New Radial Spring Engine.

[ImaPirate]

Made this engine this morning, the idea came from watching the pistons move on my ( crappy ) 12 cylinder radial engine. Involves a circle that, bound so it only faces one direction, moves around within a case with as many negatively damped springs as a person wants.

I've never seen anybody else build one like this, so I'm hoping this is something original.

The engine runs quite stable on my machine, but it has a few hitches now and then, I'm still working on it.
Also, the engine with the prop takes a fair bit of time to get up to speed ( the prop is heavy and doubles as a fly wheel ) so give it time, and watch the plot of the moving circle.

RadialNegSp­ring

ImaPirate

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I hope it's somewhat liked.. Cheers.

Edit: Side note: I've been running on sim.frequency = 1000, though the engine does seem to function fairly well at 100.

[daniels220]

That's certainly a novel design for a spring engine. It's hard to say, though, whether it really improves on previous radial designs. The biggest problem with radial spring engines is their strong tendency to cause uncontrollable rotation of whatever they're mounted to, and this one seems to be no exception. I built one that might not have had that problem (but I might not have ever freed it up), and then one that did, so I dunno.

It is fairly powerful and stable, though, and it requires no additional "dampers" to keep it stable, like bare-bones rotaries do.

All that said, I think there's a lot more use in negative-length engines, which tend to run much more smoothly and completely sidestep the problem of torque on the body of the car. Thanks to Conundrumer for the idea, and then I've been messing with different configurations to get more power out of them—it's quite possible to make them as strong as a 350Nm/600RPM motor.

[ImaPirate]

I myself have never attempted negative length, I shall investigate it. ^_^ as for the uncontrollable rotation, I'm "attempting" to fix that with a counter rotating disk. I built a different spring engine before this, with two disks that both spin on the same axis ( they are stacked ) and linked with a spring. Both disks are free to turn where they wish, but with a negatively damped spring they would turn in opposite directions ( usually ). The problem with that one was that it would spin at insanely high speeds and eventually shoot off into the next galaxy. It was extremely powerful, and stable at lower speeds, but I failed to find a good method of channeling the energy output of both disks and controlling speed.

[ImaPirate]

Ive looked at Conundrumer engine, and disassembled it and examined it until I could make my own. I succeeded in making a similar working engine, but I have no bloody clue how or Why it works! Any enlightenment would be nice.

[RA2lover]

Phun beta 4 had an exploit like this.

the things affected by it had a reduced/null gravity affecting, and could be used as thrusters. only patched part on it was the use of springs at the same body. different bodies don't count. Conundrumer used that exploit.

[daniels220]

Check out this scene for an example of negative-damping springs under control:

New stable spri..​..impler controls

daniels220

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And this one for what can be done with bigger engines and a better transmission:

Spring car with very stable engines

daniels220

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Those engines aren't linked, so they can end up turning in opposite directions, which is Bad. But the rest of the car is better.

You'll notice one distinguishing feature of all those engines, which is that they have two circles hinged to the outside of their rotors. Those are what keep the engine stable. Somehow, they provide a consistent, stable damping force—through airfriction, perhaps, or just some sort of bizarre, glitchy "hinge-stretch drag"—that keeps the motor speed-limited. You might try that on your crazy-motor.

As for how negative length engines work... The springs don't have to be negative length, actually. They just have to be under an extreme amount of tension. Combined with the stretchiness of hinges, they amplify motion, but in a much more controlled way than negative damping. Maybe as the rotor starts to spin, the hinges stretch a little, which unbalances the spring force in the direction the rotor is already moving, which makes it turn faster...etc. But then at very high speeds, the damping effect of the hinges kicks in and the motor stabilizes.

The enormous advantage of these, as I said above, is that all the forces are internal to the engine. They don't push against anything outside themselves, the way the drive springs on a negative-damping engine do, and so they don't cause cars to flip.

I'll make a thoroughly tuned one and post it soon, without all the gearing down that surround's Conundrumer's, so you can see more how it works.

[ImaPirate]

Well, I got negative length somewhat figured. Here is my second attempt at a negative length engine, AND centrifugal clutch.

NegativeLen­gthExpandin­gRotor

ImaPirate

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The fact that the drum was done with CSG makes it kind of rough, and the unit tends to bounce if used to drive something, and when it bounces it stops. This is not a great setup, but I like the idea of an expanding wheel.

[daniels220]

It is a neat idea, and if it worked well it would address the biggest problem of spring engines, namely their lack of torque. If the engine gets too overloaded, it slows down, the clutch drops away, and the engine gets a breather.

That engine is very complex for very little gain, though—much more powerful engines can be made with far fewer parts, even neglecting the clutch. Here's one such—my best so far (forgive the default colors, I have no intention of personally using this in anything that needs to look good):

Powerful negative-le­ngth spring engine

daniels220

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[ImaPirate]

Simplicity always win. ^_^
I always go for complexity.

[Gryphen]

Most of of my scenes are spring engine powered.

[Imaginer1]

This is a really good motor. Well, motors. Now I want to make one, just I lack the creativity.