507 Mechanical Movements

(507movements.com)

169 points | by helloplanets 2 hours ago

23 comments

  • amelius 1 minute ago
    Can these be generated automatically from a small set of primitives?
  • emacdona 1 hour ago
    Many of these aren't animated... which gives me a great(?) idea for a new AI benchmark: "Animate the mechanical movement at this URL: ..."

    Way more telling that "draw a pelican on a bicycle"

    • scrollop 6 minutes ago
      Ironically, before coming to the comments I was thinking this would be a good dataset for llms to learn real world mechanics.
    • worldsayshi 53 minutes ago
      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.

  • victorbjorklund 3 minutes ago
    Don’t most of these have ”names”? At least I would assume they have names so people know what they are talking about.
  • wowczarek 44 minutes ago
    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.

    0: https://archive.org/details/fivehundredseven00browiala

  • twobitshifter 6 minutes ago
    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.
  • WillAdams 1 hour ago
    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:

    https://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).

  • mkl 55 minutes ago
    Past discussions:

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10374436, 27 comments 11 years ago.

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26373539, 30 comments 5 years ago.

  • agrue 12 minutes ago
    Plugging a yt channel that posts lots of these sort of models:

    https://youtube.com/@thang010146

  • jihadjihad 1 hour ago
    It makes me want to find a way to boot up The Incredible Machine [0], so many hours spent on TIM and TIM2 back in the day.

    0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Incredible_Machine

  • frnz 46 minutes ago
    The first two examples I looked at (https://507movements.com/mm_016.html and https://507movements.com/mm_015.html) have the ropes partially going in the wrong direction.
  • akshay_akula 31 minutes ago
    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.
  • fifilura 39 minutes ago
    Also, Christopher Polhem was a Swedish inventor who created the "mechanical alphabet"

    https://sketchfab.com/Tekniskamuseet/models

  • esmoryon 2 minutes ago
    Wow!
  • jjkaczor 1 hour ago
    As a "wannabe" DIY engineer/maker and also in the 3d-printing hobby world, this is a wonderful resource...
  • pkilgore 14 minutes ago
    414 is just 1 with extra steps.
  • stoneman24 1 hour ago
    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.

  • mklyachman 1 hour ago
    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.
  • herodotus 57 minutes ago
    I would love to see good animations of a differential gear and a detente escapement.
  • stmw 25 minutes ago
    Ineed, it's a very good book. Someone should make an animated website version, though.
  • bilsbie 48 minutes ago
    This would be cool AI training data.
    • colinhb 37 minutes ago
      It is already in current training data. Both the book and website.
  • esmoryon 12 minutes ago
    Wow
  • mohamedkoubaa 52 minutes ago
    Now imagine if each of them got the ciechanow.ski treatment