did with the first generation.
Yes! Screw cutting finally! I've been waiting for this. The last couple of videos were a bit disappointing. Aeliopiles are cool, but the technology doesn't lead to anything, and it didn't work very well anyway. But now you've created something that will open up so much more. And you got it to work properly without a lot of difficulty! While I was watching, I kept thinking that the first thing you should make should be some vises for your future woodworking. And that was exactly what you did!
You guys really outdid yourselves with this one. Feels good to finally see your potential start to blossom, the introduction of some real precision and rigidity is a welcome improvement. Keep it up, super excited to see what you come up with next.
I swear, I will always support you and your channel! I know its hard especially after the fire all those years ago now but nothing will ever stop me from watching your amazing and informative content! You’re a massive inspiration to my creative flame!
One of the most important aspect of this device (and of the lathe) is that the machine can improve its own accuracy merely by building with the very tool you’ve already made. As you make new screws you can replace the old hand cut ones (and more importantly) the receiving nut from a rough approximation of coiled wire to the wooden carved nut that matches the screws profile even more finely.
why even bother cutting the first screw by hand when a simple wedge aka inclined plane, pulled by a string and pulley on the shaft to force the cutter lengthwise does exactly the same thing, far more accurately? this is one of those typical videos perpetuating the myth that davinci was a "genius" when its apparent he was not. other people figured out how to produce threads far faster and with far less hand work or guess work required.
@@paradiselost9946 It’s not so much to do with just making a screw and threaded bolt with the same threaded profile, but two other concepts that this machine is trying to fulfil. The first is lowering the skill level to make screws and bolts. We were capable of making well mating screws and bolts before this design because Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of the modern printing press used a screw press for his own machine. However, whilst making one screw and one bolt by hand is possible, (although requiring a hire degree of skill) it was the only way of making well fitting screws until comparatively recently because it was damn hard to achieve. Hence why you don’t see many screws in historical examples unless it’s absolutely necessary. What this machine Leonardo designed lowers the level of skill required to make screws and bolts dramatically, all the operator has to do is place the dowel into the machine and turn a handle and it will always produce the same quality of screw every time. This leads onto the second purpose of the machine: repeatability. Making a screw that can follow a purpose built bolt is one thing, making a screw that can follow any bolt and vice versa is an entirely different challenge altogether. But because the cutting is driven mechanically it will always follow the same input. Having the capacity to produce screws that will follow the same bolt every time is what gives modern hardware their utility, and makes them worth the effort in producing as opposed to having to produce a matching bolt for every screw you make. Finally, there’s the matter of education and access to resources. Whilst it’s easy for us in our modern world to look back and think “why didn’t we just do it in this simple way?” It’s because learning clever tricks requires access to that knowledge. Whilst the craftsmen of the day were certainly not unknowledgeable (they were as intelligent as you or me today), they did not have the luxury of a system of shared information. What makes Leonardo da Vinci a genius in people’s eyes is that he was able to come up with a staggering number of concepts of which many were way ahead of his time only with the access to the resources and education of the period.
The two lead screws (with the relatively loose linkage) average out the errors between them, which is desirable in the transition between hand and machine screws. Cut two screws with your hand-cut lead screws, then endo one and use them as lead screws to cut the next generation. As a bonus, if you use a much softer material (like balsa for your wooden screws, with the grain parallel to the axis) in a much longer nut (say 8 inches) you’ll average out local variations even more.
Thanks! This was very interesting! Making mechanical systems from wood is no small challenge. This video is yet another proof to how an incredible genius Leonardo was. The main difference between us and people in the stone age is that in the mean time, great researchers and inventors have lived. And yourself you can be proud of actually being able to make this work, based on limited information available to you.
I remember when this channel had some ridiculously low amount of subs and views for the longest time, even tho the content was good. Remember being baffled by how slowly it was growing. 1.8M, nice.
Cool video and project. I'm an engineer, artist, and woodturner so, this video really resonated. Something for your consideration for a screw+nut 2.0 project: I think that you were closer to a more elegant and more generally applicable plus usable approach w your first block. For instance, just as a scew is an incline plane twisted around a rod, a gouge is a skew cutter bent to fit around a rod and a V-gouge is a skew bent around a corner. Now consider the profiled cove moulding that they used to use to make complex crown mouldings, etc. You gradually pass the moulding plane over the wood and cut the profile more and more into the wood. Now consider wrapping that moulding plane around a rod and you have your screw rod cutter. Keep your two pieces as shown in your video and wrap sinew around the outside w a wooden dowel to twist to increase depth of cut as you make your passes. By keeping this as a smaller annular plane, you are not limited to length and you cd even use it in the field. The nut plane cutter wd be the photo negative, w maybe a wedge to drive the two pieces progressively more into the cut pass after pass. Again, smaller unit and portable. And you can even pop the screw moulding cutter into your daVinci apparatus, if you wanted to help keep longer screws straighter as you cut. I can see different screw mould planes for different diameters and pitches; just swap to a different profile. I'd love to see a Screw 2.0 video!
In terms of the "back and forth" mechanism, look at how fishing reels work. there's a part that looks threaded in both directions, that would work perfect for this.
Holy crap, that "use a thick wire on the inside of a hole" strategy of making a wooden nut is genius! I can't believe I've never seen it before! I've been puzzling over how to cut internal threads so that i can make wooden screw mechanisms, and that might just work for what I need! Thanks guys!!!
I had been wondering about that a lot recently. I watched a video a while back on making screws, but the device used to make the screw required a screw so it was very chicken-or-egg.
This is huge, and exciting to see what could be one of the most important advances on this channel. I hope we see some more videos in the future on improving precision, as that is key to making tools that make tools. Once you're able to enter the world of machining, it should be a lot easier to do some of these more advanced projects you've been attempting.
For the next step of this, the citation is Turning and Mechanical Manipulation Volume II by Charles Holtzapfeel, Section VIII: VARIOUS MODES OF ORIGINATING AND IMPROVING SCREWS, INCLUDING THOSE OE RAMSDEN, MAUDSLAY, BARTON, ALLAN, CLEMENT, AND OTHERS, page 635, which is available on the internet archive. I'd provide a link but it looks like youtube comments doesn't like that. It covers the history of screw origination and the devices of Maudslay and Donkin that were ultimately successful in creating machine screws precise enough for machining interchangeable parts.
