A walk down memory lane with a post from Greg Watson. I have to
wonder if he's on the Steorn team??
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Michael Randall wrote:
At 07:02 PM 6/2/97 -0400, Francis J. Stenger wrote:
Rick Monteverde wrote:
Frank -
I think we need to be very careful, these things are very
interesting and
even compelling, but until we've got the thing spinning for hours
on our
workbenches, we might not be any closer than anyone else ever
was. They've
never worked before, AFAIK.
I agree Rick! This evening I set up one of your sawtooth rogues with
12 magnets which I think are identical to yours. (Radio Shack?)
I had 6 magnets on each side of my 12 mm Al rail and my 1.5 inch
steel
ball. The magnets were "piggy-back" with about 1/4 inch overlap.
With the rail dead level I noticed the following:
(Note, this was a tight packing with the magnets in contact and the
inside corner of the magnets clearing the ball only by about 1/8
inch.)
1. The ball would enter from a dead stop and move through 5
null points (blue holes?).
2. The ball would NOT exit but bounced off the sixth null and
oscillated a while - finally captured in one of the nulls.
3. The BALL WOULD NOT START FROM AN INTERIOR NULL POINT!
If I slowly pushed it past a null point, it would settle
into the next one.
4. So, the ball DID traverse to the end IF started in the
fringe
field at EITHER END of the array. (from a stop!)
How did you arrange your sawtooth magnets, like a "V" (see A below)
or a
lamba (see B below)? I tried both and got the "V" design to work,
as I wrote
to Rick. The ball travel from left to right.
/////// \\\\\\\\
A ===o====> worked B ====o====> Didn't work
\\\\\\\ ////////
I get the feeling that if I had a big circle of these sawtooth
configured magnets that THE BALL WOULD NOT CONTINUE TO TRAVERSE.
Linkers of SMOT ramps might try to start the balls from an INTERIOR
ramp. It would be interesting to know if the ball would start
from such
a point! Of course, if an elevation gain is confirmed, I can't see
why a roll-a-round would not close the loop. BUT, IT STILL DRIVES ME
CRAZY!!
In SMOT, I found (and probably others) that the ball will not start
from the
interior of the arrays. It needs to be sucked into the field.
If you reduce the inter ramp linking distance, interior starts can be
done.
The same
occurrs with diagram B above but would not traverse more than 5
magnets in
the array. But with diagram A, the ball only needs to be in the
array to
start and would not start if outside the field. This is big
difference and
unique that the ball can start anywhere in the array field and will
always
travel toward the end (toward the right in A diagram).
I agree that it is MOST IMPORTANT to try to replicate Greg's results.
If he's right, then we need to REMODEL physics!
Frank Stenger
Hi Frank,
If you have the time you might want to try the V array. I did it by
flipping
the array over and putting the ball inside the field to start it
moving. I
hope this helps.
This also gave me a break from my SMOT unit. In the linking of two
ramps I
need Blue tack or something to hold the arrays in place and for
adjustments.
I'm still having problems in the two ramp mag arrays physically
linking and
need to fasten them so they don't interfer with each other. It is
challenging though. :)
Best Regards,
Michael Randall
Hi Michael,
Sounds like you are using different polarity arrays.
SN SN
SN SN
SN SN
NS NS
NS NS
NS NS
instead of
SN SN
SN SN
SN SN
SN SN
SN SN
SN SN
In the first arrangement, the arrays from two linked SMOT ramps will
attract each other and in the second they will repel each other.
The lower array arrangement is the one I use for linking. However I
have experimented with the first, but not too far as the magnets from
both arrays attract each other and lift off the side magnet supports.
Using the first arrangement, I got much better linking results, the
second linked ramp actually assists with the ball climbing the first
ramp. But I went back to the second as I thought it would cause less
problems overall.
But hey, experiment with the first system. Just devise a way to hold
the magnets to the magnet supports. Blu-Tack ......... why didn't I
think of that!
Greg
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Horace Heffner
http://www.mtaonline.net/~hheffner/
