totm august 2019 The battery-less movement thread

[dnbattley]

The new same-craft part interaction in 1.7.3 permits a while range of promising possibilities, one of which is battery-free movement using existing stock parts and combining them with a DLC "housing" that moves with the part.

As an example of this, I created a narrow-band scanner "motor" that has no electricity need, and has a very considerable torque.

Although I haven't tested it's full capacity yet, the design is easy to emulate, with two structural plates attached to an unmotorised servo clamping onto a scanner which has been offset into position.

 

I'm hoping that creating this thread will provide a place for fellow travellers to join me in exploring this further and providing a place to investigate the possibility of harnessing other "electricity-free" moving parts, such as air brakes, landing legs and satellite dishes.

[Wjolcz]

Doesn't the scanner itself use EC though? It's just that the EC is not depleting because the clamp keeps generating more than is used.

[dnbattley]

2 hours ago, Wjolcz said:

Doesn't the scanner itself use EC though? It's just that the EC is not depleting because the clamp keeps generating more than is used.

No it doesn't. And having had the opportunity to refine the concept a little further am now pleased to present the "infini-wheel mk1": a stabilised unicycle which, provided it doesn't tip over and remains on land, has no practical limit to its range.

And its brother, the infini-rover:

Edited July 16, 2019 by dnbattley

[dnbattley]

Also, while I have not made any real progress in how to harness this, I note that the expanding airlock both 1) has a large movement, 2) doesn't require electricity, and 3) can be finely controlled by a KAL1000 (e.g. 0-100 "deployment"). The KAL also doesn't require electricity, FYI.

[dnbattley]

Today's updates:

1. Gearing!

2. Flying!

[qzgy]

16 hours ago, dnbattley said:

2. Flying!

Wow thats impressive. How fast is are the heliblades spinning in the last image?

Also if you look around, I think you'll find people have also created flying things using the landing legs kinda like a piston to push a wheel, similar to pre-1.7.3 turboprops. Might be worth a look.

[dnbattley]

Further progress to report:

A stable, perpetual motion, flying machine. It doesn't really "go" anywhere, but gently rises in a (mostly) stable manner.

 

More details on the reddit forum: https://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/cf3efc/craft_file_provided_stock_perpetual_motion_flying/?

48 minutes ago, qzgy said:

Wow thats impressive. How fast is are the heliblades spinning in the last image?

Also if you look around, I think you'll find people have also created flying things using the landing legs kinda like a piston to push a wheel, similar to pre-1.7.3 turboprops. Might be worth a look.

Thanks! Not sure exactly, but they were going pretty fast. It wasn't stable, unlike my more recent offering. Re landing legs: I've been avoiding using any kraken-powered technology where possible.

[dnbattley]

Today's status report:

Made a infini-contra-prop engine. It's not yet producing enough speed to make flight viable, but with a top speed of around 30m/s on a bare-bone set-up it's getting closer

The contra-prop rotor design is actually unrelated to the battery-less movement, and may have useful applications elsewhere.

[Bubbadevlin]

hmm... very cool man! I played around with this propulsion method a quite a while ago, but never got to any appreciable performance with it. It was my attempt at a new form of rotational propulsion, since electric props were still clunky and new. I always found the scanner to be far to slow for most practical applications, and if i tried gearing it too much the scanner would start to slip out of the housing. (though i bet that is much better with proper bearings and interpart collisions) Only things I ended up finding useful for is for steady, reasonable torque but RPM limited applications. 

To that end, i remember only using it in two vehicles that went beyond a rough prototype. The first (and why i originally tried to get this to work) was my second version of a stock walker . I used it because the scanner allowed me to have a steady torque and to keep the legs moving at a constant RPM, even as the load changed. Sadly the craft is completely broken due to the KSP wheel update. (It was using old style wheel bearings for the entire thing). Looking through the thread now, there are some pretty cool creations people made a while back with the tech. 

The other craft which used it was my old school paddle boat. I really only used the engine in there due to already having the sub assembly from the walker, and it was a painfully slow boat because of it. (though thinking about it im pretty sure that a higher RPM engine was causing the paddle wheel to explode) Like the walker, its also broken. 

After those crafts I ended up being much busier with things, and stopped playing KSP for a while.  Afaik nobody else really pursued the idea, and pretty quickly stock electric engines improved well beyond the performance (and reliability) of a scanner. 

