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Building a Mechanical Battery
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- Published on Apr 18, 2026
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Not enough emphasis on the ⚡FULL BRIDGE RECTIFIER⚡
I was wondering if anyone else heard Mehdi's voice when he said that!
Hahaha i was waiting for mehdy to show up.
Or for someone to zapped halfway dead!
We first need to RECTIFY this problem
It's a complete overcrossing fixer
YAAAY!!! FULL BRIDGE RECTIFIER!
I have a four pin chip, and it’s a full bridge rectifier!
Sadly I only get 110VDC instead of 120 because diodes take away some voltage
Does you have a Google alert for the phrase "full bridge rectifier"?
heard it with your voice in my head as Tom said it
@zuvermieten so happy that I wasn't the only one
J'attendais cette réponse !
You need to power a digital clock for the 21st century grandfather clock
Coincidentally I was thinking about this last month. Low power digital clock powered by a pendulum like the video shows with the pendulum in a transparent vacuum chamber.
@BurnerJones Cool. If you make it, I'll subscribe.
Grandfather clocks don't store their energy in the pendulum, the energy is stored in a weight that slowly gets lowered in intervals timed by a pendulum. ...not that a digital clock would need the pendulum to keep seconds straight, of course.
@BurnerJones The magnetic braking from the load will still slow it down reality gets in the way of perpetual motion.
underrated comment
A fun story about your sponsor:
I remember trying to use solidworks back in college, during a 3d modeling course with 40 other students. 90% of the class material had to be changed because the software licensing wouldn't work, and their customer support completely ignored us, despite us paying them for the licensing.
I'd like to second that Solidworks isn't a product that should be encouraged to be used. Similar to Adobe, they like to indulge in the scummy practice of licensing their software for basically free to schools for the purpose of teaching it to students. Which sounds nice and great, but is really intended to make students learn and become dependent on *their* product... which they turn around and charge ludicrous amounts of money for once you're no longer a student (you can't own it, only subscription options)
If you're early on in learning maker tools like 3D modeling software, I'd recommend sticking to free open source tools or actually purchasable and usable offline software instead. Tools that you can learn to use and user forever; unlike Solidworks which you learn to use and use as long as you regularly fork over thousands of dollars to them
@TuberCommenter69 Dealer tactics. First taste is free!
@TuberCommenter69 what would you recommend then? My university is teaching us through Solidworks but I'd like to start practicing whatever the ideal software's are (for 3d modeling/printing)
@TuberCommenter69 is there a software you’d currently recommend to someone getting into 3D modeling?
@Charlesleija Onshape. And Creo Parametric (you can avail student license for free (if you are one).
Damn this build is so high quality it should be in a school or tech museum for students.
Granted but that would take time from learning the 73 gender and double spirit identities and their pronouns 😂😂😂
So if doubling the weight does double the capacity, and it currently stores 0.02Wh, which is 1/942 of the phone battery with 18.84Wh, I'd suggest putting on 43 tons of weight for the next video and fully charging the phone.
He's probably got an old 43 tonne weight lying around somewhere...
@PKWeaver74from one of the previous projects, obviously 😂
I was constantly thinking he could just make it be a gravity battery by adding an escapement mechanism and making it like a grandfathers clock with weights that slowly go down
@PKWeaver74 And bigger aluminum poles.
@larsrademakers6070Yeah that's a great idea, would be way easier to increase height (without messing with frequency or voltage), hence less weight needed. If those 13 cm require 900x the weight, making that 2.6 meter would already reduce to 45x the weight
I really love how clear and unadulterated your content is. Please never give in to the RUclipsr temptation to sensationalize your videos. You literally don't need it. Obviously, what you're doing is working.
ai SLOP has taken over youtube so its nice finding OG style youtube videos like this 👍🏻
@goldenegg1063it's not just ai slop though. Even non-slop RUclipsrs seem to be driven to more and more sensational videos with fast editing, music, over exaggerated talking and hand gestures, clickbaity titles. I respect that Tom just has cool ideas, real skill, and clearly explains everything in a natural voice.
Tom will do anything except use a battery
He is using a battery
@SomethingUnremarkable Batteries convert chemical energy to electric output. By definition: He's not using a battery.
He's using a mass/gravity storage and electrostatic storage system. Not a battery. This might seem pedantic but the point is that you can't correct his comment. He's right.
