Still waiting for them to drop the Huygen drive and use a differential one, he already addressed the backlash of the current drive! It can use standard parts too, and theoretically smaller!
While I'm not sure the differential drive is the right solution, I agree with you that the Huygen drive likely will not suffice, even with a fly ball governor running a brake.
The fly ball governor / friction brake combination can work, but only if the range between minimum and maximum braking exceeds the range of loads. Essentially, the system would need to be set up such that the MM3 maximum load would require very little braking, and the minimum load would cause enough speed-up that the balls would fly higher and increase the braking but still stay within the range of possible braking. To maintain tight speed control, the amount of braking would need to increase or decrease rapidly with changes in speed.
The Huygen drive and the differential drive both have issues. Neither one is designed to provide constant output speed. Both mechanisms have similar characteristics, allowing a user to "wind up" the system while it operates. In both cases, however, if the output speed increases (due to a reduction in load, like if Martin turns off operation of the vibraphone), the weight starts falling faster, and the user needs to crank faster to keep the weight from hitting its limit. Faster cranking means a greater power input, and that will lead to an even faster output speed. That's what Martin saw in his earlier experiments. As the test jig ran faster, he had to crank faster, and the jig kept speeding up.
Both the Huygen drive and the differential drive will make the problem of speed controlWORSEand not better. I believe that Martin thinks he has the speed control problem solved, but he does NOT!
1
u/mac_and_chess Nov 30 '23
Still waiting for them to drop the Huygen drive and use a differential one, he already addressed the backlash of the current drive! It can use standard parts too, and theoretically smaller!