March 19, 2020
I have been experimenting with the pendulum weight & stops (“planet traps”).
I have increased the weight of the pendulum weights from 8 oz to 1.25 lbs. and made them a bit different shaped (Version 2).
I found that the inner stop/trap is easily accomplished by letting the weight contact the sun gear’s axle and the addition of a movement limiter welded to the planet gear, which keeps the pendulum from swinging too far.
I tried several ways to make an effective outer stop/planet trap, from allowing the weight to hit a fixed stop to using a curved “guard” which limits movement & guides the weight into the correct position for full release. None of the physical contact types had the desired effect as of yet & I do not believe that having the pendulum weight “slip” through a friction brake (as suggested by Roy Thornson) will be much better.
Using a magnetic brake seems to be effective. Using rectangular ceramic magnets from Harbor Freight, 1 magnet is glued to the top of each pendulum (increasing the weight slightly) and 1 or 2 magnets glued or strapped to a 2” wide flat piece of steel which is fastened to the sun gear axle & adjusted approximately 180 degrees from where the weight contacts the inner stop/trap.
Using the solid inner trap & the magnetic outer trap a single rotating assembly actually has enough power to move the unit as well as it did with 2 rotating assemblies.
The next phase will be to “smooth” the movement:
The 2nd rotating assembly ring gear was re-timed to 90 degrees (1/4 turn) out of phase with the 1st assembly. Now the motion is not perfectly smooth but is much less jerky. Perhaps using 4 rotating units each progressing another 90 degrees will smooth it further and allow for forward motion with negligible “fall back” between pulses of power which would allow it to travel up an incline because of decreased “fall back”.