@Unethical.Dodgson one could argue that Tom had to eat some food to be able to move the pendulum away from its equilibrium point, therefore using chemical energy to, at some point, produce electricity. Going further, one could say he used nuclear fusion, since it's most likely that the energy stored in the food came from the sun. So it's a battery with extra steps.
@Unethical.Dodgson Are pumped hydro storage systems not batteries?
@jamesmnguyen Nope, they are hydroelectric dams.
A better question would be "Are molten salt batteries actually batteries?"
And I would disagree, because in any such device you are converting one form of energy into another form of energy.
Some forms of energy are:
- Kinetic (Atoms moving as a unit, without exchanging energy between them)
- Chemical (Electrons moving from atom to atom)
- Heat (Vibrating atoms, which can excite other atoms to vibrate through "heat dissipation")
- Photons (the purest form of energy)
- Static (Free electrons that aren't bound to any atom in particular, they will readily jump to the first available atom that can accept an electron)
A battery, by definition, is chemical.
A capacitor, by definition, is static. I.E, it will hold on to but not chemically bond free electrons. Therefore it is NOT a battery. It's just an object that has a higher than normal capacity to "capture" free electrons when a circuit isn't closed.
For example, a battery is ALWAYS "trying" to undergo the chemical process, release extra bonded electrons. If the battery isn't connected to it's anode (closed circuit) then the electrons will at least try to move away from a charged battery into whatever has capacity for said electrons. A capacitor has that capacity, so electrons will flow into it until it is at capacity.
Imagine a city where each night after work, everyone has to help hoist the 100 ton pendulum back up and it gives power through the night
Just build 1 million pulleys and one person can do it! :D
@theBabyDeadover a million years maybe
A digital grandfather clock would be sick with this
Yeah, you've basically made a small arc of a flywheel generator.
It's reciprocal rather than normal circular motion, so there's a slight difference there. But that's basically the only meaningful one.
Brilliant insight... almost like that's the entire point of the demo.
@rakibulchowdhury5400 almost like what you're seeing is indeed how insight forms. usually a pretty cool experience, unless someone like you comes along.
Basically everything is a flywheel generator 🙂↔️
@Confused_caterpiller They may have a flywheel as part of their design, but they are actively generating energy rather than using the stored kinetic energy.
7:12 or, you could have enough coils to cover the whole arc of the pendulum, which is a very slippery slope towards just building a generator
Pendulum moves fastest at the bottom therefore voltage would still change
@Jiglias fair point but it would definitely flatten the curve
The challenge is to get as close as possible, but never there.
Make a steam engine generator of it, producing >>400V
@Nishye501in 3 weeks?
Everybody was waiting for the ElectroBoom "Full Bridge Rectifier " 1:26. Missed opportunity there Tom😂
Came here to say a little Mehdi pic in the corner during that sentence would have been just perfect!
. It would have been epic.
And he had the spark generator right there! Could’ve easily caused a minor injury.
Maybe there’s a B roll of oops
Huge missed opportunity for a big fun engineering RUclips community moment.
Absolutely. Highly disappointing, I was this close to unsubbing
*Отличный проект Том! Добавь к этому маятнику заводной механизм как у часов и можно получить очень ёмкий накопитель энергии ;-)*
Use a boost converter
>pendulum as battery
>look inside
>capacitors
hmmm
all jokes aside, great video!
He should make a bike that you can easily put into a kickstand, like a motorbike, and pedal it to charge a supercapacitor, and then use that energy to ride up steep hills. Going downhill, of course, mostly charges up the supercapacitor again. No paved path or road would be too steep to bike up.
@FLPhotoCatcherhe already kind of made one in that analogue e-bike video
@FLPhotoCatcherI’ve suggested similar but have gotten 0 feedback on it.
The pendulum itself is the battery, the capacitors are to smooth the intermittent conversion of energy from the pendulum
Dudes invented a digital grandfather clock.
The pendulum in a grandfather clock is just for timing, not energy storage. The energy storage is usually a weight hanging from a pulley
@JasminUwU 🤣
Add a clock spring,add an escapement. You know like a clock.
Pin this comment. That would increase the oscillations and thus give more time of power.
Or a weight instead of a spring.
On a sailboat, mount the 200+ kg Li-ion battery bank on a springy platform. Capture the energy of the bobbing of the boat to recharge the batteries.
Recharge the lift arm with a weight designed on a cam to drop it again to lift the arm every hour
Yeah I wanted to suggest an escapement mechanism too. It solves the “my swing is too small” issue too by letting it run at small swing angles but not requiring the weight to be *on* the pendulum
Nobody knows what magnets are, not even Tom Stanton.
