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How Differential Steering Works (1937) [video]

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Re: How Differential Steering Works (1937) [video]

#21
post #7

It's part of a series for Chevrolet by Jam Handy. The Internet Archive has many more of them. A few: "Streamlines": https://archive.org/details/0142_Streamlines_M7960_09_08_44_... "Down the Gasoline Trail": https://archive.org/details/0542_Down_the_Gasoline_Trail_06_... "What Stops Them": https://archive.org/details/0797_What_Stops_Them_M6850_06_27... "No Ghosts": https://archive.org/details/0797_No_Ghosts_M7860_06_1…

Jam Handy was a national treasure. Another of my favorites from them is "Back of the Mike", a look at how radio dramas and their sound effects were produced:

https://archive.org/details/Backofth1938

Re: How Differential Steering Works (1937) [video]

#23
post #13

The nice thing is, a planetary gearset can do basically the same, and is the building block of automatic gearboxes and Prius power distribution between ICE, electric motogenerator and wheels.

Relevant and amazing link: http://eahart.com/prius/psd/

Did a project based around the Prius PSD in my Mechanical Dynamics and Vibrations class. Very cool, really opened my mind to the power of gears.

Re: How Differential Steering Works (1937) [video]

#24

I wish, in school, teachers would have taught us things like this, how gears are just concurrent levers, how cams introduce asynchronicity to an operation. This is stuff I only started learning from working on and learning about cars. I remember even when I was in school (a good time ago now), they were already killing off shop classes and the like. How sad that schools couldn't see what values classes like that have…

My 7th and 8th grade shop class in the early '60s was a great learning experience. I think I learned more geometry and trig there than in math class. At least more about their practical application.

Of course I found it especially cool because I was shop foreman both years - which meant I got to direct the cleanup at the end of class instead of having to do the cleanup!

The first semester was mechanical drawing, and the second was using the power tools and building whatever we'd designed in the first semester. Whoever scored highest in mechanical drawing would be shop foreman.

It was pretty awesome getting to use drill presses and bandsaws and lathes and all that good stuff as an 11-12 year old.

We did use eye protection, unlike my third grade "special ed for smart and restless kids" class where I told the teacher I wanted to etch a printed circuit board and I needed a tank of nitric acid to do it, and she got it for me! No eye protection back then, I just got to watch the copper dissolve away. (And fortunately, not my eyes.)

Anyway, I think I may have won the shop foreman job because I took great care in erasing cleanly. When you're doing mechanical drawing with pencil and paper and compass and protractor and a French curve and straightedge, a good eraser and that little metal erasing shield are your best friends:

https://www.google.com/search?q=erasing+shield&tbm=isch

That interest in whitespace seems to have carried over into my programming career. I'm a bit saddened by today's popular wisdom that says it really doesn't matter what the whitespace conventions in your code are, as long as you pick some standard and make everyone stick to it now and forever, and if you don't like something about the standard you're just bikeshedding.

I've had the good fortune to mostly work on teams that simply didn't have whitespace standards, so I got to see a variety of styles and learn from them all - which ones helped communicate the structure and meaning of the code, and which ones maybe less so. And also that it really isn't that hard to read code where one person's work has minor variations in spacing from another's.

If I'd been locked into rigid standards all along, I don't know if I would have had the chance to learn any of this.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not talking about sloppy indentation! You gotta get that right. ;-)

Re: How Differential Steering Works (1937) [video]

#25

I wish, in school, teachers would have taught us things like this, how gears are just concurrent levers, how cams introduce asynchronicity to an operation. This is stuff I only started learning from working on and learning about cars. I remember even when I was in school (a good time ago now), they were already killing off shop classes and the like. How sad that schools couldn't see what values classes like that have…

My professor showed this video in one of my first upper division mech eng courses

Re: How Differential Steering Works (1937) [video]

#26

You can buy a Lego differential gear to keep as a desk toy: https://www.amazon.com/LEGO-Technic-Differential-connectors-...

Omg, great! I did it with lego technic back in early 90's (without those new fancy gears) when the simplicity and power of the differential struck me :) The simplicity of the differential is just beautiful !

Re: How Differential Steering Works (1937) [video]

#27
post #19

I wish, in school, teachers would have taught us things like this, how gears are just concurrent levers, how cams introduce asynchronicity to an operation. This is stuff I only started learning from working on and learning about cars. I remember even when I was in school (a good time ago now), they were already killing off shop classes and the like. How sad that schools couldn't see what values classes like that have…

I was in a Soviet school system (it was towards the end). And somehow we had a really fun shop class. We did stuff with electricity. Had a lathe, wood and metal. Remember making our own hammers. Learned to use a coping saw, a wood plane. School was remodeling so they let do demo work. Totally unsafe but loads of fun. Didn't learn about cars much though. We had so many things there that would be considered unsafe and…

> Though interestingly there more encouragement here to play contact sports like football which leads to concussions and injuries.

Better brain dead than Red ;)

Re: How Differential Steering Works (1937) [video]

#28
I like how informative these videos are. Some more of these and I'd feel I could make working toyish automobile. I wonder why we dont get this kind of videos for our time's tech. Maybe computers and especially software are too complex to represent like this?

Re: How Differential Steering Works (1937) [video]

#29
post #26

You can buy a Lego differential gear to keep as a desk toy: https://www.amazon.com/LEGO-Technic-Differential-connectors-...

Omg, great! I did it with lego technic back in early 90's (without those new fancy gears) when the simplicity and power of the differential struck me :) The simplicity of the differential is just beautiful !

FWIW, there was a differential in the lego technic 8865 Test Car from 1988: http://www.technicopedia.com/8865.html I think this was the first model with a differential. At least, that's what introduced me to it.

Re: How Differential Steering Works (1937) [video]

#30
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Omg, great! I did it with lego technic back in early 90's (without those new fancy gears) when the simplicity and power of the differential struck me :) The simplicity of the differential is just beautiful !

FWIW, there was a differential in the lego technic 8865 Test Car from 1988: http://www.technicopedia.com/8865.html I think this was the first model with a differential. At least, that's what introduced me to it.

The 8865 was the first model with a differential. I wrote about being an adult fan of lego[1]. Over time, I purchased all 7 "super cars" that Lego manufactured. One of each car was sold every ~5 years and each one improved the previous generation's already amazing gears, steering, etc.

Fun fact: who is the largest manufacturer of tires in the world?

[1] https://www.facebook.com/notes/alok-menghrajani/afol-adult-f...

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