MecCirc project

Up: ReMec projects

The idea here is to do some scale transposed prototyping of
the mechanical analogs to analog electrical elements (and basic circuits).

It seems this has lesser potential for macroscole co-use
than some of the other of the ReMec projects like e.g.
a concrete ReChain instance of the the ReChain frame systems sub-project.

Mechanical quantities of force/torque and linear/angular speed
being vectorial rather than scalar as in the electrical case
makes sets of standard elements more challenging.
★ It is a bigger design space for the mechanical analogs.
★ It is an additional less or more achievable challenge
… to factor directionality apart from core function
… as is what would be a desired separation of concerns.

Desired standard elements

See: Mechanical-electrical analogies

• capacitors => springs (linear & coil)
• inductors => reciprocative masses & flywheels
• resistors => friction elements (easy for macroscale, interesting for nanoscale, see: snap-back
• transistors => clutches
• transformer => no clean analog
• no clean analog => gear train & sprocket chain transmissions (these work purely linear reciprocative too)
• trivial wire forks => complex mechanical differentials
  incuding: planetary gearboxes, linear recirocative analogs (whippletrees & ZigZag differentials)
• electrical wires => axles and reciprocative struts, both may be in the form of chains to go around corners,
  or use special mechanism for that, like gears or linkages,
  note that purely linear gears exist too (linear reciprocative pseudogears),
  these avoid any nonlinearity but are not used at macroscale due to macroscale-specific friction and wear (probably).
• gyrators => (TODO: what would be the analog there?)

Electic transformers

These mix inductance (reciprocative masses & flywheels) inertia
with the voltage-vs-current see saw (mechanical transmission)
mechanical transmission avoiud that

Gyrators

The idea here is to simulate inductances using capacitors.
That would be useful as masses at the nanoscale to get resonance frequencies down
are huge in volume and atom count. Even when using dense metallic lead or similar.
(wiki-TODO: Find out if that is possible for power too or only for logic.)

Wires

Electrical wires have barely any relevant inductance unless going up to really high frequencies.
Mechanical axles an rods have notable inertia in comparison,
but it is much less an issue for nanoscale mechanics operating at MHz and a few mm/s.
As is is proposed for advanced productive nanosystems.
Which is not following same absolute speeds for smaller machinery
(not choosing operation speed to be scale invariant)
but instead is a deliberate slowdown.

Still much faster than macroscale.
See: Higher throughput of smaller machinery

Related

• Mechanical-electrical analogies

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• Nanomechanic circuits
• Mechanical circuit element
• Mechanical pulse width modulation
• PWM converter & Mechanical pulse width modulation

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• Analogies and their dangers
• Lagrangian mechanics for nanomechanical circuits

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• Mechanical computation

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• Drive subsystem of a gem-gum factory
• Lagrangian mechanics for nanomechanical circuits

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• Energy recuperation

Related mechanisms

• whippletrees & ZigZag differentials … linear analog to mechanical differential and analog to trivial simple electrical forks
• Linear reciprocative pseudogears … wire analogy redirection; partial electrical transformer analogy
• Mechanical springs as energy buffers (Chemospring)