Congratulations on your improved gear-making skills! I remember how much trouble you had with the rope-winding machine, so it's really great to see similar gears working perfectly now. If you plan to make more rope, you should rebuilt the machine with proper gears. So I assume you made the spring with your home-made wire? How do you stiffen the wire after you coil it into the proper shape? Is it just simple case-hardening?
There is a channel called "little forest". A guy there makes wood screw die and tap with out only with hand tools and no reference screw. And the beauty of all it is - he used no manual carving of screw - just few "follower" stages and repeated manual tapping with a "thooth" cutter. Easy, releatable, and nearly perfect screws.
Maybe looking at how the screw was made for the Gutenberg Press? So if I recall, it used a big ass block of wood with two chisel type bits of metal in it, one at the top and the second, I think was on the left side of the block and that was used to make the screw in that printer.
I've made screws in the past by arranging the wood at an angle on the band saw, and allowing the band to both cut and self-guide to produce a regularly spaced helical kerf. As your constraints don't allow you to use the band saw, you could do exactly the same with a back saw, using the back to limit the depth of cut to a precise amount. When I did this on the band saw I made the same cut twice, a quarter inch apart to that I could then chisel out the space between the kerfs to make something that looked sort of like the threads on a lead screw, with a wide space between them.
I think for the screw cutter you could make a clamp and have it hold a pointed chisel in place, then you just move it down a little more per pass. It might also do a little bit of a better job than the saw and cut the thread to be more of a V pattern than a sort of U pattern whilst also possibly being able to move it down farther per pass and as-such cut down (didn't mean for the pun) your time for making these screws. Add a crank for the main mechanism and I think you're really on your way to success. EDIT: I looked at Leonardo's invention again and you can see a chisel set into the moving head and it's set at an angle like a wood plane.
The U shaped threads are far better to use to move things around(ACME threads). The V shaped threads are used to fasten things together. When pushing or pulling using the threads the U shape gives a big shoulder to push against and the V ends up being a wedge pushing out.
Re: Metal screws I know little about that process, but a bit about forging in general. If you create a wedge shaped die and forge in the flat sides of the shaft to create fins running along the edges of the shaft, you might be able to just twist the nail and end up with a screw. Or even if you don't forge it in, you could file it in, then twist.
It might be worth it to look into densified wood, which is a more modern invention, but essentially is boiling wood in chemicals to leach out the softer parts, then press it to squeeze the fiber ultra close. With one company claiming they have wood stronger then a32 steel. Might be easier to do that to create stronger wood parts then get ultra refined steel.
What fun to follow up on the work of such a genius!! well done! Except for one thing - none of the screws you were making had spiral threads. They are helical; the radius of their curvature is constant, whereas the radius of a spiral curve changes at a constant rate. Woodscrews usually start with a spiral curve but transition into a helix. All helical curves are 3-dimensional, but a spiral can be 2-dimensional.
As long as the drivetrain could handle the extra stress, you could modify the cutting tool to include several blades stacked upon one another. This eliminates the need for the spring and could potentially allow for one pass production of the screws. If you didn’t want to stack the blades on top of one another, you could feed screws from one machine with its blade into another machine with a different blade. This would reduce the stress on any individual cutting tool mount and allow you to make really big screws. Of course, the use of the spring is awesome and makes this machine work so well!
Hybridize that with some features of a wood plane. Should be able to get some smooth cuts as long as the grain on the wood being worked isn't too crazy.
The pinhole on an anvil was typically used in order to create corkscrew patterns by using the natural crystalline shape of the metals in order to make screws, not hand filing. It takes about four times as long to make a screw versus a nail which is why they took so long to become popular.
For screws I would suggest a large mold that has a screw pattern in it so when it's cold you get a screw red hot and put it in there, then put it between the two half's of the screw mold, hit with hammer a ton while keeping it pressed shut. Should be a shorter process
the reversing mechanism to get it to run on a monodirectional input such as the water wheel is absolutely necessary because this device is an auto-iterative machine. basically a machine that makes things to make itself better, which obviously will take a lot of time. I'd love to see you guys advance in your accuracies by making increasingly accurate screws to make things like lathes. while not exactly realistic to history, it would be very interesting to see just how quickly humans could have advanced from a hand carved screw that wobbles all over the place, to a precision lead screw for machine lathe, had the knowledge been there.
This looks like it would not allow arbitrary increases in screw precision. It averages the error from both leadscrews onto the cut screw, so would improve local accuracy, but if the two leadscrews have similar error in the same places, it would not improve that. Like, if one end of both screws had a coarser pitch than desired and the other ends the correct pitch, the result would have this same issue. That can be fixed by reversing one screw, but I think that this setup cannot remove symmetrical pitch errors. You should look into lapping (or whatever the wood version is) screws, since that can reduce pitch uniformity errors. It changes the pitch slightly, but if the screw has truly uniform pitch across it's length, you can use gears to get similarly uniform threads of any pitch on the result, like a modern lathe. Moore's foundations of mechanical accuracy talks about their process for producing truly uniform screws. I think their method could be brought down the level of tools you're allowing yourself.
imo, add something like a 6:1 gear set on the side that you're turning, so that you can just use a simple hand crank, and it'll speed it up. You can go bigger of course, for quicker cuts, but I think something like 6:1 or 8:1 would be the best balance between effectiveness and practicaltiy. Another thing I'd suggest, though i have no idea the effectiveness (or feasibility), is to polish both the initial rods, and the blocks riding across them, and then using a light amount of oil to reduce friction a bit. And according to a couple comments I've seen, you could also use it to make improved iterations, which I feel would be best to do.
Self reversing lead screws exist and allow a constant direction rotational input to result in a cyclical motion of the carrier down the axis of the lead screw. Common modern applications are where a guide is being used to facilitate the winding of a loose string/cable. Think reels on fishing rods or winches on trucks. They effectively have a thread cut down one side, stop during the middle of the last thread, then cut a reverse thread going back in the other direction. The two threads cross each other with a round turn around at the end. If you make forward and reverse drive lead-screws for your DaVinci Machine, you should be able to cut a self reversing one.
