Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

homestead - [Homestead] The Three Pillars of the Fluid Power Revolution

homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Homestead mailing list

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: "WILLIAM JONES" <billj AT harborside.com>
  • To: <homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Cc:
  • Subject: [Homestead] The Three Pillars of the Fluid Power Revolution
  • Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2012 03:05:59 GMT

I've mentioned all these devices, so we might as well make it official.
1.   The Spiral Manometer
Also called the Wirtz pump or Belcher pump, it just consists of a spiral of
hose submerged partly in water, so that the plane of the spiral is held
vertical.  At the wide end of the spiral there's usually a little jug that
allows it to collect water each time the hose dips under the water.  This
plug of water moves along as the spiral turns, forcing the air collected
between dips into smaller and smaller spaces, and also sucking in a new dose
of air with each revolution.
The Spiral Manometer allows us to turn motion into pressurized air and water. 
They are easily separated by gravity.  Few people can make a cylinder/piston
combo to do the same thing, but any child can make a Spiral Manometer!
The Spiral Manometer concept can be reversed to turn pressurized water or air
into motion (as in the proposed Wirtz bike), but it has to fed air and water
alternately, which requires a little extra hardware.
2.   Displacement Pumps
The Stauffer pump is one type of displacement pump.  Basically compressed air
is used to pump water, and the meniscus where the two come together serves as
a perfectly fine piston, as long as it remains level.
It's quite possible to do the opposite, to use pressurized water to compress
air.  Later I'll be talking about the details of using a hydraulic ram to
compress air to higher pressures than is practical with a Spiral Manometer.
3.   Buoyancy Engines
I first started wondering about this when I took my basketball into the pool
when I was a kid.  I mistakenly let it go right under my face, and it hit me
hard right in the nose.  Everyone has seen a Buoyancy Engine in action, right
down at the pet shop.  The "bubble wheel" that's so commonplace is yet so
poorly appreciated.  It requires very little pressure to force the air to
such a shallow depth.  Once in place, the air (and thus energy) is stored
more-or-less permanently in place.  It can be made to produce any desired
level of torque, just by making the the float larger.  But like the Spiral
Manometer, it must never be made to run fast.
Buoyancy Engines come in two types.  The bubble wheel is an "open-float"
Buoyancy Engine, since it just jettisons the charge of air with each
revolution.  The new heat engine I've been talking about is a "closed-float"
Buoyancy Engine, since the air is reabsorbed back into the blackbottle.


  • [Homestead] The Three Pillars of the Fluid Power Revolution, WILLIAM JONES, 07/25/2012

Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page