 

I also worked on the landing leg propeller thing, havent tested it with  1.7.3 inter-collisions though, and it was pretty buggy/annoying mess of a propulsion method to begin with. While it was possible to make very powerful motors.. they were extremely prone to spontaneous combustion (and for some reason that likely hood was tied to craft mass.. [just to give you an idea to how bizarre the thing was]). The absurd bugginess of landing legs is what ended up making the propulsion form impractical (in my eyes) and I never ended up making use of it beyond a cool test craft. 
 

Again afaik the only person to put the tech to use is @klond, who made some really cool micro helis and planes with it 

[dnbattley]

Cross post from the challenge forums, having now started to explore the battery-less propulsive properties of airlocks...

 

[Pds314]

No battery for active flight. It does have cockpit battery for SAS to get initial airflow and a 1% power mini motor for the sake of making it easier to jumpstart.

I have a version so far that does 200 m/s on no power. Just aerodynamic free energy turbine power. Gearing the free energy turbine might let you do other things.

Edited July 20, 2019 by Pds314

[dnbattley]

5 minutes ago, Pds314 said:

I have a version so far that does 200 m/s on no power. Just aerodynamic free energy turbine power. Gearing the free energy turbine might let you do other things

Amazing! Thanks for sharing this. How does the free energy turbine work? Do you have a craft file you would be willing to share?

[Frozen_Heart]

Not sure if this counts, but I've managed to make something spin without electric power. You can adjust the torque using pistons.

 

Not sure if it's useful...

 

 

[dnbattley]

On 7/20/2019 at 11:39 PM, Frozen_Heart said:

Not sure if this counts, but I've managed to make something spin without electric power. You can adjust the torque using pistons.

 

Not sure if it's useful...

 

 

Very interesting. Thanks.

 

I've also made further progress using my scanner powered engine:

Flight!

In fairness it was more of a long hop than true flight, but if it's good enough for the Wright brothers, then it's good enough for me.

[Pds314]

On 7/21/2019 at 11:49 PM, dnbattley said:

Very interesting. Thanks.

 

I've also made further progress using my scanner powered engine:

Flight!

In fairness it was more of a long hop than true flight, but if it's good enough for the Wright brothers, then it's good enough for me.

Not gonna lie. That's some impressive gearing.

[klond]

On 7/22/2019 at 1:49 AM, dnbattley said:

I've also made further progress using my scanner powered engine:

Flight!

 Might be first scanner plane ever.

[PhylumCnidaria]

Now someone needs to get off of eve without using any power. We have the K-Drives to do it!

[Pds314]

5 hours ago, PhylumCnidaria said:

Now someone needs to get off of eve without using any power. We have the K-Drives to do it!

Hmm. I don't know if lander leg K-drives work nowadays.

[dnbattley]

On 7/24/2019 at 10:46 AM, Pds314 said:

That's some impressive gearing

Thanks! Sadly not impressive enough however: I've been trying and failing to keep speeds reliably over 25m/s after take off, meaning I'm confined to bunny-hopping along the runway for now...

[Pds314]

One way we probably CAN reach Eve Orbit is using Breaking Ground parts to make a magazine for a Landing leg Orion drive, then using something else to spin/extend/retract the magazine that isn't powered. Like say the narrow band scanner shown above.

The especially nice thing is that whatever Moving-3D-Magazine-With-Hundreds-Of-Decouplers you have can be mechanically isolated from everything else. It doesn't experience the direct impact of the fairly substantial recoil.

 

Edited July 26, 2019 by Pds314

[klond]

On 7/25/2019 at 9:18 PM, Pds314 said:

I don't know if lander leg K-drives work nowadays.

 Yep, still valid on 1.7.3.  The ol' blimp still floats and I can spin stuff with legs too.

Still gotta separate the craft old-style.   Wait.  We don't need to separate craft!

 It works for spinning a prop with legs.  Gonna try a k-drive now.  Can't frikken believe it.

Edited July 30, 2019 by klond

[klond]

 Yeah ok, we got one piece k-drives now  

[Ultimate Steve]

Oooo!

How jittery are the K-drives? If they are less jittery than the old ones, well... I may just have to make a K-drive interplanetary mothership...

[Aelipse]

Just a technical question. Does the complex gearing have any influence on the game performance? I would guess that so many parts interacting with each other should be somewhat CPU taxing.

[dnbattley]

43 minutes ago, Aelipse said:

Just a technical question. Does the complex gearing have any influence on the game performance? I would guess that so many parts interacting with each other should be somewhat CPU taxing.

Surprisingly it is not particularly taxing, at least unless you crash. Most of my testing was done on a MacBook Pro 2015...