@3:30 just get One or two flute end mills. Now you had 4 flutes and say 4000rpm. With two flutes, you can double the rpm. And then your spindle works just fine.
1:44 Doesn't everyone?
NO
yaa i do
Sure buddy
absolutely no.. 😂
full bridge rectifier 🎉
Electroboom always forgets to say full "WAVE "bridge rectifier
He said the word 🤲🤲🤲
Full wave bridge rectifier
13:40 after that paper plane launch, I can imagine an alternate timeline of renaissance aircraft carriers launching da vinci designs with a trebuchet mounted where the control tower would be 😂
Practical? Absolutely NO, but it would look cool
Does that timeline include inventing the diodes that enables this?
This was so fun!
One of my favorite RUclips engineering projects to date.
One day, if we run out of everything, theyll have a giant one of these on every aircraft carrier
10:49 The 3D printed guidiance arms: ohno
6:42 this is how a lot of roller coaster brakes work.
Ohhhh😮
this is also similarish to how electric car brakes work, except it's obviously not using the center brake rail like a coaster, it's using its motor
And the car is dumping the energy into the battery rather than joule heating the metal.
@jnawk83yeah
13:18 plane launch was the best demo IMO. Seeing the impulse of kinetic energy transferred is more interesting than a normal generator and motor. Also, check the voltage drop on the rectifier diodes, which can waste some of your power.
8:37 the wonders of a capacitor! 😂😂
awesome
2:53. The iron plate giving an easier path to the magnetic field, kind of blew my mind.
Thank you for your videos.
my university had one of those massive pendulums that demonstrated the rotation of the earth. every morning one of the math professors would set up all the balls on little pegs in a circle around the pendulum and then get it started (it was a massive brass ball with a tiny finger to knock the little balls off the pegs over time). always blew my mind that it was so simple to see earth rate (15 deg/hour). you can measure earth rate with a 100k plus ring laser gyro, or just a huge pendulum
Did you have any flat earth nut bags claiming it was all a conspiracy?
@ferrumignis I bet the professor did give it a bit of twist each time he started it, just so it would conform to his agenda.
@Karl-r5jimagine thinking you can manually, consistently, give a small twist to a pendulum so that every day it shows the exact same rotation.
Not to mention that that would not even work. All that would achieve is making the path slightly oval in shape. It would not create the slow rotation you get from the spinning earth. That requires a constant force applied to the pendulum. It's why it's such a great experiment in the first place. Because if you by accident slightly push the ball in the opposite direction from the expected rotation, it would still show the expected rotation over time because the earth did not stop spinning.
And finally, in all likelihood the math professor isn't pushing the pendulum in the first place. Usually whats done is that the pendulum is pulled to the edge and connected to something so that you can just have it release and set it off swinging without outside influence. Precisely to counter arguments like the one your making (plus it helps make sure it doesn't fall short of tipping over a little peg due to not being given a large enough swing at the start of the day)
@Karl-r5j I hope you are making a joke here, so hard to tell these days.
@HildeTheOkayishI thought his comment was funny. You, on the other hand, need to get a life. Imagine writing as many words as you did to “rebut” a joke.
Now attach it to a clock escapement mechanism with a hanging weight for an extra step in energy conversion.
Maybe even a heavy wheel, some sort of.... fly wheel
Would love to see you do a flywheel battery 👍 Great work
Now reverse the circuit to store energy such that the pendulum begins swinging on its own.
Seeing the regenerative braking like that is so cool
There is something cool about seeing the magnet just come to a full stop when it's shorted out.
This is great! I work at a research University and in some of our laboratory buildings we use inertial Uninterruptible Power Supplies (UPS). These are essentially a motor/generator and a massive flywheel that use the incoming electricity to spin up the flywheel and then use the inertia of flywheel to both regulate and back up the entire building's electrical power supply (for a short amount of time, 30-60 seconds). The backup is enough time to start and connect a backup generator so the building never notices the outage.
Lol y’all must be ready at all times to make that happen! Someone just hovering over the Genny vibrating with eagerness
Already done by Tom
@matthewhallman4358 They might also be using a simple current sensor in the incoming power line that tells the generator to start when they lose external power, but a guy sitting there waiting probably makes more sense.
