Weights and Gears

You don't have to be an injinear to build a clock. If you can paint you can make a clock from plans and instruction. From there it is only a short hop to making alterations to that you can build just what you need to turn you painting or art work every whichway at whatever speed you desire.

Go here for plans to get started: <http://www.clockplans.com/page2.html>

For more ideas as to what can be done with wood go to:<http://www.tomhaney.com/portfolio_weight.htm>

Hmmm, lemme think.

It's not much of a problem determining what gears to use. If you want to reduce your rotation by half, you choose two gears where one of them has half the number of teeth as the other one. If you need other ratios, you could choose different numbers of teeth or use combinations of gears to get them.

The part where the you have a weight that you crank up and as it slowly goes down, it will drive the gears, is a little problematic. Not that it won't work but I don't think you can get much rotation time out of it. This are not little itty bitty clock hands that you're moving.

I would envision a spring loaded device, much like a wind up toy, though, again, how long you want it to turn per crank is a problem. 'Want to wind it up every 5 minutes?

Artist should be original in content as well as design. Conventional boring squeaky rotating art is out of range for a true artiist.

Please use solar powered state-of-the art high lumen LED lighting of various colors.

Utilize affordable micro-minatrue on-off frequency to simulate rotation and stimulate thought.

Use solar to prove concept of wireless power transmission.

Use LED to prove concept of low power affordable transportable lighting.

Engineers need the invaluable assistance of an artist to prove affordable wireless power generation is presently available. Artistic platforms educate the public, challenge foregone conclusions, stimulate controversal comment, resolve the simplistic concerns. Please Ms Artist, the engineering field has dropped the ball.

Can you please pick up the pace and deliver the ball for the benefit of wo&man kind?

I believe you are asking for a mechanism that has 2 parts. First, a weight driven motor that converts potential enery to motion, IE kenetic energy and the second part is a hand crank mechanism to raise the weight.

Could be many issues such as the size and weight of the art, how do you control the speed of the rotation, how long must it operate before cranking up the weight etc. This would take some mechanical engineering to make a reliable assembly.

Of course any engineer would need to know more info inorder to design such a system.

Using a clock mechanism may work if the art is lightweight and does not require much force to rotate it, but remember the clock is not design to produce any significant torque.

What's slow? Clocks were sometimes built with a governor which amounted to nothing more than a paddle wheel. A dead weight attached to a string and a shaft could be made to turn at a fairly constant speed by adding a paddle wheel (fan) to one end of the shaft. OF course, by use of gears, slower or faster speeds can be obtained. Tooth ratios (number of teeth on one gear compared to another) determine new speeds. For example a shaft turned by a dead weight which has a 10 tooth gear meshed with a 27 tooth gear will result in the shaft to which the 27 tooth gear is attached to turn at a speed which is 10/27 of the shaft which is turned by the dead weight, regardless of speed regulation by a paddle wheel. Look up clocks on the internet -- I'm sure someone has posted pictures to illustrate the actual mechanism.

Your piece of artwork (if not a potter's wheel) is called a grandfather clock. Why don't you buy a movement and study that for ideas--even use it in your sculpture?