oh wow, I always wondered how they weren't constantly tapping and ruining the drives. Escpecially now that they have three servos on those arms for the super precise positioning needed for the high density of information. thanks for sharing that!
@@mikepettengill2706 this of course means that normal hard drives can't operate in a vacuum. Though there are now hard drives that are totally sealed and filled with helium.
Back in the day - we had a guy come in and wash the platters on our disk-pack. On. Another machine a CD Cyber something-or-other you could see the bits on the memory boards. They were wound torroids.
After working 43 years as a physicist, I still find this stuff fascinating.... I am now a amateur machinist .. great to see your skills combined with Steve’s
Well I have learned as a machinist and amateur physicist (or is that arm chair physicist?) The two careers go together like peanut butter and jelly, white on rice, and chocolate covered everything. It's only a shame that the two are not intertwined at the university level.
it's a good one. I subscribe and keep the bell on and then have to keep checking my subscriptions directly and occasionally go to Ox Tools page directly to check for stuff that I haven't seen. You can't rely on the algorithm to show you all of any channel, it is up to something or failing at something, I can never tell.
That is an absolutely fantastic piece of very old engineering. As a point of reference, there has been a 2.25 ton K/M bearing in constant use... since 1912, with virtually no maintenance. It has an estimated life of 1300 YEARS. Amazing stuff.
Thanks. The one thing I wished Steve would have done, was, spend more time on the unit. This you did for him. I love custom fabrication, and people with talented hands.
The engineers and scientists of the world would be hopeless and helpless without people like you who can create the precision tools they need to do their work. Don't sell yourself short.
Well, talking about that intro.. I really do apreciate you sharing all of your knowledge! I have learnt a lot from purely observing what you do and how you do it, I don't do metal working, rather woodworking, but still I learn a lot about layout, measuring, cutting tools etc (a lot more as well!) Cheers :)
Great stuff. I work in the Hydro Power industry, and we have similar bearings (oil not air, and 100x bigger) that support more that 600 tons while rotating 300+ rpm. Great to see this demo and teach others the power of hydrodynamic bearings. The machine shop guys get mad when you ask to get a 20 inch bearing pad to 100 micron flatness tolerance, but we get 150 (0.5 mil).
Really cool. I’m a machinist for Kingsbury. We use a very similar model to demonstrate the principles behind our thrust bearings to customers. It was nice to have this video to show my wife what these bearings do on a fundamental level.
Absolutely mesmerising. What fantastic workmanship. I unfortunately have the hands of a bling elephant so construction of such an obviously versatile device will for ever be beyond me. But I will watch this again and again. As soon as I saw it working a million different ideas flashed in my head. I am in awe of your skill. My father used to be just like you. If he were here I’d give him the plans and he’d make it for me. Even just from the point of view if a classroom demonstration tool, I can tell it’s one of those things that would kindle the imagination of a teenager, or anyone really, to the point of choosing a career in hand machining tools. It’s a craft that is under appreciated and in danger of vanishing. Everyone just thinks that some autonomous robot in Japan is the only what’s such precision can be achieved. I’ll be sharing this video with my students. Just brilliant. Thank you.
This is a cool demonstration of a hydrodynamic bearing. Same principle that prevents metal to metal contact in the rotating parts in an engine. It's NOT oil pressure that does it, it's the hydrodynamic bearing effect that keeps the metal from touching even with hundreds or thousands of pounds of force.
Here from Steve Mould's channel. I think I am really gonna enjoy your videos, I enjoy machining videos and science so this should be a great combination. Also sounds like you have an amazing job, building things for scientific test seems like it would be challenging and exiting.
Beautiful! Love all the details that went into the rod with the flags, knurled tightener and everything. Looks like an interesting cross between modern tech and vintage science.
That’s how they hang hydroelectric generator/turbine units. Most often submerged in oil with jacking ports in the pads to get the film started. Cool stuff.
