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:
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).
If you haven't checked it out before, Nicholas Rougeux often does these types of modernization conversions for older printed content: https://www.c82.net/
Yes, I'm familiar with his work --- it's very nice, but it's not the on-line and animated/interactive thing I was trying to describe/specify/ask about.
Also, set up formulas for calculating speed, torque, forces etc, of each system.
Then create a modular simulation library and point and click simulator where all the component variants are covered so that the user can piece new systems together using those components.
For me it's a great dataset to train my own brain. This way when I'm in the field and need to come up with a fix for something I can query my intellect and come up with a solution. No accounts, internet connection, or compute needed!
That's a good training set for animation AIs. Image generators are terrible at mechanical understanding at the moment. That needs to be fixed.
AI videos of steam trains make a horrid mess of the engine linkages. Some wheels rotate in the wrong direction. Wheels rotate on stationary locomotives.
Just keeping rails in parallel is beyond many Stable Diffusion type systems.
Trackwork with switches is just rails all over the place. Some videos can't even keep the train wheels on the track.
Pseudo-historical AI generated videos on machinery related subjects are awful. I saw one recently on rolling mills. There are blatant errors. Some rolls are turning in the wrong direction. Useless rolls facing sideways to the direction of slab travel. Gears that don't do anything. Steel entering rolls headed for the roller, not the gap.[1]
That's for a rolling mill, which is a large but simple machine. AI misunderstanding of things with moving parts is even worse. There's now more AI slop about historical machinery in search results than real-world content.
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.
Good times. Ever played Sid & Al's Incredible Toons [0]? Same same concept, from the same people (Sierra / Dynamix), but with a slightly different take and an emphasis on silliness / humour. A sound card was a must though.
This so much! What great games, probably my favorites over the early FPSs of the time, but in close contention with Day of the Tentacle and Monkey Island
The developer for TIM made a modern version called Contraption Maker that is a lot of the same feel and available on Steam. There is a free playable demo that plays well on my 16G M1 Macbook Air. Full version is $12.99 USD
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.
They both look fine to me. But I do notice some weird aliasing effects in the animation that makes it difficult to identify the direction of fast moving rope. Maybe that's the problem?
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.
These things don't have names they have descriptions of how they work. But I see your point that some of them are described only in reference to another movement with a more complete description.
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.
There was a youtuber who built each of these mechanisms one by one but he passed last year. Does anyone remember those videos? I looked but couldn’t find them again.
For those who also haven't seen it before who might follow: the presenter (who demonstrates the mechanical mechanisms) lost his wife to a heart attack in 2024, kept the channel going for another 1.5 years, made a seemingly happy 'My Last Video' video that presented the end as just running out of new things to talk about, then he killed himself.
This is great, but repetitive. A lot of them are minor variances on a previous example. Is there a shorter list that distills it down to novel examples of the major concepts?
86 comments
[ 1.3 ms ] story [ 33.0 ms ] threadhttps://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).
e.g. here's a very beautiful reproduction of Euclid's elements https://www.c82.net/work/euclid
Way more telling that "draw a pelican on a bicycle"
Then create a modular simulation library and point and click simulator where all the component variants are covered so that the user can piece new systems together using those components.
AI videos of steam trains make a horrid mess of the engine linkages. Some wheels rotate in the wrong direction. Wheels rotate on stationary locomotives. Just keeping rails in parallel is beyond many Stable Diffusion type systems. Trackwork with switches is just rails all over the place. Some videos can't even keep the train wheels on the track.
Pseudo-historical AI generated videos on machinery related subjects are awful. I saw one recently on rolling mills. There are blatant errors. Some rolls are turning in the wrong direction. Useless rolls facing sideways to the direction of slab travel. Gears that don't do anything. Steel entering rolls headed for the roller, not the gap.[1]
That's for a rolling mill, which is a large but simple machine. AI misunderstanding of things with moving parts is even worse. There's now more AI slop about historical machinery in search results than real-world content.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItWeqMpDpkk
https://beta.mindcast.com/3d-mechanicals/
The sandbox was originally intended for video game effects, but it works for these, as well.
---
Original sandbox source: https://github.com/majidmanzarpour/threejs-vfx
Original samurai source: https://github.com/achrefelouafi/SamuraiThirdPersonTemplateT...
The side project was dropped as life got in the way, but I really enjoyed looking at all the different mechanisms.
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Incredible_Machine
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sid_&_Al's_Incredible_Toons
https://store.steampowered.com/app/241240/Contraption_Maker/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10374436, 27 comments 11 years ago.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26373539, 30 comments 5 years ago.
Five hundred and seven Mechanical Movements - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41579354 - Sept 2024 (5 comments)
507 Mechanical Movements (1868) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26373539 - March 2021 (30 comments)
Five Hundred and Seven Mechanical Movements - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19968114 - May 2019 (147 comments)
507 Mechanical Movements (1868) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10374436 - Oct 2015 (27 comments)
Mechanical Movements, Animated - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8019787 - July 2014 (1 comment)
Five Hundred and Seven Mechanical Movements - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6230363 - Aug 2013 (66 comments)
Five Hundred and Seven Mechanical Movements (1868) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5660770 - May 2013 (25 comments)
0: https://archive.org/details/fivehundredseven00browiala
Mechanisms in Modern Engineering Design: A Handbook for Engineers, Designers and Inventors by I. I. Artobolevsky.
In 5 volumes and seven books
https://mirtitles.org/2018/10/13/mechanisms-in-modern-engine...
https://sketchfab.com/Tekniskamuseet/models
https://507movements.com/
https://507movements.com/mm_001.html
https://507movements.com/mm_414.html
https://youtube.com/@thang010146
Its great, but also pretty tragic.
For those who also haven't seen it before who might follow: the presenter (who demonstrates the mechanical mechanisms) lost his wife to a heart attack in 2024, kept the channel going for another 1.5 years, made a seemingly happy 'My Last Video' video that presented the end as just running out of new things to talk about, then he killed himself.