Einstein
Temporal Engineer
- Messages
- 5,400
It's been a while since I've done any further experimentation with this device. I had it out last week and was observing operation. The intermediate gears on the ZTG were starting to get a little wobbly. So I decided to convert them over to ball bearing mounted. I found a guy on eBay that had the size I wanted. 10 bearings for 10 dollars. I just needed 4, but that price was very attractive. Since previously I've been getting ball bearings out of a place in Florida called Boca Bearing for 5 dollars each. The eBay guy had them in my mailbox in 2 days with free shipping. A couple hours of machine time and everything was all back together with the added benefit of much quieter operation.
About a month ago I decided to make a custom tachometer for the ZTG. I only planned on taking one week to do that project. But it wound up taking two weeks. The LED digit displays I initially chose to use were the wrong kind. Which I didn't find out till after I had made a circuit board with everything all mounted. I found a guy on eBay that had some nice blue 1" LED digit displays for an attractive price. 10 digits for 11 dollars. In my mailbox in 5 days. I was impressed at the output intensity of the LED displays. I was using 20ma for the old displays. These displays give out plenty of light at just 10ma per segment.
So then I needed to make a custom speed sensor assembly to mount on the ZTG. It was just a photo diode type. But making the sensor ring was more work than I had hoped for. Initially I just used a wood disk with 20 slits in it to create the on-off pulses of light. But it was too flimsy. It lasted 3 minutes before it started to lose teeth. So I had no choice but to make that disk out of metal. That was a bit of a challenge. The disk was only 1/16" thick. I knew it could be done. But at the time I didn't know how. It took some creative thinking to figure out how to do it. I wound up making a sandwich of wood-metal-wood blank disk to start with. Then a slitting saw was used on my mill to make the window slots on the metal disk. The extra wood on each side of the metal disk gave the thin metal disk extra support during the cutting operation, so the metal wasn't torn to shreds as it was being cut. I was impressed with the final result. Of course it took a whole day to get there.
The end result was to watch the ZTG speed in Hertz as it spins up through its range of operation. Just watching the ZTG in conjunction with the Hertz frequency meter gives a little bit more information about its operation. As I increased power initailly to the ZTG, I could see on the meter that the speed seems to hover around 6.8Hz even though I am still increasing power gradually. Then a slight increase to 7.2Hz, then back down to 6.8Hz. At which time there is a sudden surge, and the frequency reading rapidly increases. The same behavior is visually noted with the ZTG. It starts rotating one way, then reverses direction and surges with its speed. This is like a wave phenomena. It goes from a standing wave to oscillating briefly.
I made a video of the ZTG operation.
About a month ago I decided to make a custom tachometer for the ZTG. I only planned on taking one week to do that project. But it wound up taking two weeks. The LED digit displays I initially chose to use were the wrong kind. Which I didn't find out till after I had made a circuit board with everything all mounted. I found a guy on eBay that had some nice blue 1" LED digit displays for an attractive price. 10 digits for 11 dollars. In my mailbox in 5 days. I was impressed at the output intensity of the LED displays. I was using 20ma for the old displays. These displays give out plenty of light at just 10ma per segment.
So then I needed to make a custom speed sensor assembly to mount on the ZTG. It was just a photo diode type. But making the sensor ring was more work than I had hoped for. Initially I just used a wood disk with 20 slits in it to create the on-off pulses of light. But it was too flimsy. It lasted 3 minutes before it started to lose teeth. So I had no choice but to make that disk out of metal. That was a bit of a challenge. The disk was only 1/16" thick. I knew it could be done. But at the time I didn't know how. It took some creative thinking to figure out how to do it. I wound up making a sandwich of wood-metal-wood blank disk to start with. Then a slitting saw was used on my mill to make the window slots on the metal disk. The extra wood on each side of the metal disk gave the thin metal disk extra support during the cutting operation, so the metal wasn't torn to shreds as it was being cut. I was impressed with the final result. Of course it took a whole day to get there.
The end result was to watch the ZTG speed in Hertz as it spins up through its range of operation. Just watching the ZTG in conjunction with the Hertz frequency meter gives a little bit more information about its operation. As I increased power initailly to the ZTG, I could see on the meter that the speed seems to hover around 6.8Hz even though I am still increasing power gradually. Then a slight increase to 7.2Hz, then back down to 6.8Hz. At which time there is a sudden surge, and the frequency reading rapidly increases. The same behavior is visually noted with the ZTG. It starts rotating one way, then reverses direction and surges with its speed. This is like a wave phenomena. It goes from a standing wave to oscillating briefly.
I made a video of the ZTG operation.
