507 Mechanical Movements

(507movements.com)

123 points | by helloplanets 1 hour ago

15 comments

  • akshay_akula 2 minutes ago
    This site is a treasure for anyone who has ever tried to get useful motion out of a small motor. The wish for them to finish the remaining animations is very real.
  • jihadjihad 34 minutes ago
    It makes me want to find a way to boot up The Incredible Machine [0], so many hours spent on TIM and TIM2 back in the day.

    0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Incredible_Machine

  • wowczarek 15 minutes ago
    It's a great collection and exploring it is fun, but it misses on titles / names of the given linkage or movement. It makes sense when you are reading the book [0], but on a site like this where you see the individual item in isolation, a title or name would be helpful.

    0: https://archive.org/details/fivehundredseven00browiala

  • emacdona 40 minutes ago
    Many of these aren't animated... which gives me a great(?) idea for a new AI benchmark: "Animate the mechanical movement at this URL: ..."

    Way more telling that "draw a pelican on a bicycle"

    • worldsayshi 24 minutes ago
      Also, set up formulas for calculating speed, torque, forces etc, of each system.

      Then create a modular simulation library and point and click simulator where all the component variants are covered so that the user can piece new systems together using those components.

  • WillAdams 55 minutes ago
    One of my favourite sites! and an interesting example of that class of sites which are book made into sites with animations/interaction --- the another classic and notable example is:

    https://mathcs.clarku.edu/~djoyce/java/elements/elements.htm...

    Really wish that the folks doing the 507 Mechanical Movements would finish the balance of the animations.

    Curious if folks are aware of other similar text/website combinations which are still extant (many others such as Bembo's Zoo are no longer available, and of course at one point in time, this sort of thing was the province of CD-ROMs such as Leonardo).

  • frnz 17 minutes ago
    The first two examples I looked at (https://507movements.com/mm_016.html and https://507movements.com/mm_015.html) have the ropes partially going in the wrong direction.
  • fifilura 10 minutes ago
    Also, Christopher Polhem was a Swedish inventor who created the "mechanical alphabet"

    https://sketchfab.com/Tekniskamuseet/models

  • mkl 26 minutes ago
    Past discussions:

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10374436, 27 comments 11 years ago.

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26373539, 30 comments 5 years ago.

  • jjkaczor 35 minutes ago
    As a "wannabe" DIY engineer/maker and also in the 3d-printing hobby world, this is a wonderful resource...
  • stoneman24 38 minutes ago
    Well, there’s a book from my past. Got the book to see if I could find a clever way to get high speed, low displacement and high torque from small motors without huge gearing.

    The side project was dropped as life got in the way, but I really enjoyed looking at all the different mechanisms.

  • mklyachman 32 minutes ago
    Honestly, I miss old-style internet sites like this. Nothing fancy, just good niched out information. No 300 MB loads for something that should be simple.
  • herodotus 28 minutes ago
    I would love to see good animations of a differential gear and a detente escapement.
  • bilsbie 19 minutes ago
    This would be cool AI training data.
    • colinhb 8 minutes ago
      It is already in current training data. Both the book and website.
  • mohamedkoubaa 23 minutes ago
    Now imagine if each of them got the ciechanow.ski treatment