Agricultural equipment with the strength of the calves!

[Did67]

1) Exercise bikes, I know: cardiac training!

It is a question of "dissipating" a constant power: we pedal, but we produce nothing, no movement. Just an effort. The approximately 100 W produced go into heat!

The more sophisticated models have electronic regulation of the dissipated power (in fact, a variable generator ...) ...

2) I come back to the initial problem:

- or we just want to "smooth" the pedaling, and indeed, an inertia wheel can bring more, without "producing" anything

Note that "pedaling" is itself a fairly "smooth" effort. No real bicycle has an inertia wheel. It is the weight / speed of the cyclist that "smooths".

So, there, yes, on stationary bikes, a bicycle wheel which spins in a vacuum and which carries a few weights will be a "plus".

3) I was at what I thought I understood from the request of Grelinette: to store energy. That is to say, we pedal without plowing, then we plow by pedaling + use of the energy previously stored ...

And there, a flywheel seems to me of little help ... It will be stopped after a few seconds ...

Plowing a board taking a few minutes, rather a dozen minutes!

[Grelinette]

Good evening everyone,

I had reopened the debate but I had not read your comments since ...

Thank you for your scientifically convincing reflections and demonstrations!

Nevertheless .... lately, I have been helping to empty an apartment and I have recovered a kind of exercise bike that makes the legs and arms work, a bit like this one, but less new and less beautiful:


Before going to throw it in the recycling center, I had a little fun with it and I was surprised to see the speed at which I could turn the flywheel. Certainly, in addition to the legs, I also used the arms, and the gesture was quite comfortable even with an adjustable brake and at high speed ...

It is grumbling that your calculations show that the energy acquired, even with 4 cyclists at the same time, will not be enough to plow! ...

[Obamot]

1) Exercise bikes, I know: cardiac training!

It is a question of "dissipating" a constant power: we pedal, but we produce nothing, no movement. Just an effort. The approximately 100 W produced go into heat!

The more sophisticated models have electronic regulation of the dissipated power (in fact, a variable generator ...) ...

- or we just want to "smooth" the pedaling, and indeed, an inertia wheel can bring more, without "producing" anything

Note that the "pedaling" is in itself a fairly "smooth" effort. No real bicycle has an inertia wheel. It is the weight / speed of the cyclist which "smooths".

So, there, yes, on stationary bicycles, a bicycle wheel which turns in a vacuum and which carries a few weights will be a "plus".

3) I was at what I thought I understood: store energy. That is to say, we pedal without plowing, then we plow by pedaling + use of the energy previously stored ...

And there, a flywheel seems to me of little help ... It will be stopped after a few seconds ...

This point is interesting since it leads us straight to think that any cyclist will reach a certain maximum speed of rotation (it will not be very fast and not very powerful, since the fact of turning the steering wheel already requires a continuous expenditure of energy in oneself) speed which it will hardly be able to exceed and which will constitute a kind of "climax of energy that can be stored for a given time"by the system - but just enough to maintain it - and indeed, this is confirmed by seeing that it will only take a few seconds to stop and with very little force applied (I have just tried the experiment) .

The illusion is given by the fact that the effort given by the pedaler is continuous, and that the braked flywheel will stop very quickly as soon as the effort stops: it is even so low that it would hardly allow a plow to come out of its rut!

[Ahmed]

Things seem clear to me: human physical power is limited and all the tricks to use it on materials that only make sense for higher animal or mechanical powers are doomed to failure.

Working the soil with a manual tool is either continuous or discontinuous; the first mode is suitable for superficial work in a soil offering little resistance due to its substance or its state of "dirtiness", the second is suitable for a more compact soil or with more tough weeds, because that a good part of the movement is used to accumulate energy: the impact is stronger, to the detriment of the hourly surface worked.

There is therefore a gain in easy conditions when, by a modification of the tooling, the second mode, often more traditional, is dethroned by the first.

[phil53]

If you want to use only human force, you have to give up the idea of ​​plowing.
Either you dig like you started
Either weed then use the trident system to aerate the soil without turning it over.
The work of the ground requires a lot of muscular work which discourages very quickly.

[JLB29P]

I had the same idea 20 years ago, but did not use it, just kneaded in my spare time.

- The "principle" of city dwellers are on the spot on exercise bikes or in gyms. The "bikes" in question are braked to adjust the effort. Instead of wasting this energy, why not use it for direct heating or converting to electricity, raising water, etc.?

- Retirees are tinkering, having time and looking to expend energy to maintain health. Why not develop tools (mower, chainsaw ...) activated by the muscular strength of a pseudo cyclist? The effort should be multiplied or applied less strongly (a chainsaw becoming a kind of band saw with fine teeth and more progressive action)

- For the plow, the brute force should be replaced by a vibratory effect allowing the share to penetrate more easily but more slowly (except in heavy or very stony ground)
etc ...

- a pedal boat is much less efficient than a canoe powered by oars, however its object is not maximum efficiency but leisure.
He too could be improved.

- The objective is not to be greener than the neighbor, but more efficient day by day, nothing prevents adding electrical elements or automatisms to muscle strength.

[Ahmed]

JLB29P, on the first point, the energy expended on exercise bikes is not lost (energy is neither created nor lost), it is transformed into heat which dissipates in the room. Converting it into electricity does not have much interest because of the small quantity to be hoped for, ditto for water: a gas factory for not much ...

The second is more realistic, at least theoretically. Well designed, some tools, originally not too greedy, could prove to be very effective; I remember an old hand drill with flywheel that allowed me to drill 16 holes in the full without much effort.
Also remember that many small devices were once manual, like coffee grinders. However, the industrial organization makes that an electric motor is cheaper than the mechanical drive by crank or pedal ...

On the third, it seems difficult to me to generate a vibratory movement without excessive consumption of muscular energy, little adapted to this production (to produce vibrations, the skill is to start from an imbalance in rapid rotation on an axis) .

For a pedal boat "improved" by electrical devices and automatisms, the complexity quickly becomes prohibitive and if it is efficiency that takes precedence, you very quickly find yourself back to square one, with a thermal or electric motor + a load of batteries ...

[JLB29P]

Thank you Ahmed,
Your comments are relevant.

I have an annoying tendency to perfect on paper to the detail before realizing that the basic principle is not applicable for questions of energy scale! Or reinvent the wheel.
I could have been a policy maker!

If one of my projects is successful, I will not fail to share it with you.
I generally try to adapt existing accessories, borrowed from other trades. In my field, it has often been effective although marginal.

For gymnasiums (which I attend too little), they are often ventilated to dissipate this heat and heated elsewhere !!!
The most modern have probably double flow ventilation ...

One of my most advanced projects: robotic mower has not been marketed, but the patent has been filed by others faster.
Perfectionism, when you hold us!
Another version, with pedals may be born, being led by a human, it will not have to respect flowers and other prohibited areas.
Salutation

[Grelinette]

Agricultural tractor with pedals with electric assistance:

We talked about it and talked about it again ... a team of young French engineers got down to it and did it in open-source:
http://www.farmingsoul.org/

[chatelot16]

to save energy to plow the best is to hire green earth ... they work the land for free without energy see farming / gardening-more-than-bio-en-direct-seeding-without-fatigue-t13846-1580.html # p306605

for those who really want to turn the earth the plow is not the energetically optimum means: the plow makes friction on the earth ... the beak is more effective

in general the hand tools are more energy efficient because human energy is low ... as soon as we mechanize we use less good but simpler methods, it is the great power which compensates for the poor performance

so pedaling to advance an energy-consuming tool seems absurd to me