IT WORKS! (simple clutch mechanism)

[dbb-the-bruce]

So the digital tach arrived today. A single full wind gets the flywheel up to ~1800 RPM
If I rewind a couple of times while its spinning I can get all the way up to 3K!

Pretty awesome.
I hope to add the ball bearing for the flywheel this weekend. That should greatly increase the amount of time it takes to spin down.

 

[Diecutter]

I haven't done that.... yet. I've been meaning to get one of those point and measure RPM guns, I think it might now be time.

I bought this one recently and use it all the time. It's nicely made, simple to use and accurate. Bought it to find the true spindle speeds of my new triple stepped pulley drive setup. My math skills were just not cutting it to find the speeds.

 

[Superburban]

So the digital tach arrived today. A single full wind gets the flywheel up to ~1800 RPM
If I rewind a couple of times while its spinning I can get all the way up to 3K!

Pretty awesome.
I hope to add the ball bearing for the flywheel this weekend. That should greatly increase the amount of time it takes to spin down.

Interesting, I would have guessed more with the sound in the vid. I would have guessed around 5K.

Have you looked at he balance of the flywheel?

 

[dbb-the-bruce]

Interesting, I would have guessed more with the sound in the vid. I would have guessed around 5K.

Have you looked at he balance of the flywheel?

Not in any real sense, however I turned it quite accurately on my lathe and there is virtually no vibration when it winds up. Most of the noise is coming from the gearing. As I keep mentioning, there is considerable drag between the flywheel and the shaft that it spins on. I did nothing to attempt to reduce friction on that bearing surface. I expected that I'd do it again if it all worked. Right now it is just a tight hole in the ~1/4 thick flywheel spinning on un-polished "blue steel" or pinion wire.

I think adding the micro ball bearing I have to the flywheel axis will make a huge difference. I suspect that as soon as the speed of the drive clutch starts to drop, there is a huge loss in friction that limits how fast it can go. When the clutch is aggressively driving the flywheel, the both are spinning with the pinion wire axle. The ends of which are about .050 and bearing against cylindrical holes in the frame plates (1/16 brass).

In a real clock work, one would start with undersized hole in the frame plates and open them up with a tapered reamer from both sides until the pinion/axle fit perfectly. This method provides a very low friction bearing surface as there is very little contact between the axle and the tapered hole.

At least that's my understanding of clock works. I have no idea how well that would work or how long it would last at speeds of 3K.

I'm going to add the ball bearing first and then go back and try to reduce friction in the rest of the gear train. The gearing is also quite (relatively) loud. I used the cutters I have ( 20 deg pressure angle) for the large gears and the small gears are only 6 tooth and cut on a CNC machine. I deliberately chose to have the pinion gears low tooth count - just to see how it would turn out and to get the largest gear ratio I could.

We will see, this has been a lot of fun and leaning. Sooner or later I'm going to just move on.