My career has revolved around tilting pad and fluid film bearings from design, to manufacturing and installation. The first one of these air bearing models I saw was one made by Kingsbury and given to Westinghouse when Westinghouse was still an empire, my boss had it in his office at that time. The other one I saw was a few years ago in a display case at Kingsbury in Philadelphia. They were used as demonstrations and educational pieces almost 100yrs ago. I’ve been fascinated by these bearings for decades, do some reading on the history of Albert Kingsbury.
@@oxtoolco I can share a few cool pictures with you. Most of the photos from inside suppliers shops I can’t though. Bearings we’re making right now are 10’ diameter.
i work at a waste water treatment facility. as part of our treatment process we have large industrial blowers. they consist of basically a giant centrifugal supercharger that spins at roughly 15k rpms. they supposedly spin on an air bearing. one example of a real world application. cool video.
The company i work for make the pads out of Carbon Fiber reinforced PEEK for use in large vertical pumps. The pads don't need to be lapped as the "woven" surface of the carbon fiber creates 100s of air pockets. Plus the ductile nature of the PEEK means that once the rotary motion stops the shock loading of the disc/shaft/pump impeller etc is absorbed.
Tom, One of the best example I could compare that, would be the heads of an Hard Drive, they float above the surface of the platters where the data is saved. Thes platters turns at 5400, 7000 or 10000 rpm to make the heard floats above each of the surfaces. And if the platters slow down or stop with the lost of power and the heads are not in the park position, the head will land on the surfaces and create a lock, in some cases, that could prevent the platter to turn in some cases. In the past with those big computers the hard drive platters were between 18 to 24 inche in diameter and when the heads would land on them they crash and leave gauge on the surfaces. That's why parking the heads was important then with those monster computer drives and in the early days of the PC hard dirves.
The most accurate gyroscopes (with the exception of the Gravity B Probe cryogenic devices) have hydrodynamic gas bearing rotors. These instruments can measure relative inertial motion in the angstrom to sub-angstrom level. The Hubble Telescope utilizes several of these devices designed to stabilize the optical path to a particular object in inertial space for hours or days at a time. These single axis fluid floated gyroscopes are made of a ceramic material (typically Aluminum or Beryllium Oxide) for high hardness and excellent mechanical stability and have rotors that rotate at 19,200 RPM. All critical mechanical surfaces are machined at the micro-inch level. And yes, I have been down that rabbit hole. www.stsci.edu/itt/review/2gyro_handbook/c03_gyroscopes2.html
My issue is to watch the build vids next or Steve's vid next. EDIT: I watched Steve's video and I should have watched the build video. Perhaps some learned something from the other but for me it was pretty elementary. I do however think I will enjoy Steve's presentation style, seems like a great host with a fair bit of knowledge
I always knew about engine bearings working on this principle and is amazing in itself. But I'd never, ever, thought this was possible with just natural air. Wow... Thanks for sharing!
Very very cool. This reminds me of the lathe on Dan Gelbarts channel built with air bearings. Fascinating stuff. They never wear out because they dont touch. How people on YT get 27million views rubbing sticks together to make fire compared to people like Tom demonstrating these sort of scientific oddities is beyond me.
Tom, thanks for posting all of your videos! I have been able to learn so much from you and other TH-cam creators who are passionate about metal working :-)
Reminds me on the internal disks in a hard drive. If you have an old one maybe you can convert the disks into air bearings avoiding polishing to the nano meters.
Not a physicist but have stayed in a Holiday Inn, this whole enchilada has a very Tesla Turbine feel to it. What would happen if you lapped the pivot/contact areas to the same precision.. Enlarging the center pivot diameter might allow that surface to function as a bearing surface as well, reducing drag and extending the spin time.
Wow, that's an amazingly non-obnoxious continuity checker! The air bearing is pretty cool too :) (Ok, the air bearing is way cooler, but I can put the idea of a non-obnoxious continuity checker to immediate use)
I bet the reason it slows down so quickly when you apply the down force is the friction between the contact finger and the spindle - rather than somehow compromising the air bearing itself.
Would it be possible to have a rip cord wound around that brass shaft so you could really get it spinning? Does a higher RPM affect the load the bearing can take? Thanks for all the cool vids and knowledge sharing Tom.
