Hacker Read top | best | new | newcomments | leaders | about | bookmarklet login

Yep. And boats and CNC machines do with with circular spinny things that use centrifugal force instead of a physical cleaning element.


sort by: page size:

Do you mean centrifugal?

Yes but centrifugal forces on the simle “rotating fluid” equivalent are too strong and require a costly casing when compared to an equivalent solid flywheel. What they do is they use the rotating part as a pump to push the fluid up a vertical pressurized storage and the pressure there plus the potential energy of the fluid store the energy in a more manageable matter than having it all in the fluid speed

Centrifugal force is a common one: https://xkcd.com/123/

I wonder if centrifugal forces are useful for anything. For example, would there be any benefit in pressing battery cell plates closer together?

I remember seeing a device that used flywheels to “generate lift” and I couldn’t help but noticing it involved counterrotating units, meaning that where they approached each other they were both spinning the same direction (up or down, I don’t recall which). I thought, “I bet this doesn’t work in a vacuum chamber”.

Later I remembered rotor ships. He essentially stood a complex one on its ear, and made some math errors that backed up his discovery.


And if you spin very rapidly, centrifugal force applies.

Yes, but that's using an external actuator, rather than weights that pull the blades to their new angle.

You spin them to create “gravity”, which is really just centrifugal force.

Oh yes, that's true! In Europe they are also used when there is not enough space for purely front loaders... nevertheless they still spin around horizontal axis.

Most things that can be spun clockwise can also be spun counterclockwise.

Why is centrifugal force still a thing?

What's your theory on how they lubricate the spinning parts?

Not much new here, just scaling down the production of centripetal force.

> The engineer lies down on a metal platform that looks like a hospital gurney, part of a machine that engineers call a short-radius centrifuge. After a quick countdown, the platform begins to rotate around the room, first slowly and then faster and faster.


Except as artificial gravity or pumps or geared robotic arms or automatic doors or … I think we’ll have rotary motion for some time to come.

No. But if you have any centrifuges they will probably exhibit inconsistent behavior.

Isn't this a job for a mechanical system, like a rotor mounted off axis with a counterweight?

It seems more likely that a mechanical engineer would end up using a slip ring, so the computer doesn't need to spin.

A spinning rotor immersed in the flow. Like a water wheel.

Sure it does! Anything rotates if you apply enough force.
next

Legal | privacy