FWIW, I'd love to see the full treatment on how to make lead screws from scratch. That is make a long screw that can produce motion accurate into the 0.001" range (or below) over it's full length. Ideally staring with nothing more accurate than cast or hot rolled iron/steel stock and hand forged tool. I've found documentation of how to make surface plates, angle blocks, cylinders and more or less all the other parts needed to build machine tools, but the precision feeding part I've only got my own educated guesses on.
Ive made leadscrews! For otherpeople and money and everything, I guess that means I am actually a professional. Simularly to flats, and angle plates the leadscrews can and will slowly lap together to make a perfect average of the pitchs if you lap 3 together, however just like a surface plate threads have thier own potato chipping phenomia where they try to just become a dowl rod the size of the minor diameter. This is avoided by using at least two nuts per thread rod in the the rotation of lapping together, AND using two half nuts in the measuring stage, one to pull your measurement referance the other with lapping compound or has a dimond cutter imbedded, and is left disengaged until an error is measured, then it is engaged and pressure is applied in the direction that material needs to be removed. I know that describing anything to do with helix's with text alone is difficult to do and I only write okay, feel free to ask me anything.
@@AnonymousAnarchist2 I can sort of follow. How fast do the threads get removed? If it's not too fast, and if you aren't working at the limits of precision, I wonder if it might be simpler to just live with the threads going away while making a master, deal with whatever the thread form ends up being and then cut whatever form you actually need from that? For that matter, what thread form is best for both constructing and using high accuracy screws? I'm thinking ACME or square (if not an outright dovetail form) but that's just an off the top of my head guess.
It would require some work to build, but there are a couple ways to have a shuttle switch directions at one end and go back to the beginning. The easiest to build might be something similar to the reverse gear in a manual transmission. When the shuttle with the cutting tool reaches the end of the shaft, it pushes the entire shaft into a different "reverse" gear. When it reaches the beginning, it pushes it back into "forward" gear.
Another method of making screws is the way very old blacksmith vice screws were made - you can use a stop-block to forge two square rods. Now heat them up and bend them together around a round mandrel, and last un screw one of the two coils. You can then solder the coils onto a round rod. I have not seen this done on an old vice less than 150 years old, and only a couple of those. Hope this helps.
I really like how infinitely recursive this is, particularly when you pair it with a gear-making jig. with the two hand-made screws, you can make a pair of identical "Machined" screws. with those two machined screws, you can make a number of precise gears, and those new gears can create new ratios of threading, which enable you to make different screws. once you have precise gear ratios and precise screws, you can measure things to a high precision, which means things like lathes, flywheels, presses, and such are going to become radically more useable. I'm really wanting to see your "everything" series proceed to have a "Refined" series, where you go over the older inventions with the newer precision, to show how much better it can be made. refining the water wheel, treadle lathe, and such would probably be a great start, as with the precise screws and gears, you can gear stuff up/down properly, and that unlocks their uses in other projects.
At 4:30 a really basic proto-lathe that could spin the stick smoothly would allow much faster cutting of the initial thread with better control and repeatability. The proto-lathe would not have any threads, the woodworker simply follows the original scribed groove.
This is super promising! The screws cut on this could probably be used to make a MUCH better screw cutter -- maybe one that could work a soft metal that could be hardened afterwards? Then suddenly you have unlocked primitive machining!
Every time we make a machine to make another machine, we should be getting more accurate each time. :-) This is a perfect example of that. You did a great job on the matched screws!
@@netherdemonbut for lathe you basically need only motor and everything else you can create (motor also dont sound too bad but idk if its really possible to make something with enough force). And for 3d printer you need to buy much more complicated stepper motors, heater for nozzle, circuit board for control, 12v psu and pc for designing 3d models.
Using blocks like the at 3:24 in succession and incremental depth of cut would likely be more efficient and more accurate as long as the pole is properly passing through guide holes along the way
An equivelent to a lead screw can be made from 2 winch pulleys of different diameter on common shaft, and arranged to wind off one, and onto to the other. Differental pulley. and equal spacing from rotation.
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So basically you'd have to use the crude hand carved threads to make "machined" threads that then replace the originals to make the second iteration more precise.
Yeah, I was hoping to see them actually replace the original set of lead screws in this, because that's how precision is really achieved. Using machines to make more and more precise machines iteratively.
@@TheLadderman they also could have stuck a chisel in their first jig and it would have fully cut the threads
@@user-wg5lu6ub6e Tried it with several blades and bevels, it always ended up ripping the wood apart
If you think about it, all of human history is a result of that development loop.
Give a dwarve a wooden hammer and he'll use it to make a crude iron one, iron to steel to masterpiece
Feel free to make some minor modifications if needed. Da Vinci often deliberately drew pictures with errors in them that rendered them useless. This was to protect his work from being copied in the days before patents. But his drawings DID illustrate the IDEA for his own reference. The crank that drove his "tank" was an example-- It would not work as drawn.
11:50
@nicholas-dv1mg i was gonna say that but they probably commented halfway through. It's still useful info for anyone thay doesn't finish the video
Except da Vinci’s notebooks weren’t shared… his errors were most likely actually errors.
He was sketching things up to get them out of his head. The notebooks weren’t a manual for publication like the swordsmanship manuals of the time, they were his own aide de memoire.
He didn’t write in mirror script because it was some diabolical secret code; it’s just that as a left hander he wasn’t dragging his hand across the wet ink.
@LoneEagle2061 as a left handed person, I agree this is more likely than a copyright protection, I have used fountain pens in the past and it's incredibly boring writing letter by letter. Also the reason I don't use it anymore. I'll write with pencil, or just do it digitally because I hate smudges (especially with ink)
@LoneEagle2061 shared, no. Had the potential to be stolen, yes. Sometimes things go public without the authors permission and many scholar and trades used codes to keep secrets secret.