I love your channel and watch everything with joy. You have got me started on precision lapping in ways I didn't know existed before. For that I am grateful. But do you really need to do the full resume at the beginning of each episode.
Will be cool to get the math and design involved in a real orifice air bearing PIco style... there is not too much out there Tom. Only guy sanding graphite.
yet another one here from the collab. mind you i very much agree with the entire ethos of the channel as frankly machinist and on tool knowledge is just too vast to be efficiently passed on through apprenticeship and I've always been kind of existentially annoyed at the implied and very real loss of knowledge as folks pass on. got a seriously debilitating sleep disorder so I'll likely be binging a few of these, love the minimal fanfare in your style here so thats probably a subscribe in a few vids. im hoping the lapping ones really catch the questions that a few folks won't give you a straight answer about because apparently saying "I don't know" is scary to some folks. i would love to see some attempts to miniaturise some of the key machines for precision work as many good milling machines and the like are just completely out of the realms of possibility without a very large dedicated machine shop.
I once heard an engineer involved in hard disk drive design and manufacture talk about how the heads “flew over the surface” of the spinning disk platters. The same principles apply. He said it was “like flying a 747 10 feet off the ground.”
Thank you. I made the mistake of leaving a few gauge blocks in the elecro-optics lab together over the weekend when i was in school. They never separated again. Oops. My professor was pissed. I guess I wasn’t listening the day he talked about that.
Hello, When the "octo" detector show conductivity, is there a place where I could focus an air compressor to give it a lift? The idea is to keep it running as long as possible.
Is there any way that we could do an experiment to prove that when the blocks are "ringing" together as they fall off they produce a small electrical charge or discharge? And also would they ring together if they were made out of different materials? Could you have made the rotating bearing faces or pads out of a material such as glass and still have this phenomenon work?
Was wondering if this could work with a simpler build,,as in two plates precision lapped round plates and simple holes drilled in to induce air from underneath ?? my interest is in a diy record player turntable air bearings...
Crazy idea: since this bearing consists of two very flat conductive surfaces very close together, in theory you could measure how high it is floating with electrical capacitance. I have no clue what order of magnitude it will be, if a normal DMM’s capacitance range can handle it. This and a tachometer of some sort will let you get a rotary speed/floating height relationship for further study.
@@oxtoolco Tom, very interesting that this actually worked. That is higher capacitance than I expected (I was thinking picofarads maybe). How much is the height affected by rotational speed?
@@dennischertkovsky8871 I didn't notice any difference with rotational speed. The capacitance was fluctuating a bit then started to change rapidly as the speed decayed. I'll have to do it again a few more times to have confidence in the measurement. Cheers, Tom
Hi Tom. 8:08 About these stones. I am familiar with this concept. But I thought that they should be made on a surface grinder. And I have no access to it. Can i ask for instructions, how to lap them by hand?
I make them by hand lapping them on a fixed abrasive diamond flat lapping plate called a Ablap. You can actually do a decent job with silicon carbide paper on a surface plate. Cheers, Tom
Great video! Can't wait for the build video.
Same
Where is the link?
Great collaboration! Never thought I would see you two combining your forces! 😅
Part 1 of the build videos: th-cam.com/video/xpwtpCnh1R0/w-d-xo.html
Incidentally, this is how hard drive heads 'fly' over the disk surface.
oh wow, I always wondered how they weren't constantly tapping and ruining the drives. Escpecially now that they have three servos on those arms for the super precise positioning needed for the high density of information. thanks for sharing that!
@@mikepettengill2706 this of course means that normal hard drives can't operate in a vacuum. Though there are now hard drives that are totally sealed and filled with helium.
Back in the day - we had a guy come in and wash the platters on our disk-pack. On. Another machine a CD Cyber something-or-other you could see the bits on the memory boards. They were wound torroids.
and they fly as low as 3 nm away from the surface according to some dude on wikipedia, which is even more amazing
you read my mind James. Top man
After working 43 years as a physicist, I still find this stuff fascinating.... I am now a amateur machinist .. great to see your skills combined with Steve’s
Well I have learned as a machinist and amateur physicist (or is that arm chair physicist?) The two careers go together like peanut butter and jelly, white on rice, and chocolate covered everything.
