I’m thinking of things like waterwheels, windmills, millstones, etc- these systems would presumably have a lot of force running through them, such that stopping them for maintenance or replacement would seem difficult to do and maybe even damage the system. So what kind of mechanisms back in the day did people put in place to stop energy from moving through the machine at a given point? How do you successfully get two gears that are actively engaged to be safely uncoupled, for lack of a better word?
In: Engineering
If you take something like a water powered factory, you might have a turbine that drives a line shaft. On that shaft were pulleys that worked with flat belts of leather. On the machine, you had one pulley that was mechanically connected to whatever the machine is, and one that’s just an idler pulley, so you can slide the belt onto the idler if you want to stop the machine. The belt keeps spinning but it’s not driving the machine.
You can also turn the power off at the source, which would certainly be safer, but maybe less convenient.
Latest Answers