The best part is: It can make all the possible lead screws you could want, it can literally make itself better.
i dont think so, because you'd need to make the first pair of lead screws... the copy can only be as good as are the originals
@@GuilhermeCarbonetti It depends on what you mean be "better". The errors in the 2 guide screws will be averaged out when carving the profile of the screw you are making. So if you thread two rods with the existing setup, replacing the original rods with those new rods *will* give you a more precise (but not necessarily accurate) result, as it will wobble less. You could then theoretically repeat this process, although I imagine it would give diminishing returns, and there would be no point beyond 2 or three total iterations.
You could also make larger diameter lead screws which wouldn't wobble as much, and as some pointed out, since this will average out errors, you can make three screws, and run combinations of them front ways and backwards to get closer and closer to the norm (similar to how they use three flat plates ground against each other in turn to remove all the high points).
Another trick you could use to extract more uniformity; flip one of the screws end for end. That would allow you to create two screws that have different error distributions starting from only two original screws. Then uses them to get a 2nd generation product form only 2 hand cut screws rather than 4.
That said, I agree there's a limit, but I suspect (at least if you were to use metal) it would be more like 3-5 generations of screws down the line. I think I've heard suggestions for improving beyond that based on lapping a screw with a long nut. That will tend to require that the pitch of the nut match the screw over its full length regardless of where it's positioned. That will tend to remove variation over the length of the screw. (But it would also likely end up with a thread that's only accurate loaded/feeding in one direction.)
@@GuilhermeCarbonetti The origin of precision all boil down to figuring out how to make more precise products from less precise tools. Optical quality surface plates from 3 rocks and polishing powder is the classic example, but I've read it can be done with screws as well (like to the sub micron level with strictly mechanical tools), thought I've yet to find documentation on a detailed process.
Fun fact, your setup for making a nut is basically how rifling was cut into gun barrels until hammer forging became widespread in the early 20th century.
If you want to power it from a water wheel, look up 19th century rifling cutting machines. They have all the linkages you’d need to upgrade your machine. They also typically had a ratchet that would automatically advance the depth of the cutter after each pass.
No wonder then that for most of human history nails and rivets were preferred over screws!! Great video
hand filing that screw took was one of the most painfully slow day of my life
Well, nails were a much later invention. Most wood work was just cut and jointed together.
Nails are still used more in structural wood constructions. Nails can move a bit with the wood and still bear load. Screws shear off and can cause building collapse. They have their different uses.
@@BenjaminDamoncycle JESUS: _"Bulls!ht, nails were a much later invention!"_
@@BenjaminDamoncycle Nails are literally one of the first things people created when they got their hands on a good supply of iron.
FYI, according to one of my history profs, back in college (50 years ago) screws were often made by wrapping a small rope around a round piece of wood a couple of times in a spiral, sprinkling it with sand, and then drawing it back and forth until the groove was sanded deeply enough. Then the spiraled rope was moved up the wood, and the process was repeated.
The grooves thus made were quite smooth and uniform --- especially if they were following a pre-scribed line - like what you made.
That makes me feel like a genius, cause my first thought was "I bet you can do something with wrapping rope or string around it to get the spiral.
Seeing how many passes it took with the saw tooth, sand probably even works better than that single saw tooth.
I love how these guys went to all the trouble to re invent the wheel.for gosh sake why do we call them screw threads. I am an old machinist. they could have talked to me and this video would be a hell of allot different. but i got a good laugh out of watching these egg heads.
If you have access to iron and forging, you can create a screw by tightly hot winding one round iron thiner rod "turn-to-turn" around another (little bit more fatter), then forge welding the ends with flux. This will form a uniform, strong thread - my father and I repaired old vice in the Chernozem'ye Region far from civilization this way - and it was works. Sorru for bad english)
I would love to see this process, do you know of any youtube videos showing it? I honestly dont know what to search
@alexstone691 a good starting point might be "hand forging a screw"
You should do a few iterations of "master screws" made on the machine. I think it would average out any remaining imperfections in your partially hand carved master screws, and allow for better precision. You've got a consistent automated method for making screws now, use it to make itself better.
Machines that can screw themselves?!!!
This is the beginning of the end.
maybe one iteration with wood and then switch to metal rods for everything
Very glad to see you all reference the screw-cutting lathe from the Mittelalterlisches Hausbuch von Schloss Wolfegg. It's far more advanced than what Da Vinci sketched, and was a tool actually in existence at least 20 years before Da Vinci sketched his. The innovation of the Da Vinci screw-lathe is the ability to change gear ratio for different thread-pitch rather than multiple master screws with matching guide poppets.
We don't carve threads into screws, we roll the blank screw shank between grooved plates.
The modularity of this is great
I love your initial scribing tool for creating an accurately spaced screw to start with! That's such a simple device but it works so well!
I still don't quite understand how he consistently advances the rod to make a uniform pitch
@@palimdragonmaster3kthe blade itself at an angle does that. It makes more sense if you think of a screw as a ramp coiled around a rod.
Wow this is my favorite project on your channel. Bootstrapping precision like this blew my mind
As a machinist it’s wild to me how people figured out making precise reference tools with imprecise tools.
I can’t imagine what it’d take to start with a block of stone and end up with a surface plate.
If you like this, watch Chris’ work over on Clickspring, he recreates the first metal lathe
@@PrebleStreetRecords it takes three blocks of stone, an alternating pattern of rubbing different pairs of two of the three together in sequence to average out their relative errors, and then absolutely soul-destroying amounts of time and patience repeating the sequence over and over and over to gradually chase desired flatness. But then if you do it right at the end of the process you have three surface plates.
@@PrebleStreetRecordsThe three plate method. You can use it to make a reference place, internal and external squares. plus a straight edge. Then from a reference plate you can dress a grinding wheel into a surface grinder. That gives you parallelism. You can create a measuring system with dividers and a straight edge. You can get lots of angle measurements with a dividing plate, which you make with your reference plate, straight edge and dividers. You can replace layout fluid with soot. With reference plates you can make ways and start working towards a modern lathe.
From what I remember even all the way back in the stone age, using tools to make better more precise tools was a massive factor. Like a primitive "anvil".
Would love to see if the machine is improved by replacing its reference screws with screws made on it.
Can’t wait to see the lathe video! Clickspring did an awesome video on how a Greek brass-turning lathe could be made from only a few pieces of wrought iron and wood, and the. used to build a clock (Antikeithra mechanism)!
