I should have been more clear, I was talking about consumer applications like home solar installations. The thought of homeowner installation and maintainance of such destructive potential is frightening.
We put them in busses and semi's in energy capacities that would be useful in homes, but I'm pretty sure the economics for a quality, self-contained unit at the house level isn't there. But it always surprises me the stuff that we have in our houses would require a huge amount of safety training and such in a lab setting.
Scott,
Machinery's handbook has a nice section on the use of flywheels for punches and presses. They have fallen out of favor since OSHA requires safeties to prevent accidental amputations. Hydraulics are easier to release a valve if body parts are sensed or if the dual button system is tripped. For wheel presses you can build up speed on the wheel and then engage a clutch. Today it allows a small motor to build up momentum enough to do huge pressures.
In days of old where an overhead rotating shaft was used to distribute power flywheels really came into their own. A water wheel, a shaft, a few bearings, leather belts and flywheels really were a huge step forward almost completely forgotten today. But there still are some belt systems in use.
The first lathe I regularly used was modified to have an individual electric motor from a overhead shaft system. The belt was still leather. From the date of manufacture it seemed it was modified when pressed into service to produce pieces for WWII. The main bearings were bronze and still good in the mid seventies when I used it. Apparently it was always properly lubricated. I have seen modern equipment retired due to worn out main bearings. (Talking gear that costs well over $100,000.00!)
Machinery's handbook has a nice section on the use of flywheels for punches and presses. They have fallen out of favor since OSHA requires safeties to prevent accidental amputations. Hydraulics are easier to release a valve if body parts are sensed or if the dual button system is tripped. For wheel presses you can build up speed on the wheel and then engage a clutch. Today it allows a small motor to build up momentum enough to do huge pressures.
In days of old where an overhead rotating shaft was used to distribute power flywheels really came into their own. A water wheel, a shaft, a few bearings, leather belts and flywheels really were a huge step forward almost completely forgotten today. But there still are some belt systems in use.
The first lathe I regularly used was modified to have an individual electric motor from a overhead shaft system. The belt was still leather. From the date of manufacture it seemed it was modified when pressed into service to produce pieces for WWII. The main bearings were bronze and still good in the mid seventies when I used it. Apparently it was always properly lubricated. I have seen modern equipment retired due to worn out main bearings. (Talking gear that costs well over $100,000.00!)
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Funny you mention fusion. My favourite auntie gave me a popular science book for a Christmas present in 1964. It was a collection of articles from a Pommy publication. There were articles on lasers (an 11 year old's dream), hovercraft (SRN-1), deep sea research and a long story about nuclear fusion. Back in 1963 (the date of publication), fusion generated electricity was thought to be only 20 years away. It's STILL 20 years away.....
Funny you should mention it didn't a few of us have a conversation years ago about how every table saw would soon be the one that self destructs every time it senses human flesh. I see SawStop is still around but they have some quality problems (the fences are not square) and I have yet to see one, but they have simplified the reset.
EDIT - It's actually a classic story, they tried the GFCI* route but time seems to be running out on their patents. After talking to some colleagues over the holidays it seems there is a movement to make all autonomous vehicle AI software open source and openly shared by all manufacturers. An interesting change.
*The GFCI was patented and agencies were lobbied to make them required by code while the patents were in force hence the consumer was often hosed (a 15A mains breaker was $50), but I guess in this case no one had anything to lose.
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The insurance companies encourage safer tools. My current table saw has a moving table. The blade is covered by a shield that doubles as a dust collector. If you try you can still hurt yourself bit it is much harder. Also has a safèty to reduce binding and kickback.
The real improvement is that the sheet of plywood is completely supported on the table so it moves smoothly past the blade. As a result you usually are positioned to the side of the wood, not behind it.
But I rarely see new unisaws they really are out sold by the saw stop ones.
But the issue becomes what is my liability if one of my employees cuts off a thumb on an older design saw? One of the guys didn't understand why I spent so much money buying the new saw instead of keeping the old one.
The old one did score a nice scar on my thumb, threw a binding piece of wood through a wall and 120' past it and popped a piece into one of the guys gut. Put him down for a bit. No issues since the new saw.
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Any cites? All the references I have seen to these were never actually built.
"Sorry, this content isn't available right now
The link you followed may have expired, or the page may only be visible to an audience you're not in."
I don't understand neither the utility of this thing.
But his boss is richer (smarter ?) than me ;-)
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There are a couple companies that make them. I have to recall which to find it. They were blue.
Ah yes. the good Old days. No seat belts. No helmets. No life jackets. No guard fences. I worked during the summers in a lumber mill. Open blades on everything that cut wood. They had these huge band saws.... I mean Big. The band was 6 inches wide.... each tooth was about an inch with diamond cutting tip. The band saw was about 12 feet tall above the floor and went down below the floor boards. It took 3-4 minutes to ramp up to full cutting speed. I stood arms length from the cutting band blade taking the boards passing thru it and grading them as fast as they would cut. Fast. I'll never forget that scary job and the sound of the running steel band blades inches from your fingers. Rarely, but every once in awhile the band would burst. The good old days when life was an adventure.
-RM
-RM
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Ah, those are a lot smaller than the ones I had seen. skimming their website seems that each flywheel is around 100kW, cw 8MW for the 1980s JET unit. The units I saw being discussed were large diameter rings (100m or so), which clearly didn't work. This setup is going to be pricey, but when you can charge up on electricity you are paid to take and sell it back at $750/MWh or more the business plan isn't hard.
Big battery plants are getting more press these days.
Big battery plants are getting more press these days.
They are small enough I looked at them for storing energy over night in certain locations that could be solar powered otherwise. Mainly as an interest to avoid the atrocity of batteries.
If you look at the pictures they use a bunch all at once. Which has merits too, because you can scale the efficiency, not using ones you don't need and running the others up to as high as RPM as possible.
But I like the idea of the problems and potential movie plots for having a 1/4 mile wide flywheel that is suppose to store energy but ends up falling into a terrorist plot to over-surge the grid so they can pull off some big plot... and it of coarse ends up with the protagonist somehow throwing or driving something into the flywheel to kill some antagonist goons.
If you look at the pictures they use a bunch all at once. Which has merits too, because you can scale the efficiency, not using ones you don't need and running the others up to as high as RPM as possible.
But I like the idea of the problems and potential movie plots for having a 1/4 mile wide flywheel that is suppose to store energy but ends up falling into a terrorist plot to over-surge the grid so they can pull off some big plot... and it of coarse ends up with the protagonist somehow throwing or driving something into the flywheel to kill some antagonist goons.
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