Kirk commented that I could hang the Gravity Light from the attic and let the weights drop into the basement.\u00a0 Problem is I don’t have a basement, and my attic isn’t much bigger than 3 feet (1 meter).\u00a0 I wouldn’t gain enough to make it worth cutting a hole in my ceiling.\u00a0 One guy once told me that his friends and he dug a hole in his back yard.\u00a0 I don’t think I want to go to all that work.<\/p>\n
My latest brainstorm is to make two ramps, each with a two wheeled ‘cart’, with one much heavier than the other.\u00a0 The carts would be tied to the rope.\u00a0 The length of travel could be 1.4 times longer if the ramp was at 45 degrees.\u00a0 If the ramp was at 30 degrees, the length would be longer but the weights would have to be much heavier. It would probably require a pulley at the top of each ramp.\u00a0 But then things start to get expensive, like building the ramps, and it’s more complicated.\u00a0 As the system gets more complicated and has more mechanical points, there is more loss from friction and more points for wear.\u00a0\u00a0 And the ramps take up a much larger area.<\/p>\n
Then I had another brainstorm.\u00a0 I could make the rope an endless loop.\u00a0 I then would move the lighter weight from the Gravity Light to the floor, and move the heavier weight from the floor to the Gravity Light.\u00a0 One problem I have is to get the splice in the rope to be very small, so that it will pass through the Gravity light just like the rest of the rope.\u00a0 I’m not sure that I could do it without some form of mechanical joint, and then I don’t know if the joint will go through without a problem.<\/p>\n
Another brainstorm I thought about is to use the heaviest weight that is filled with water.\u00a0\u00a0 At the bottom of its travel it would trip a valve that lets out the water into a container.\u00a0 The weight becomes so light that it resets itself to the top of its travel.\u00a0 The container is manually lifted up and poured back into the weight.\u00a0 This could be extended to a system that runs off a small amount of running water.\u00a0 I once knew a guy who had a tiny spring coming out of a crack in his back yard.\u00a0 The amount of water may have been only a few cupfuls a minute, but over time it could be held in a reservoir and then used to power one of these lights.<\/p>\n
I thought about several other ways to do the job, from a water wheel to a few more mechanical schemes.\u00a0 But they all require more materials and are more expensive, and possibly more unreliable.\u00a0 The trick is KISS, keep it simple, stupid.\u00a0 That way, the contraption stays somewhat idiot-proof, at least until a bigger idiot comes along…<\/p>\n
The sun will soon be setting and it will be Christmas Eve.\u00a0 So have a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Kirk commented that I could hang the Gravity Light from the attic and let the weights drop into the basement.\u00a0 Problem is I don’t have a basement, and my attic isn’t much bigger than 3 feet (1 meter).\u00a0 I wouldn’t gain enough to make it worth cutting a hole in my ceiling.\u00a0 One guy once <\/p>\n (Read More…)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[141,12,34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-free-energy","category-led","category-renewable-energy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rustybolt.info\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rustybolt.info\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rustybolt.info\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rustybolt.info\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rustybolt.info\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9063"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/rustybolt.info\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9063\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9065,"href":"https:\/\/rustybolt.info\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9063\/revisions\/9065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rustybolt.info\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rustybolt.info\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rustybolt.info\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}