Regarding vices, Clickspring did a video on a leg vice that could have been made in ancient greek times for his antikythera project, so, while not exactly like a modern vice, it is entirely possible for people to have had vices before the screw was perfected.
another thing is you could just use plain wedges too
There are a few ways I could think of to make a vise without needing a screw thread. You could have a locking plate with regularly spaced holes or notches where the remaining slack is taken up with a wedge (this could be made with basic forging tools, or even out of wood), or you could use a steel holdfast type design, where a slightly springy curved steel "L" shaped bar can be used to lock and unlock the vise with a tap of a mallet. Clickspring's vise was pretty cool to, especially for holding small parts.
Wasn't that vise designed for small part? With leather Jaws so it wouldn't brake stuff
I ask because that was a pressure base vase not a tension vase, as it works almost the same you can't really use it to like carve in any direction cos some direction may lose the grip as a tension vase its stronger on its grip and it can hold on better a betting with a mallet
@@fergardla that's true, although I guess similar principles (using wedges etc), could be applied to larger vices with higher grip strength, and the jaws could be made out of wood or metal textured in such a manner as to provide higher friction.
that's awesome! btw i don't think you need to carve the screws in metal. what might be more useful is a screw cut in wood that could be used as a shaping tool for the mold. then you could just make a lot of screws by just casting them in brass.
Thats what I thought too
For a quick work you could probably get away with twisting the metal.
Depends on what their goals are. If its for fastening that might be true, but if its for power driving the exact profile might be more important (like for a lathe?)
You aren't going to be able to sand cast a screw, so they would have to use a more advanced form of casting. But even still that's just not really practical for making small screws like they are going to need. Casting is always going to be an imprecise manufacturing method.
@@UMADBRO64 yes, and that "finishing" you are talking about has to be done on a precise machine if you want the finished product to be precise. The precision comes from the finishing machining and not at all from the casting. Hand finishing will not give you particularly repeatable or precise results. There's a reason every machine had to be hand fit and finished up until the mid 19th century when advanced machining practices allowed people to make parts with consistent, repeatable dimensions, i.e. replaceable parts.
Fantastic series. Love all the builds.
Wow, this looks like it's one of your most successful projects to date! It can even be used to increase its own precision (by making new leadscrews with tighter threads). Very cool indeed!
This is some of y'alls best work yet!
4:23 could use a chisel and a guide , probably a trailing guide, to keep the tool and the right place, and just rotate and cut, then deepen rotate and cut and deepen, rotate and cut etc
This might be my favorite video that you have done. This project really illustrates how humanity and technology really moved into the ‘modern’ era of machining, by iterating machines that can be used to improve themselves and improve precision
Thank you for posting this and doing a deep dive into the mechanics. I have decided to build one to make an injection screw and without a CNC machine, this is perfect.
I'm impressed. This is the first time I've seen you making something which is genuinely precise. Your lack of precision has been a constant source of struggle as you've been making more complex machines, hopefully you can start to improve on that now. You have a whole lot of work ahead of you if you ever want to get enough precision to make a steam engine though.
I love what this channel has grown into. I dabble in various crafts myself on top of woodworking for a living and I remember laughing at some goofy metalwork and woodworking mistakes, it's amazing to see this stuff I'd never even think of figuring out myself and how well it comes out now!
This is brilliant. I know it's on the shoulders of giants and all, but very impressive!
Awesome work! I saw a similar replica of this machine at a Science World exhibit once. I rarely see it mentioned in the history of screw-cutting lathes. Quite an ingenious invention. One of the great things about this machine is that it can improve its own accuracy, by making two screws to swap out the outer ones and reversing them, averaging out errors.
5:33 Looks as smooth as my Craftobot Original!
To file a screw by hand is time consuming but I had to make a screw for a antique firearm that did not match any modern screw. They do turn out very precise anyway.
a gear box that auto switch between two directions is easy to make with a few gears and levers
Hi, what i love about your channel is the old school Tech that you are exploring ❤ its great to see.
Thank you, Well done!
What a cool device. The drawing shows the thread being cut with something similar to a wooden rabbit plane. The method for cutting you chose or suggested for a metal screw does not work very well because it has no way to clear the waste from the cut. A saw or file clogs very quickly when held in the same spot on a lathe where a single point cutter can easily clear its self. A relatively simple solution would be to use a wood chisel as your cutting tool.
I'm very excited to see everything going forward! I've been watching this channel since this series started, loved all of it!
i think the better way of getting a smooth and good evenly spaced master screw would actually be to use two long rods or soft iron wires twisted together from the very ends. this will have them automatically form a double helix with two very consistent and evenly spaced grooves running along the entire length.
this is something a seasoned blacksmith can do in a day.
heck you could probably even do a plaster cast of a rope under tension in an easy to cast metal like copper
the problem with this machine is that while wonky cut threads will even out, any inconsistencies in pitch of the master screws will still be transferred to the new screw.
you can average out the pitch inconsistencies by offsetting the new screw between passes but that makes the process more tedious.
the master screws based on the twisted double helix of rods, ropes or wires that i suggest should be way more consistent in pitch across their entire length with way less effort than the twist scribe and then handcut wooden masters
This is amazing! Your machinery video series always make me go "whoa"! Impressive how you guys made all that by hand!
I think this machine is not just cutting screw but also averaging the errors in the two motion screws, thus giving you a smoother, more regular, more precise finished screw. If you can iterate, cut new screws that then replace the old motion screws to cut a new generation, you can progressively improve on differential errors between the two screws. And if you can skew the two screws (or their nut), you can transform "common mode" error in one section into differential errors that can be corrected. I'd say you should have sqrt(2) gain in precision for each pass. After a dozen iterations, you are cutting 100x more precisely than you did with the first generation.
Yes! Screw cutting finally! I've been waiting for this.
The last couple of videos were a bit disappointing. Aeliopiles are cool, but the technology doesn't lead to anything, and it didn't work very well anyway. But now you've created something that will open up so much more. And you got it to work properly without a lot of difficulty!
While I was watching, I kept thinking that the first thing you should make should be some vises for your future woodworking. And that was exactly what you did!