@j@jamesburleson1916l I am just picturing myself attempting it
Brilliant idea 👌🏻 thank you.
one thing to notice in case you don't already know, don't solder the capacitor leads for too long or it can melt the dielectric separator and short the capacitor from inside
Full bridge rectifier mentioned 🗣️🔥
I love how at least a third of the comments is just about the *FOOL BRIDSH RECTIFAIAH* XD
I believe that eddy currents and their resistive forces are how the brakes on many modern roller coasters work. There are no moving parts to wear out or maintain, works wet or dry, etc.
1:29 FOOL BRIDGE RECTIFIER
* electroboom intensify *
this is a really good demo of how regenerative braking works in electric cars
This is perfectly suited for a flywheel system.
You should put the magnets in direct contact with the mild steel plate, the thin layer of plastic serve no purpose and decrease the efficiency!
Except than that pretty interesting concept and nice build as usual!
electro boom be like: FULL BRIDGE RECTIFIER
Hello beautiful girl
instead of all the weight in the pendulum you could add most of it to a clock work ratchet to keep the pendulum swinging at a given displacement for longer.
Or 2 large magnets, 1 on each side of pendulum at the end of swing?
@JUSBCAUZ1that wouldn’t work
@SkilledMTBwhat about electromagnets timed to only turn on when the swing reaches its (not apex, but I can’t think of the appropriate term. I’m not a physicist, or engineer, obviously). I’m sure you wouldn’t end up with more power at the end (thermodynamics and all that) but could you potentially keep the pendulum swinging longer?
I think your getting close to figuring out how flying saucers work.
Working with magnetism and electricity are the closest things humans can get to experiencing wizardry. This was so delightful to watch ♥️
The LED is already a diode (Light-Emitting Diode) would've been cool to build the bridge using those directly.
3:00 ruclips.net/video/lctzxrv6RJU/video.htmlsi=gMPYyKd3kEjzRCar
@NotAnotherSmith123exactly
Make a planetary gearbox winch, hang the load, and while the load is being lowered, the generator will run until the load reaches the floor.
That's called a gravity battery.
well i guess you should wire it in 3 phase, so you dont lose each phase rms
and rather than putting the stator on the lower part like that,
you should put it on the pendulum axle so you don't lose more than 50% of the pendulum rotation
also it will make your wiggly pendulum irrelevant to that wiggle support design
"how many times were you sponsored by a company?"
Tom Stanton: "yes."
Full bridge rectifier sounds like an internet shock video youd see covered by Whang.
Full bridge rectifier ~~~!!!!!
This guy just keeps thinking of cool stuff, I love the videos Tom!
Wtf - I literally just went to your channel to see if I'd missed a video, as the last one was a few months ago. Then you upload one a few minutes later!
This is a cool exercise for getting a tangible idea of how much energy is stored in modern batteries. It's crazy.
I'm a simple man, I see a full-bridge-rectifier, I smash the like button.
i really dig the production quality improvements youre adding like this "pause and explain" keylighting section 04:51
I wish solidworks wasnt so expensive 😩
@NerdSidequests it is unless u want to sell what u make. check out the solidworks for makes, they will give u a free annual liscense
Time to wait for a pendulum generator powered plane!!!
Don't bother
Isn't it like every plane? Just grab it, get some wood and start swinging.
01:15 Connect two generators as you would synchronous motors
When I see how difficult it is to generate a fraction of a watt, it just makes me marvel at solar panels all over again.
Simply Breathtaking !!!!
This is a perfect demonstration of the problem with free energy machines. It's visual and intuitive. You have already shown the swinging pendulum as an intuitive slowly leaking reserve of energy, then shown the faster drain when it's powering a closed circuit. It would be cool to bring it full circle by attempting to discharge it into something that would swing the pendulum, then showing that diminishing loop on time lapse as compared with a time lapse of the pure mechanical pendulum with the circuit open. Then it would be cool to show the heat losses with an infrared camera looking at the bearings, wires, and rectifier.
And start by defining "free energy" ( and also problem, demonstration, ...)
What if if powered an electrolysis chamber with electrolyte HH+(people are pretty sure its potassium hydroxide) , fueling a small combustion engine with collection system on the exhaust that puts water back into the electrolysis reservoir? 🤔
9:23 - Mr. Ferdinand Porsche liked it.
Same with The Old Gang :v
The LED was not lighting up at the beginning because it only allows current to flow one way, not because of AC vs DC. The stroke on the pendulum that illuminated the LED sent the current through in the direction that the diode allows.
Exactly! It wasn't about AC it was about the wrong polarity for led to allow current to flow.
I think the next logical evolution of this idea is a Flywheel battery.
pendulum powered light for backup lighting in power outages seems like an incredibly cool idea.
