71–79 of 79 posts
This dude just reinvented the wheel.
My only question is how effective it actually is. 30% is a lot.
It is patented according to the article. Lot if guessing here how it could/should work, but maybe someone can track a link to the patent first?
It is patented according to the article. Lot if guessing here how it could/should work, but maybe someone can track a link to the patent first?
I tried tracking down the patent, the creator seems to have terminated their application in 2018: https://patents.google.com/patent/GB201703765D0/en
Initially I thought this was some kind of mechanical regenerative braking. I wonder if that's been attempted before. Applying the brakes would wind a spring and bring the bike to a stop. Then applying force to the pedals or manually pulling a lever would release the spring for an assisted start. Edit: Here's some mechanical regenerative braking projects: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yK7fyugbe6o https://m.youtube.com…
Spring regen is hard because you need a very big Spring to store the energy of 80kg of bike at 30mph.
I have trouble making sense of this. What is the mechanism at work here[0]? Is it maybe storing energy that otherwise would be lost (e.g. from shocks, jerks, up and down motion of bike and biker while pedalling?) in the springs to convert it into useful motion, like the Achilles tendon helps humans to walk more efficiently [1]? Being a physicist, the name of the tech ("Weight (Mass) to energy Conversion Technology" […
The video shows elastic potential energy being converted into torque in the wheel as the wheel slides vertically down (due to gravity, without springs). The springs help center the resting state. Yes, it looks to me like it's trying to convert the energy wasted in damping into torque. The effect ought to be more pronounced on bumpy terrain and negligible on smooth ground.
I would mount wheel axis on a small crank and use rotation of the crank to rotate the wheel.
Something like this https://youtu.be/48TdMKCOrmo
Not sure where the springs should come in...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The video shows elastic potential energy being converted into torque in the wheel as the wheel slides vertically down (due to gravity, without springs). The springs help center the resting state. Yes, it looks to me like it's trying to convert the energy wasted in damping into torque. The effect ought to be more pronounced on bumpy terrain and negligible on smooth ground.
Even on a smooth ground you move your bike up and down as you press the pedals. If you could turn some of that pulsating motion into a torque you could have some gain.
There are these things called "bumps in the road" that redirect horizontal momentum into vertical force. It's why cars and bikes have suspension. What do you think pushes against a gas shock? Vertical force. This wheel captures that force in a spring and dissipates it through torque instead of just compressing gas in a cylinder. I don't see why it wouldn't work. This dude just reinvented the wheel. My only question i…
This article has all the makings of a perpetual motion machine. Those are normally found by using either "springs", "magnets" or a combination of both. There is theoretically a way to use the roughness of the terrain (so the bike going up and down as it rides) to store that energy and then use that for propulsion. When finding a rough spot, the bike trades forward momentum for a vertical impulse, so it might be possi…
I had quick look around and it doesn't seem to be an actuall scam. They have them out in the field selling small batches and there is no telltale 1 million $ kickstarter promising rocket bike powered by solar and wind pressure. This device seems to be capturing a kinetic energy and storing it in the springs that release it to assist/smooth-out peddling? In a test clip a guy pushes down on tire and the lifts the tire…
edit: and while there wasn't a $1 million kickstarter, there was a $60,000 "flexible spend" indiegogo, which is an even stronger telltale for a scam.