You guys really outdid yourselves with this one. Feels good to finally see your potential start to blossom, the introduction of some real precision and rigidity is a welcome improvement. Keep it up, super excited to see what you come up with next.
I swear, I will always support you and your channel! I know its hard especially after the fire all those years ago now but nothing will ever stop me from watching your amazing and informative content! You’re a massive inspiration to my creative flame!
One of the most important aspect of this device (and of the lathe) is that the machine can improve its own accuracy merely by building with the very tool you’ve already made. As you make new screws you can replace the old hand cut ones (and more importantly) the receiving nut from a rough approximation of coiled wire to the wooden carved nut that matches the screws profile even more finely.
why even bother cutting the first screw by hand when a simple wedge aka inclined plane, pulled by a string and pulley on the shaft to force the cutter lengthwise does exactly the same thing, far more accurately?
this is one of those typical videos perpetuating the myth that davinci was a "genius" when its apparent he was not. other people figured out how to produce threads far faster and with far less hand work or guess work required.
@@paradiselost9946 It’s not so much to do with just making a screw and threaded bolt with the same threaded profile, but two other concepts that this machine is trying to fulfil.
The first is lowering the skill level to make screws and bolts. We were capable of making well mating screws and bolts before this design because Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of the modern printing press used a screw press for his own machine. However, whilst making one screw and one bolt by hand is possible, (although requiring a hire degree of skill) it was the only way of making well fitting screws until comparatively recently because it was damn hard to achieve. Hence why you don’t see many screws in historical examples unless it’s absolutely necessary. What this machine Leonardo designed lowers the level of skill required to make screws and bolts dramatically, all the operator has to do is place the dowel into the machine and turn a handle and it will always produce the same quality of screw every time.
This leads onto the second purpose of the machine: repeatability.
Making a screw that can follow a purpose built bolt is one thing, making a screw that can follow any bolt and vice versa is an entirely different challenge altogether. But because the cutting is driven mechanically it will always follow the same input. Having the capacity to produce screws that will follow the same bolt every time is what gives modern hardware their utility, and makes them worth the effort in producing as opposed to having to produce a matching bolt for every screw you make.
Finally, there’s the matter of education and access to resources. Whilst it’s easy for us in our modern world to look back and think “why didn’t we just do it in this simple way?” It’s because learning clever tricks requires access to that knowledge. Whilst the craftsmen of the day were certainly not unknowledgeable (they were as intelligent as you or me today), they did not have the luxury of a system of shared information. What makes Leonardo da Vinci a genius in people’s eyes is that he was able to come up with a staggering number of concepts of which many were way ahead of his time only with the access to the resources and education of the period.
The two lead screws (with the relatively loose linkage) average out the errors between them, which is desirable in the transition between hand and machine screws. Cut two screws with your hand-cut lead screws, then endo one and use them as lead screws to cut the next generation.
As a bonus, if you use a much softer material (like balsa for your wooden screws, with the grain parallel to the axis) in a much longer nut (say 8 inches) you’ll average out local variations even more.
just a thought but you would cast the perfect wooden guide blanks into bronze to make low friction, long lasting guides
Thanks! This was very interesting! Making mechanical systems from wood is no small challenge. This video is yet another proof to how an incredible genius Leonardo was. The main difference between us and people in the stone age is that in the mean time, great researchers and inventors have lived. And yourself you can be proud of actually being able to make this work, based on limited information available to you.
I remember when this channel had some ridiculously low amount of subs and views for the longest time, even tho the content was good. Remember being baffled by how slowly it was growing. 1.8M, nice.
Cool video and project. I'm an engineer, artist, and woodturner so, this video really resonated.
Something for your consideration for a screw+nut 2.0 project: I think that you were closer to a more elegant and more generally applicable plus usable approach w your first block. For instance, just as a scew is an incline plane twisted around a rod, a gouge is a skew cutter bent to fit around a rod and a V-gouge is a skew bent around a corner. Now consider the profiled cove moulding that they used to use to make complex crown mouldings, etc. You gradually pass the moulding plane over the wood and cut the profile more and more into the wood. Now consider wrapping that moulding plane around a rod and you have your screw rod cutter. Keep your two pieces as shown in your video and wrap sinew around the outside w a wooden dowel to twist to increase depth of cut as you make your passes. By keeping this as a smaller annular plane, you are not limited to length and you cd even use it in the field. The nut plane cutter wd be the photo negative, w maybe a wedge to drive the two pieces progressively more into the cut pass after pass. Again, smaller unit and portable. And you can even pop the screw moulding cutter into your daVinci apparatus, if you wanted to help keep longer screws straighter as you cut. I can see different screw mould planes for different diameters and pitches; just swap to a different profile. I'd love to see a Screw 2.0 video!
In terms of the "back and forth" mechanism, look at how fishing reels work. there's a part that looks threaded in both directions, that would work perfect for this.
Spectacular. I love seeing you make complex items from scratch.
Omg omg omg they’re bootstrapping the lathe!
Holy crap, that "use a thick wire on the inside of a hole" strategy of making a wooden nut is genius! I can't believe I've never seen it before! I've been puzzling over how to cut internal threads so that i can make wooden screw mechanisms, and that might just work for what I need! Thanks guys!!!
I had been wondering about that a lot recently. I watched a video a while back on making screws, but the device used to make the screw required a screw so it was very chicken-or-egg.
The stars aligned today. I find an Alac Steele video from 11 months ago about making nails and then you post this. You have made my day
This is huge, and exciting to see what could be one of the most important advances on this channel. I hope we see some more videos in the future on improving precision, as that is key to making tools that make tools. Once you're able to enter the world of machining, it should be a lot easier to do some of these more advanced projects you've been attempting.
well done! this was one of the best builds so far!
More DaVinci machines! I want to see Andy to a ride on Leonardo's aerial screw 🚁
For the next step of this, the citation is Turning and Mechanical Manipulation Volume II by Charles Holtzapfeel, Section VIII: VARIOUS MODES OF ORIGINATING AND IMPROVING SCREWS, INCLUDING THOSE OE RAMSDEN, MAUDSLAY, BARTON, ALLAN, CLEMENT, AND OTHERS, page 635, which is available on the internet archive. I'd provide a link but it looks like youtube comments doesn't like that. It covers the history of screw origination and the devices of Maudslay and Donkin that were ultimately successful in creating machine screws precise enough for machining interchangeable parts.