It's only a shame that the two are not intertwined at the university level.
Oh SHIT this is a collab with Steve Mould, talk about worlds colliding, so cool man
Talk about a surprise collab. Love to see it
And a really great video from both sides! Wish it happened more often.
blew my mind. assumed it was a crazy coincidence to start with...
Linked here from Steve Mould's video, didn't realize I was already subscribed to this channel.
it's a good one. I subscribe and keep the bell on and then have to keep checking my subscriptions directly and occasionally go to Ox Tools page directly to check for stuff that I haven't seen. You can't rely on the algorithm to show you all of any channel, it is up to something or failing at something, I can never tell.
That is an absolutely fantastic piece of very old engineering. As a point of reference, there has been a 2.25 ton K/M bearing in constant use... since 1912, with virtually no maintenance. It has an estimated life of 1300 YEARS. Amazing stuff.
Thanks. The one thing I wished Steve would have done, was, spend more time on the unit. This you did for him. I love custom fabrication, and people with talented hands.
The engineers and scientists of the world would be hopeless and helpless without people like you who can create the precision tools they need to do their work. Don't sell yourself short.
Well, talking about that intro.. I really do apreciate you sharing all of your knowledge! I have learnt a lot from purely observing what you do and how you do it, I don't do metal working, rather woodworking, but still I learn a lot about layout, measuring, cutting tools etc (a lot more as well!)
Cheers :)
Thanks for continuing to educate people, this kind of work is required to keep a smart, engaged, and enthusiastic next generation.
You know what, it is my first time here.
Thank you for that introduction.
Great stuff. I work in the Hydro Power industry, and we have similar bearings (oil not air, and 100x bigger) that support more that 600 tons while rotating 300+ rpm. Great to see this demo and teach others the power of hydrodynamic bearings. The machine shop guys get mad when you ask to get a 20 inch bearing pad to 100 micron flatness tolerance, but we get 150 (0.5 mil).
Really cool. I’m a machinist for Kingsbury. We use a very similar model to demonstrate the principles behind our thrust bearings to customers. It was nice to have this video to show my wife what these bearings do on a fundamental level.
This would be an awesome science fair project for a kid!
Absolutely mesmerising. What fantastic workmanship. I unfortunately have the hands of a bling elephant so construction of such an obviously versatile device will for ever be beyond me. But I will watch this again and again. As soon as I saw it working a million different ideas flashed in my head. I am in awe of your skill. My father used to be just like you. If he were here I’d give him the plans and he’d make it for me. Even just from the point of view if a classroom demonstration tool, I can tell it’s one of those things that would kindle the imagination of a teenager, or anyone really, to the point of choosing a career in hand machining tools. It’s a craft that is under appreciated and in danger of vanishing. Everyone just thinks that some autonomous robot in Japan is the only what’s such precision can be achieved. I’ll be sharing this video with my students. Just brilliant. Thank you.
Thanks Steve Mould, I like this guy already!!!!!
Tom Lipton has forgotten more than most of us will ever know. Guy is a living legend.
I honestly have no clue what that would be used for but it is probably the coolest thing i have seen in awhile.
This is a cool demonstration of a hydrodynamic bearing. Same principle that prevents metal to metal contact in the rotating parts in an engine. It's NOT oil pressure that does it, it's the hydrodynamic bearing effect that keeps the metal from touching even with hundreds or thousands of pounds of force.
Absolutely love your videos. So much skill, and so much intelligence, and yet you remain down to earth and humble. Really awesome stuff.
I have used some air lift rotary tables on the big HBM's before and you can move parts weighing 20tons or more with just your fingers. Pretty cool!
I have often been envious of those things... as well as envious of floors flat and smooth enough to use them on, even if i didn't have them! ;D
Here from Steve Mould's channel. I think I am really gonna enjoy your videos, I enjoy machining videos and science so this should be a great combination.
Also sounds like you have an amazing job, building things for scientific test seems like it would be challenging and exiting.