Make it the size of the big ben
It almost is. Big Ben is a bell. I think you probably meant the Elizabeth Tower.
4:15 Seems like a bistake to use conductive aluminium extrusion pieces in that place right below where the magnet swings, as it acts like a shortcircuited coil, much like the copper cylinder in the beginning. There are an immense ammount of radio wave photons going back and forth between the magnet and the conductor. There are inefficiencies in thier reflection. If the reflection was much more efficient, the magnet itself would be reflected, bouncing away.
You're right about the aluminum, but it's a lot less conductive than the copper and further away so I doubt it contributes meaningfully.
What do you mean about reflection? I'm very confused.
@antonliakhovitch8306 Aluminium, while not as good as copper, is still good conductor. It's quite often used in eddy current brakes. However in this case, the magnet layout should result in more or less linear fields between the magnets, with minimum spilling out. It would be still interesting to test whether the aluminium extrusions don't add some parasitic losses.
The bigger problem may be the coil "core" made from screws. It would be better to use actual ferrite core and glue the coils instead of bolting them together.
Bistake
could you explain the "radio waves" and the reflection? How are they created and what happens to them?
@3:15 coil on each side?
i got the same idea lol😂
There's a lot of cool stuff in here
Watching this feels like sci-fi coming to life
Diods voltage drop is enormous. Probably there are other people suggesting using mosfets
So called Ideal diodes do exactly that, they often come in single package
How does a MOSFET convert AC to DC?
@redfields5070 exactly the same as a diode bridge rectifier. Except there's much less energy loss via heat.
@redfields5070 It is controlled to only be conductive when side A has a higher voltage than C. It often needs some kind of logic to controll it. This results in a voltage drop of around 100-200mV instead of 400-700mV with Schottky or 600-1200mV with regular diodes.
Look up ideal diode controller or ideal diode.
.
Sometimes you do not need a controller, but i highly recommend it. You often do not need one if you just need it reverse polarity protection.
@Eugensson I mean that surely the additional controlling power consumption would probable more than offset any gain here. I haven't looked into it but it seems like using a microcontroller to operate a pencil. We're way into overkill here. If there was any benefit, such as reverse polarity protection, then I could see it.
Whoa! You got sponsered by solidworks. Congrats dude, I hadn't seen a youtuber get sponsored by them before.
I think its pretty neat anyway.
h a c k s m i t h
Ah solidworks that cad program you need to be a multi millionaire to start out with.
This would work on a sailing boat.
It would generate power from the waves while decreasing the boats roll
Where would you put the coils and the magnet? One has to move while the other is stationary. So if you put the coils on the boat, where does the magnet go?
@antonliakhovitch8306 we could try replacing the ocean with ferrofluid?
@888Grim😂
In all seriousness -- I had a friend who worked on wave energy tech. Their lab used buoys anchored to the sea floor, so the rise and fall of the buoy relative to the anchor/rope would generate power.
It's a viable idea, just... probably not on a boat 🙃
@antonliakhovitch8306 That buoy thing sounds like a pretty groovy project, although I'm struggling to imagine a way of scaling it up without causing ecological problems...
...WAY less ecological problems than replacing every ocean with ferrofluid, but still 😛
Pendulum powered rail guns are definitely going in my electro-punk siege weapons folder
FUUU00LL BRIDGE RECTIFIYAAA !!
5:30 please blink
😂❤
Hahahahahahaha
Full bridge rectifier 😂😂
⚡💥
This has made me respect the humble AA battery a whole lot more
You are stranded on a desert island and are only allowed to take one thing with you.
I take Tom Stanton.
Tom, the King of "no one has ever thought of anything like this ever!"
This may as well be magic
Yes. On to the next video.
Looks like a great idea for wave power.
Fascinating and well produced video.
Now build a clockwork mechanism to give a gentle nudge to the pendulum each swing to keep it going.
This was so much fun, thanks👏😄
Missed opportunity for a Mehdi "Full Bridge Rectifier" cut.
Watching all this to power a few LEDs or charge a phone over a week really makes me appreciate electricity
A grandfather clock powered taser.
A fantastic example of how absurdly weak gravity actually is.
Thank you Mr
A pendulum generator is basically a normal full rotation generator that only rotates through partway before reversing direction.
The one time a perpetual motion battery is not fake, you should fully expect Tom behind it.
Great work!
Now make that setup a full circle and make a water wheel.
I love your projects!