That is super cool, not to mention ambitious. Bravo, guys! Well effing done!
Never occurred to me before how difficult creating precise screws could be. The bootstrapping process is really fascinating with this!
Congratulations on your improved gear-making skills! I remember how much trouble you had with the rope-winding machine, so it's really great to see similar gears working perfectly now. If you plan to make more rope, you should rebuilt the machine with proper gears.
So I assume you made the spring with your home-made wire? How do you stiffen the wire after you coil it into the proper shape? Is it just simple case-hardening?
There is a channel called "little forest". A guy there makes wood screw die and tap with out only with hand tools and no reference screw. And the beauty of all it is - he used no manual carving of screw - just few "follower" stages and repeated manual tapping with a "thooth" cutter. Easy, releatable, and nearly perfect screws.
I was thinking the same thing while I was watching this. The cutter that made the spiral groove was really all they needed.
Surprised you settled on saw blade to do the cutting, I was thinking it would be a chisel type blade
You can get a specific consistent pitch of screw by wrapping a right triangle of paper around a rod. The hypotenuse forms the spiral.
This is sick, works way better than I expected when I first saw it.
Maybe looking at how the screw was made for the Gutenberg Press?
So if I recall, it used a big ass block of wood with two chisel type bits of metal in it, one at the top and the second, I think was on the left side of the block and that was used to make the screw in that printer.
Use this to make a wax screw then cast in iron. Cut notches in and now you have a tap for copper or brass nuts
Really cool to see the progress
I've made screws in the past by arranging the wood at an angle on the band saw, and allowing the band to both cut and self-guide to produce a regularly spaced helical kerf. As your constraints don't allow you to use the band saw, you could do exactly the same with a back saw, using the back to limit the depth of cut to a precise amount. When I did this on the band saw I made the same cut twice, a quarter inch apart to that I could then chisel out the space between the kerfs to make something that looked sort of like the threads on a lead screw, with a wide space between them.
I think for the screw cutter you could make a clamp and have it hold a pointed chisel in place, then you just move it down a little more per pass. It might also do a little bit of a better job than the saw and cut the thread to be more of a V pattern than a sort of U pattern whilst also possibly being able to move it down farther per pass and as-such cut down (didn't mean for the pun) your time for making these screws. Add a crank for the main mechanism and I think you're really on your way to success. EDIT: I looked at Leonardo's invention again and you can see a chisel set into the moving head and it's set at an angle like a wood plane.
The U shaped threads are far better to use to move things around(ACME threads). The V shaped threads are used to fasten things together. When pushing or pulling using the threads the U shape gives a big shoulder to push against and the V ends up being a wedge pushing out.
Could adding beeswax, melted tallow or other age appropriate wood oil to some of the high friction areas improve the operation?
Very early, one of the coolest series on RUclips in my opinion
Re: Metal screws I know little about that process, but a bit about forging in general. If you create a wedge shaped die and forge in the flat sides of the shaft to create fins running along the edges of the shaft, you might be able to just twist the nail and end up with a screw. Or even if you don't forge it in, you could file it in, then twist.
I'll add something, try looking up something called a 'Stoll Jbom', it had a chain that can drive a head back and forth with using a latch.
It might be worth it to look into densified wood, which is a more modern invention, but essentially is boiling wood in chemicals to leach out the softer parts, then press it to squeeze the fiber ultra close. With one company claiming they have wood stronger then a32 steel.
Might be easier to do that to create stronger wood parts then get ultra refined steel.
Very cool, I like precision! Will be interesting to see how precise of movements you can reach!
What fun to follow up on the work of such a genius!! well done! Except for one thing - none of the screws you were making had spiral threads. They are helical; the radius of their curvature is constant, whereas the radius of a spiral curve changes at a constant rate. Woodscrews usually start with a spiral curve but transition into a helix. All helical curves are 3-dimensional, but a spiral can be 2-dimensional.
As long as the drivetrain could handle the extra stress, you could modify the cutting tool to include several blades stacked upon one another. This eliminates the need for the spring and could potentially allow for one pass production of the screws.
If you didn’t want to stack the blades on top of one another, you could feed screws from one machine with its blade into another machine with a different blade. This would reduce the stress on any individual cutting tool mount and allow you to make really big screws.
Of course, the use of the spring is awesome and makes this machine work so well!
I would think that a very narrow "V" gouge like a lathe tool would cut faster and more accurately for the screw thread.
Hybridize that with some features of a wood plane. Should be able to get some smooth cuts as long as the grain on the wood being worked isn't too crazy.
A very interesting invention - great work guys!
love how a lot of DaVinci's drawings could actually work but also this set up is very similar to rope making machines ive seen
The pinhole on an anvil was typically used in order to create corkscrew patterns by using the natural crystalline shape of the metals in order to make screws, not hand filing. It takes about four times as long to make a screw versus a nail which is why they took so long to become popular.
For screws I would suggest a large mold that has a screw pattern in it so when it's cold you get a screw red hot and put it in there, then put it between the two half's of the screw mold, hit with hammer a ton while keeping it pressed shut. Should be a shorter process
the reversing mechanism to get it to run on a monodirectional input such as the water wheel is absolutely necessary because this device is an auto-iterative machine. basically a machine that makes things to make itself better, which obviously will take a lot of time. I'd love to see you guys advance in your accuracies by making increasingly accurate screws to make things like lathes. while not exactly realistic to history, it would be very interesting to see just how quickly humans could have advanced from a hand carved screw that wobbles all over the place, to a precision lead screw for machine lathe, had the knowledge been there.
