totm mechanical things - piston car

[CAKE99]

 Great work on that design 

Can you add a download?

Also, I gave you your 100th rep point.

[Sharpy]

Impressive. And the steering wheel is merely British style, there I thought it's on the rear.

 

Is it pure pure stock stock, or "Editor Extensions stock" i.e. thing that will load and run in stock game just fine, but couldn't be built, due to e.g. surface attachment of parts that don't normally allow it?

[Gman_builder]

I'm thoroughly impressed with your steering mechanism. Very fancy!

[klond]

On 10/2/2016 at 7:05 PM, CAKE99 said:

Can you add a download?

Also, I gave you your 100th rep point.

 Neat, thanks!  There's a tiny link under the last picture of the very first post.

 

13 hours ago, Sharpy said:

Is it pure pure stock stock, or "Editor Extensions stock" i.e. thing that will load and run in stock game just fine, but couldn't be built, due to e.g. surface attachment of parts that don't normally allow it?

 You may hear Chatterer in the background and VOID might be loaded for RPM meter, but seriously it's all stock - no debug funny business either.  And much of it is snapped, so you can move pieces, and move them back to the exact same position (except if you snap, then rotate multiple parts - snap works funny at a different angles).  Stock maximizes the number of folks who can use my stuff (also why I'm still on 1.1.3) and snapping gives predictable results and makes experimentation easier.  Place, move, rotate, move.  Hold shift for fine granularity.  1,2,3 on keyboard for tool shortcuts to save time.  Good question.

Edited October 4, 2016 by klond

[Jonfliesgoats]

This is really beautiful!  Do you have video of it running?

Just saw the link!  pardon me!

[klond]

 Lil tiny video link in the main posting.  Thanks for watching.  I didn't know at the time how to put the video into the post.

[cubinator]

Great work! Another glorious example of voiding the warranties of dozens of parts! I wonder how long before someone manages to make a stock computer...

[Azimech]

22 minutes ago, cubinator said:

 I wonder how long before someone manages to make a stock computer...

Never. Using stock modules, it's possible albeit incredibly slow. And huge part count. I've made "transistors" and it's possible to build logic circuits with them.

[cubinator]

2 hours ago, Azimech said:

Never.

 

2 hours ago, Azimech said:

Using stock modules, it's possible albeit incredibly slow.

That's a pretty big oxymoron. And I'm not thinking of anything complex like what's possible in Minecraft, I'm thinking *maybe* a very simple calculator. My Rubik's cube is incredibly slow and impractical and unwieldy, but the answer to when someone would make one wasn't "never". Granted, there are a lot fewer people obsessing over running KSP in itself than there are obsessing over running Minecraft in Minecraft, but I still think someone's bound to try it eventually. 

[Azimech]

6 hours ago, cubinator said:

 

That's a pretty big oxymoron. And I'm not thinking of anything complex like what's possible in Minecraft, I'm thinking *maybe* a very simple calculator. My Rubik's cube is incredibly slow and impractical and unwieldy, but the answer to when someone would make one wasn't "never". Granted, there are a lot fewer people obsessing over running KSP in itself than there are obsessing over running Minecraft in Minecraft, but I still think someone's bound to try it eventually. 

A simple mechanical calculator ... there are a few people who have made a first attempt a few years back. Not sure if I would be able to find that stuff. If you're talking digital, it is totally impossible in vanilla KSP. I've researched everything. Colliders don't interact except collision, there is no heat transfer between craft  touching each other, solar panels are borked so light switches don't work, solar panels don't detect the flashlights, the environmental sensors only detect ambience, no output of engines etc. Everything in KSP is not designed for these kind of things although some modules are incredibly flexible. Eventually I used ModuleEnginesFX and ModuleResourceConverter to build the very first sensors and transistors, I use it as the ignition system for my piston engines.

[Baricus]

How exactly do the pistons fire?  I know you have the fuel tank/piston head that is pushed by the engines, but what stroke order did you use to allow you to let all the jet engines run continuously?  I assume that's why you needed a starter rocket engine, so that it could build up the necessary rotational speed to push the piston heads against the thrust from the engines.  I still don't see how you get energy out of that though, as its looks like its pushing on it the whole time.  I know its something simple I'm not getting here. . .could someone explain it to me?

[klond]

 

1 hour ago, Baricus said:

How exactly do the pistons fire?

 The stream of air from the engines is actually pretty narrow, far narrower than the width of the jet engine.  'You don't have to move far to get out of it's way.  I offset the jets and the pistons flop into and out of the stream at mostly the right time by using little antennas as fulcrum pins (idk sounds fancy so I'm going with it).  We haven't yet figured out how to make engines turn on and off at will without mods, so I feel justified using this kind of hokey way of making it work.

 I needed a starter because there's 2 dead spots on each 360 degree rotation.  Top dead center and bottom dead center of the pistons strokes, one of which they all reach at the same time.  No power is made at those 2 points, and some is lost from the pistons transitioning into and out of the stream of air.  Since the engine gets staged at a dead spot it needs a little push to get going.  There isn't a whole lot of extra power after all the efficiency losses (there's a little room for improvement, but I'm gonna leave it alone for now), hence the low low gearing of the machine.  Great question.

 

Edited October 30, 2016 by klond