Tom, you and Robin never cease to amaze me.
amazing how the physics are so capable of impressioning us more than anything else.
gathering from your brief introduction, You are an exemplary awesome human specimen, sir!
Very nice video and I am impressed by the beautiful bearing and your craftsmanship. I look forward to seeing the rest of the series!
Beautiful! Love all the details that went into the rod with the flags, knurled tightener and everything. Looks like an interesting cross between modern tech and vintage science.
Thanks! Over from Steve's channel
That’s how they hang hydroelectric generator/turbine units. Most often submerged in oil with jacking ports in the pads to get the film started. Cool stuff.
Thanks Tom!!! Wow that works way slower thin I thought it would. Thanks for sharing.
My career has revolved around tilting pad and fluid film bearings from design, to manufacturing and installation. The first one of these air bearing models I saw was one made by Kingsbury and given to Westinghouse when Westinghouse was still an empire, my boss had it in his office at that time. The other one I saw was a few years ago in a display case at Kingsbury in Philadelphia. They were used as demonstrations and educational pieces almost 100yrs ago. I’ve been fascinated by these bearings for decades, do some reading on the history of Albert Kingsbury.
I would love to see some of the early Kingsbury stuff.
Cheers,
Tom
@@oxtoolco I can share a few cool pictures with you. Most of the photos from inside suppliers shops I can’t though. Bearings we’re making right now are 10’ diameter.
8:45 beautiful tool Tom. Hey those stones have a wonderfully soothing sound when you rub em together don't they
as soothing as nails on a chalkboard...
I was so confused when I saw your and Steve's video about the same thing in my notifications. Great collab
I had to subscribe to see the build video. Thank you Steve Mould for showing me this channel.
i work at a waste water treatment facility. as part of our treatment process we have large industrial blowers. they consist of basically a giant centrifugal supercharger that spins at roughly 15k rpms. they supposedly spin on an air bearing. one example of a real world application. cool video.
The company i work for make the pads out of Carbon Fiber reinforced PEEK for use in large vertical pumps. The pads don't need to be lapped as the "woven" surface of the carbon fiber creates 100s of air pockets. Plus the ductile nature of the PEEK means that once the rotary motion stops the shock loading of the disc/shaft/pump impeller etc is absorbed.
Tom, One of the best example I could compare that, would be the heads of an Hard Drive, they float above the surface of the platters where the data is saved. Thes platters turns at 5400, 7000 or 10000 rpm to make the heard floats above each of the surfaces. And if the platters slow down or stop with the lost of power and the heads are not in the park position, the head will land on the surfaces and create a lock, in some cases, that could prevent the platter to turn in some cases. In the past with those big computers the hard drive platters were between 18 to 24 inche in diameter and when the heads would land on them they crash and leave gauge on the surfaces. That's why parking the heads was important then with those monster computer drives and in the early days of the PC hard dirves.
The most accurate gyroscopes (with the exception of the Gravity B Probe cryogenic devices) have hydrodynamic gas bearing rotors. These instruments can measure relative inertial motion in the angstrom to sub-angstrom level.
The Hubble Telescope utilizes several of these devices designed to stabilize the optical path to a particular object in inertial space for hours or days at a time. These single axis fluid floated gyroscopes are made of a ceramic material (typically Aluminum or Beryllium Oxide) for high hardness and excellent mechanical stability and have rotors that rotate at 19,200 RPM. All critical mechanical surfaces are machined at the micro-inch level.
And yes, I have been down that rabbit hole.
www.stsci.edu/itt/review/2gyro_handbook/c03_gyroscopes2.html
Hi Jerome. I'll add another branch to the rabbit hole diagram. Thanks for the link!
Cheers,
Tom
My issue is to watch the build vids next or Steve's vid next.
EDIT: I watched Steve's video and I should have watched the build video. Perhaps some learned something from the other but for me it was pretty elementary. I do however think I will enjoy Steve's presentation style, seems like a great host with a fair bit of knowledge
that was great work.. very nice demonstration kit..
mr Mould also does a great job in educating us :}
stay safe everyone, have fun when possible
Wait don't you mean have fun, stay safe whenever possible? I think I would enjoy my take a bit more :)
@@skizzik121 :}
I can't wait for the build series.