The soft wire as thread is freaking clever. That alone made the whole thing possible wow
This looks like it would not allow arbitrary increases in screw precision. It averages the error from both leadscrews onto the cut screw, so would improve local accuracy, but if the two leadscrews have similar error in the same places, it would not improve that. Like, if one end of both screws had a coarser pitch than desired and the other ends the correct pitch, the result would have this same issue. That can be fixed by reversing one screw, but I think that this setup cannot remove symmetrical pitch errors. You should look into lapping (or whatever the wood version is) screws, since that can reduce pitch uniformity errors. It changes the pitch slightly, but if the screw has truly uniform pitch across it's length, you can use gears to get similarly uniform threads of any pitch on the result, like a modern lathe. Moore's foundations of mechanical accuracy talks about their process for producing truly uniform screws. I think their method could be brought down the level of tools you're allowing yourself.
imo, add something like a 6:1 gear set on the side that you're turning, so that you can just use a simple hand crank, and it'll speed it up. You can go bigger of course, for quicker cuts, but I think something like 6:1 or 8:1 would be the best balance between effectiveness and practicaltiy.
Another thing I'd suggest, though i have no idea the effectiveness (or feasibility), is to polish both the initial rods, and the blocks riding across them, and then using a light amount of oil to reduce friction a bit.
And according to a couple comments I've seen, you could also use it to make improved iterations, which I feel would be best to do.
Self reversing lead screws exist and allow a constant direction rotational input to result in a cyclical motion of the carrier down the axis of the lead screw.
Common modern applications are where a guide is being used to facilitate the winding of a loose string/cable. Think reels on fishing rods or winches on trucks.
They effectively have a thread cut down one side, stop during the middle of the last thread, then cut a reverse thread going back in the other direction. The two threads cross each other with a round turn around at the end.
If you make forward and reverse drive lead-screws for your DaVinci Machine, you should be able to cut a self reversing one.
FWIW, I'd love to see the full treatment on how to make lead screws from scratch. That is make a long screw that can produce motion accurate into the 0.001" range (or below) over it's full length. Ideally staring with nothing more accurate than cast or hot rolled iron/steel stock and hand forged tool.
I've found documentation of how to make surface plates, angle blocks, cylinders and more or less all the other parts needed to build machine tools, but the precision feeding part I've only got my own educated guesses on.
Ive made leadscrews! For otherpeople and money and everything, I guess that means I am actually a professional.
Simularly to flats, and angle plates the leadscrews can and will slowly lap together to make a perfect average of the pitchs if you lap 3 together, however just like a surface plate threads have thier own potato chipping phenomia where they try to just become a dowl rod the size of the minor diameter. This is avoided by using at least two nuts per thread rod in the the rotation of lapping together, AND using two half nuts in the measuring stage, one to pull your measurement referance the other with lapping compound or has a dimond cutter imbedded, and is left disengaged until an error is measured, then it is engaged and pressure is applied in the direction that material needs to be removed.
I know that describing anything to do with helix's with text alone is difficult to do and I only write okay, feel free to ask me anything.
@@AnonymousAnarchist2 I can sort of follow.
How fast do the threads get removed? If it's not too fast, and if you aren't working at the limits of precision, I wonder if it might be simpler to just live with the threads going away while making a master, deal with whatever the thread form ends up being and then cut whatever form you actually need from that? For that matter, what thread form is best for both constructing and using high accuracy screws? I'm thinking ACME or square (if not an outright dovetail form) but that's just an off the top of my head guess.
It would require some work to build, but there are a couple ways to have a shuttle switch directions at one end and go back to the beginning. The easiest to build might be something similar to the reverse gear in a manual transmission. When the shuttle with the cutting tool reaches the end of the shaft, it pushes the entire shaft into a different "reverse" gear. When it reaches the beginning, it pushes it back into "forward" gear.
large diameter circle on the end of the shaft for the angles, single block to create the pitch for filing to.
That bench vice works MUCH better than i expected it to
Another method of making screws is the way very old blacksmith vice screws were made - you can use a stop-block to forge two square rods. Now heat them up and bend them together around a round mandrel, and last un screw one of the two coils. You can then solder the coils onto a round rod. I have not seen this done on an old vice less than 150 years old, and only a couple of those. Hope this helps.
I really like how infinitely recursive this is, particularly when you pair it with a gear-making jig.
with the two hand-made screws, you can make a pair of identical "Machined" screws. with those two machined screws, you can make a number of precise gears, and those new gears can create new ratios of threading, which enable you to make different screws.
once you have precise gear ratios and precise screws, you can measure things to a high precision, which means things like lathes, flywheels, presses, and such are going to become radically more useable.
I'm really wanting to see your "everything" series proceed to have a "Refined" series, where you go over the older inventions with the newer precision, to show how much better it can be made. refining the water wheel, treadle lathe, and such would probably be a great start, as with the precise screws and gears, you can gear stuff up/down properly, and that unlocks their uses in other projects.
David Gingery's lathe book had a section on making a reference thread by wrapping a wire around a shaft.
At 4:30 a really basic proto-lathe that could spin the stick smoothly would allow much faster cutting of the initial thread with better control and repeatability. The proto-lathe would not have any threads, the woodworker simply follows the original scribed groove.
Awesome video, thanks!
This is super promising! The screws cut on this could probably be used to make a MUCH better screw cutter -- maybe one that could work a soft metal that could be hardened afterwards? Then suddenly you have unlocked primitive machining!
machining always uses what was made for the next cycle, so you make a 2nd and use the 2 good ones for a better accuracy lathe- rinse and repeat
Every time we make a machine to make another machine, we should be getting more accurate each time. :-) This is a perfect example of that. You did a great job on the matched screws!
The lathe is one machine that made the modern world possible, and it’s the only machine that can replicate itself.
You forgot about the 3d printer. It can replicate itself
Well neither of them can actually reproduce themselves. But at least they could produce a variety of parts needed for the assembly.😅
@@netherdemon 3d print a stepper motor.
@@Beamer1969 Challenge accepted.
@@netherdemonbut for lathe you basically need only motor and everything else you can create (motor also dont sound too bad but idk if its really possible to make something with enough force). And for 3d printer you need to buy much more complicated stepper motors, heater for nozzle, circuit board for control, 12v psu and pc for designing 3d models.
It’s hard to gain precision when your working material changes with the weather.
Using blocks like the at 3:24 in succession and incremental depth of cut would likely be more efficient and more accurate as long as the pole is properly passing through guide holes along the way
An equivelent to a lead screw can be made from 2 winch pulleys of different diameter on common shaft, and arranged to wind off one, and onto to the other. Differental pulley. and equal spacing from rotation.