Thanks to Mike Shuter, who commented on the previous entry, for sending me his two spreadsheets with Orrery gear ratios and the “continuous fractions” method of determining wheel/pinion pairs. He has permitted me to post them here but please contact “m [dot] shuter [at] ntlworld [dot] com” if you find them useful. Please do not repost without contacting Mike as he is the creator.
Good day
I have been trying to design a mechanism for an orrery I´ve been working on an off for months now, I could make a Copernican orrery and that would be it but I want to have all the planets , including Pluto just for Nostalgia, I just don´t know why you have two sets of gear ratios, I’m imagining it as a more complex version of a copernican orrery with the stacked gears, so I’m grabbing each gear pair (driver and driven) and stacking them , like so http://imgur.com/S33OBrQ Would I be correct in this assumption? if so … which one of the ratios do I use? the one on top or the second in the calculations file.
Also I’m not sure what you mean wheel / pinion pairs I suppose its to calculate accurate speeds,… I did find a mechanism that I want to replicate which is this one http://imgur.com/wd1Grtt, I just observed the orrery till I figured out the motion, altho I really cannot know the gear ratios, do you think I could convert the stacked ones into that one? and do I need the continuous fractions sheet? if so I must admit I have no idea how to use it
Not sure if you could help me with this, if you have time and are willing of course.
Thank you.