Author Archives: Manuel Rodriguez-Achach

Marvelous Mechanisms: The Ubiquitous Four Bar Linkage

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The four bar linkage is a type of mechanical linkage that is used in many different devices. A few examples are: locking pliers, bicycles, oil well pumps, loaders, internal combustion engines, compressors, and pantographs. In biology we can also find examples of this linkage, as in the human knee joint, where the mechanism allows rotation and keeps the two legs bones attached to each other. It is also present in some fish jaws that evolved to take advantage of the force multiplication that the four bar mechanism can provide.

How It Works

The study of linkages started with Archimedes who …read more

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How Does a Voltage Multiplier Work?

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If you need a high voltage, a voltage multiplier is one of the easiest ways to obtain it. A voltage multiplier is a specialized type of rectifier circuit that converts an AC voltage to a higher DC voltage. Invented by Heinrich Greinacher in 1919, they were used in the design of a particle accelerator that performed the first artificial nuclear disintegration, so you know they mean business.

Theoretically the output of the multiplier is an integer times the AC peak input voltage, and while they can work with any input voltage, the principal use for voltage multipliers is when very …read more

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Tiny Electric Motor Runs on Power from an LED

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If you were not aware, LEDs can also work in reverse: they deliver tiny amounts of current, in the microamp range, when illuminated. If you look on YouTube you can find several videos of solar panels built with arrays of LEDs, but powering an electric motor with a single 3 mm LED is something that we’ve never seen before. [Slider2732] built a small electric motor that happily runs from a green LED in sunlight.

The motor uses four coils of 1,000 ohms each. Using coils with many turns of very fine wire helps to draw less current while keeping an …read more

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Simple Marble Machine Captivates the Eyes

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Marble machines are the kind of useless mechanisms that everybody loves. Their sole purpose is to route marbles through different paths for your viewing pleasure. They can be extremely complicated contraptions, and sometimes that is the precisely the point. However, even a simple mechanism can be delightful to watch. [Denha] just uploaded his latest creation, using a spring as elevator and a simple zig-zag path.

The construction is relatively simple, a spring with the appropriate pitch for the steel balls size is used as an elevator. The spring is driven by a small electric motor via a couple of gears, …read more

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Unconventional Homopolar Motor

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As a hacker, chances are that you have built a homopolar motor, as you only need three things: a battery, a magnet and some copper wire. There are zillions of videos on YouTube. This time we want to show you [Electric Experiments Roobert33]´s version. Definitely a fresh twist on the ubiquitous design that you see everywhere. His design is a bit more complicated, but the result makes the effort worthwhile.

The homopolar motor was the first electric motor ever built. Created  Michael Faraday in 1821, it works because of the Lorentz force. This force acts on any current-carrying conductor that …read more

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Santos Dumont and the Origins of Aviation

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The history of aviation is a fascinating one, spanning more than two thousand years starting from kites and tower jumping. Many hackers are also aviation fans, and the name of Alberto Santos Dumont may be familiar, but if not, here we talk about his role and accomplishments in the field. Santos Dumont is one of the few aviation pioneers that made contributions in both balloons, airships and heavier-than-air aircraft.

From Lighter to Heavier Than Air Machines

Santos Dumont was the youngest son of a wealthy coffee producer in Brazil. From his earliest years he was fascinated by the machinery of …read more

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The Zimmermann Telegram

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World War I began in 1914 as a fight among several European nations, while the United States pursued a policy of non-intervention. In fact, Woodrow Wilson was reelected President largely because “He kept us out of war”. But as the war unfolded in Europe, an intercepted telegram sent by the German Foreign Secretary, Arthur Zimmermann, to the Mexican government inflamed the U.S. public opinion and was one of the main reasons for the entry of the U.S. into WWI. This is the story of the encrypted telegram that changed the last century.

ORIGIN OF THE GERMAN OFFER

Germany was actively …read more

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Will Supercapacitors Ever Replace Batteries?

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Recharging your mobile phone or your electric vehicle in a few minutes sure sounds appealing. Supercapacitor technology has the potential to deliver that kind of performance that batteries currently can’t, and while batteries are constantly improving, the pace of development is not very fast. Just remember your old Nokia mobile with Ni-Cad batteries and several days of usage before a recharge was needed. Today we have Lithium-Ion batteries and we have to charge our phones every single day. A better energy storage option is clearly needed, and supercapacitors seem to be the only technology that is close to replace the …read more

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Cordless Drill Uses no Electricity

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There are few projects on how to make your own cordless drill, but what sets [Johnnyq90’s] amazing project apart is the fact that his power plant is a nitro engine. Not an easy task of course, but he makes it look easier than it is, and we really enjoyed the construction process.

He uses an RC Kyosho GX12 engine that was previously modified, changing the cooling head with a larger one. The engine drives a gearbox that was taken from another drill. All other parts were hand made. The clutch was carefully machined, and the cooling fan was made in …read more

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Pulsed Power and its Applications

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Pulsed power is a technology that consists in accumulating energy over some period of time, then releasing it very quickly. Since power equals energy (or work) divided by time, the idea is to emit a constant amount of energy in as short a time as possible. It will only last for a fraction of a second though, but that instantaneous power has very interesting applications. With this technology, power levels of more than 300 terawatts have been obtained. Is this technology for unlimited budgets, or is this in reach of the common hacker?

Consider for example discharging a capacitor. A …read more

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