I love your commitment to your ideals! Thank you for an awesome video!
I always knew about engine bearings working on this principle and is amazing in itself. But I'd never, ever, thought this was possible with just natural air. Wow... Thanks for sharing!
The read/write head on a hard drive floats on a film of air that's dragged around by the disc.
@@massimookissed1023 haven't watched the whole video yet but that looks a lot like a hard drive platter.
Very very cool. This reminds me of the lathe on Dan Gelbarts channel built with air bearings. Fascinating stuff. They never wear out because they dont touch. How people on YT get 27million views rubbing sticks together to make fire compared to people like Tom demonstrating these sort of scientific oddities is beyond me.
That is really super cool for sure.
Very nicely done Tom! I love rabbit holes please keep them coming! The engraved OxTools logo is awesome
ATB, Robin
Hi, Steve sent me over great work on the bearing!
This is a perfect bearing to build a pulse motor.
Tom, thanks for posting all of your videos! I have been able to learn so much from you and other TH-cam creators who are passionate about metal working :-)
I've been watching both of you for quite some time. It's great to see the collab!
that was amazing. I have to watch that again until I understand what is going on.
This may be the way to make the perfect record player.
wow 10lbs of force and still spinning
..amazing
thats a pretty cool demo!
Fascinating! Thanks Tom.
I have the exact same octopus thing! I've had it since I was super young and used to play with it! Though mine made a weird noise when turned on
Came here from Steve Mould.
intro was a great idea, because this sounds *fascinating*!!!
so excited to learn from you!
+sub!
I came from Steve ! This is cool
5:30 That so cool . Well done!
You guy's videos are separated by one other video in my feed. Good timing
Supervideo. Fascinating doesn't even start to describe it... :)
Thanks Tom👍
i think it would be super cool to graph the total amount of time that the light has been on over time. might have a cool result!
Very cool! You probably could have a surplus silicon wafer polishing machine near you with a very similar air bearing.
Hi Tom,
An interesting video... thanks for sharing, I am off to checkout Steve's channel now.
Take care
Paul,,
Great collaboration
I work at kinsbury bearing, making these every day. Quite interesting to see other peoples experiences.
Reminds me on the internal disks in a hard drive. If you have an old one maybe you can convert the disks into air bearings avoiding polishing to the nano meters.
Machine Tech also has a video about hydrodynamic bearing. Defininetly worth checking out.
Got to love an air bearing!
That's pretty cool!
Outstanding! Thanks for posting!
oh why didn't me think of that, a gyroscope for demonstrating the gliding effect of scraped metal surfaces 😁👍
Not a physicist but have stayed in a Holiday Inn, this whole enchilada has a very Tesla Turbine feel to it. What would happen if you lapped the pivot/contact areas to the same precision.. Enlarging the center pivot diameter might allow that surface to function as a bearing surface as well, reducing drag and extending the spin time.
Wow, that's an amazingly non-obnoxious continuity checker! The air bearing is pretty cool too :) (Ok, the air bearing is way cooler, but I can put the idea of a non-obnoxious continuity checker to immediate use)
Steve Mould says I can learn to make stuff in this channel, so here i am.
I bet the reason it slows down so quickly when you apply the down force is the friction between the contact finger and the spindle - rather than somehow compromising the air bearing itself.
I agree. The center pivot and the contact arm are significant sources of friction in the assembly.
Cheers,
Tom
That's so awesome. Love the collab!
now that is cool, thanks for the video and lesson..
My world of science channels meets my world of machining channels.
Would it be possible to have a rip cord wound around that brass shaft so you could really get it spinning? Does a higher RPM affect the load the bearing can take? Thanks for all the cool vids and knowledge sharing Tom.
I love your channel and watch everything with joy. You have got me started on precision lapping in ways I didn't know existed before. For that I am grateful.
But do you really need to do the full resume at the beginning of each episode.
So when you do a collaboration with a big TH-cam channel like Steve's the potential for attracting new viewers is high.
