507 Mechanical Movements

WillAdams

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).

emacdona

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"

stoneman24

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.

jjkaczor

As a "wannabe" DIY engineer/maker and also in the 3d-printing hobby world, this is a wonderful resource...

jihadjihad

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

mklyachman

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

I would love to see good animations of a differential gear and a detente escapement.

mkl

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.

mohamedkoubaa

Now imagine if each of them got the ciechanow.ski treatment

bilsbie

This would be cool AI training data.

frnz

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.

wowczarek

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

fifilura

Also, Christopher Polhem was a Swedish inventor who created the "mechanical alphabet" https://sketchfab.com/Tekniskamuseet/models

akshay_akula

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.

stmw

Ineed, it's a very good book. Someone should make an animated website version, though.

pkilgore

414 is just 1 with extra steps.

agrue

Plugging a yt channel that posts lots of these sort of models: https://youtube.com/@thang010146

twobitshifter

Robert Murray Smith made many videos on mechanisms like these https://www.youtube.com/@ThinkingandTinkering/videos

victorbjorklund

Don’t most of these have ”names”? At least I would assume they have names so people know what they are talking about.

amelius

Can these be generated automatically from a small set of primitives?