Regards,
Tom
wish there was a build video
Will be cool to get the math and design involved in a real orifice air bearing PIco style... there is not too much out there Tom. Only guy sanding graphite.
When it comes to precision, no one can match your tolerance.
yet another one here from the collab.
mind you i very much agree with the entire ethos of the channel as frankly machinist and on tool knowledge is just too vast to be efficiently passed on through apprenticeship and I've always been kind of existentially annoyed at the implied and very real loss of knowledge as folks pass on.
got a seriously debilitating sleep disorder so I'll likely be binging a few of these, love the minimal fanfare in your style here so thats probably a subscribe in a few vids. im hoping the lapping ones really catch the questions that a few folks won't give you a straight answer about because apparently saying "I don't know" is scary to some folks.
i would love to see some attempts to miniaturise some of the key machines for precision work as many good milling machines and the like are just completely out of the realms of possibility without a very large dedicated machine shop.
This is super cool.
I once heard an engineer involved in hard disk drive design and manufacture talk about how the heads “flew over the surface” of the spinning disk platters. The same principles apply. He said it was “like flying a 747 10 feet off the ground.”
@@JackHudler There is a whole class of aircraft based on this principle, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground-effect_vehicle
@@JackHudler The ekranoplan is a pretty cool example of that. Curious Droid has a nice video about it th-cam.com/video/x22nVFTd8nI/w-d-xo.html
lovely gizmo What's it do? I mean besides spin on air ; what applications can it be put to?
How did neither of you ended up calling it an Optopus?! I'm baffled
Thank you. I made the mistake of leaving a few gauge blocks in the elecro-optics lab together over the weekend when i was in school. They never separated again. Oops. My professor was pissed. I guess I wasn’t listening the day he talked about that.
Coming from Steve’s channels
Hello, When the "octo" detector show conductivity, is there a place where I could focus an air compressor to give it a lift? The idea is to keep it running as long as possible.
Thank you very much for that video and sharing with us thank(rabbit hole) experience!
Can you please tell me what the stone grit number ? Thank you!
Is there any way that we could do an experiment to prove that when the blocks are "ringing" together as they fall off they produce a small electrical charge or discharge? And also would they ring together if they were made out of different materials? Could you have made the rotating bearing faces or pads out of a material such as glass and still have this phenomenon work?
Is there a making of video coming for this ? looks like a fun build not that i could but id love to see the process
Yes. There is a full build series coming out shortly.
Cheers,
Tom
How smooth do the mating surfaces of the tilting pads and the rotor need to be? Do they actually have to be wringing-block-level flatness?
Was wondering if this could work with a simpler build,,as in two plates precision lapped round plates and simple holes drilled in to induce air from underneath ?? my interest is in a diy record player turntable air bearings...
Crazy idea: since this bearing consists of two very flat conductive surfaces very close together, in theory you could measure how high it is floating with electrical capacitance. I have no clue what order of magnitude it will be, if a normal DMM’s capacitance range can handle it.
This and a tachometer of some sort will let you get a rotary speed/floating height relationship for further study.
Hi Dennis,
I did this exact thing. That is how I determined the ride height of the rotor. The capacitance is in the 8000 nf range.
Cheers,
Tom
@@oxtoolco Tom, very interesting that this actually worked. That is higher capacitance than I expected (I was thinking picofarads maybe). How much is the height affected by rotational speed?
@@dennischertkovsky8871 I didn't notice any difference with rotational speed. The capacitance was fluctuating a bit then started to change rapidly as the speed decayed. I'll have to do it again a few more times to have confidence in the measurement.
Cheers,
Tom
Hi Tom.
8:08 About these stones.
I am familiar with this concept. But I thought that they should be made on a surface grinder. And I have no access to it.
Can i ask for instructions, how to lap them by hand?
I make them by hand lapping them on a fixed abrasive diamond flat lapping plate called a Ablap. You can actually do a decent job with silicon carbide paper on a surface plate.
Cheers,
Tom
@@oxtoolco thought I would need something like the three plates method)
Thanks for answer.