The CavalryProject - Mehanical Engineers Wanted

I'm an ME, shoot.

 

Mechanical Engineering student here, interested in hearing more.

 

I'm not an ME, but that sounds like an electromagnet.

Wouldn't a device that has a series of magnets operating in a field of varying magnetic intensity just be an electric motor?

 

It's been done
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Sorry to be the pessimist, but you wouldn't just "turn the automotive world on its ear", you'd win a Noble Prize -- maybe several

Do you have a rough diagram of your idea?

 

Yes to both.

 

As an AE/ME who studied of all things astrophysics, wish I had kept up in that field! I'd say 99.9% of all ideas have been done before, and maybe Mark can chime in here on this as well.

Yrs Ago I had thought of an Ion drive design, much like the Sci-Fi stories of the great golden age. In any case, it wasn't a new idea but implementing it is, then NASA had to go and develop it for deep space probes. to their credit they've probably been working on it long before I came into the world.

Electromagnetic travel is currently used in trains and subways pretty much anywhere you have a fixed track, this most everybody knows. rail trains use electric motors that drive and slow/stop the train thru a similar process, an electric motor is much like the maglev train design.

we obviously don't have all the info, but i'm sure we'll help as we can. for better or worse you can pick up ALOT of critique here

PM sent btw

 

Me too, but for smg2 to say that 99.9% of all ideas..... sounds rather odd to me. I guess it depends on how I read it, I guess the known ideas have been mostly been tried but inventions will come. Didn't they close or try to close the patent office at one point saying something like "everything has been invented"?
BTW I'm in awe at smg2 and others that can design and make the things they do. Just a regular guy, Walt.

 

Walt,
right, I'm not saying that everything has been invented but rather most all ideas do overlap or have been thought of, the trick is getting it to work and the biggest trick of all, finding a market!

now in the automotive world, it has been known that the big guys will buy ideas or new tech just to squash it and keep the competition down.

 

Figure out how to harness "zero point energy" and everyone will forget about the better mouse trap.

 

I'm an EE design engineer, familiar with all sorts of systems involving magnetic and electromagnetic fields. PM me if you want to ask more specific questions.

 

Hey, auto engineer here -feel free to shoot me a PM. I'm heavy into new product / process development so I don't want to sound like I'm shooting down any ideas....but before you get too excited about it, think long and hard about the single greatest benefit of the current ICE - simple and relatively cheap. This is why fuel cells will take a loooong time to gain traction. The good 'ole cam driven valve, now with variable everything and a turbo is getting pretty good. Throw in advances like bi-turbos and electric spool turbos and you've got a 2 liter engine with the power and low end torque of a V-8.

Bottom line, like mentioned above it'd take a Nobel prize idea to replace the ICE within the next 5-10 yrs, in my opinion. Keep in mind that the 2009 -2010 motors are being designed and tested now...

 

I think i know where he is headed with this. I have been playing with a very similar idea for a while, but just haven't been able to even being to try and figure out how to build it. I can see it in my head wroking, and it all seems very simple, but how you go about putting it all together and contoling the N/S poles of the magents in propper sequence and at the speeds you would need is the sticking point... for me anyway.

 

For those not familiar zero point energy is the lowest state of energy. in other words, free energy (casimir effect) if one could harness it. in quantum physics it is not possible to obtain a quantum-mechanical state of zero.

clear as mud right?

I think for any real progress to made in transportation we would need to abandon our current familiarity with the automobile. start clean and go from there.

when i first started studying physics i was obsessed with EMF's and had a great idea about using that as a force for vector based travel, but one could see the hazards of such a machine. i'll stop rambling for now, would love to hear about its progress as you move forward.

 

I am also in deep study with Quantum Mechanics. Nice to see others involved.

 

a great book although older that would apply here i think is 'the refrigerator and the universe' helps cover those pesky laws of energy. it's also written so that most anyone can understand it.

yes I'am a geek! my library is text books and books written by those in the leading fields of physics and astronomy. my 'light' reading is Sci-Fi, but Sci-Fi most consider boring or to involved. but now i've seem to high jacked the thread oops.
back to our regular scheduled program...

 

I second that recommendation. I have given away a half dozen copies of this book to people who are fascinated about physics but lack the rigorous training and thought process necessary to get things in perspective. I have also given it to high school graduates who are planning on pursuing an engineering degree, as a painless segway into thermodynamics. It is a wonderful read for the layman and career physicist as well.

There is a lot of pseudo-science bantered about today by people who pick up on an idea they don't completely understand and then let their imagination and creativity go someplace useless because they don't understand basic physics.

A magnetic field is like a gravitational field. If you want to use it to accelerate a mass, you first have to place that mass in the field, and that takes energy. If you want to accelerate a body by droppping it off a building, you first have to haul it up the damn building. Same thing with a magnetic field.

The original poster says he has an idea for a vehicle without an engine? A common definition of an engine is an energy conversion device that converts potential energy to kinetic energy. If you want to accelerate a car you're going to have to supply energy from somewhere and if it comes from within the car (i.e. not from a tow truck or from a catapult working from the outside on the car) then the car will have what we call an engine. It will take stored energy and convert it to mechanical and heat energy.

I admire the spunk and creativity of the originator of this thread, but it many ways it resembles an all-too-common scenario - someone claims they have a revolutionary idea that will change the world, but they can't tell anyone the details because they fear their idea will be stolen, yet they ask for help because they don't understand the physics involved. In every case like this I have ever come across, once they understood the physics involved their ship was sunk. I have lost count of the examples of this I have run across. In many cases investors have lost substantial sums of money because they allowed themselves to be seduced by the siren of perpetual motion or free energy. Perhaps that isn't what the poster is referring to, but the mention of a vehicle with no engine suggests something that is similarly unobtainable.

It takes a creative mind to come up with new ideas and I admire that. We need that now more than ever It also takes spunk to stand up and show your cards and be prepared to get shot down. I especially admire that! I firmly believe that the only stupid questions are the ones you don't ask, and I know it is hard to ask those questions when your personal ego is invested in the concept. But, if you aren't willing to do the latter, I believe you need to quietly bite the bullet and teach yourself what you need to know. The book recommended by "smg2" is a great start. If you want to understand enough of the nuances of electromagnetics to thoroughly analyze an idea like this in detail, then you need the equivalent of a BS in physics or EE.

In the meantime, if you are still willing to toot your horn and wave your flag proclaiming that you have a revolutionary idea, but aren't willing to show your cards, you may impress some of the uneducated, but you are now fair game for arrows flung by educated skeptics. Show your cards, on the other hand, and most folks in the know will be happy to kindly explain the physics involved and whether the concept will work or not.

I encourage you to show your cards AND learn more about physics AND keep cranking out ideas!

 

Thanks,
and thank you again for saying what i wouldn't have been able to put across in such a constructive manner. I liked that book so much I've actually started reading it again. Kip Thorne is another good source too.

for some real fun Michio Kaku has some great books as well, different from this topic but fun none the less.

 

Nicely said. It's very rare that someone is able to revolutionize an industry or field without first becoming expert in that industry or field first. That doesn't mean you have to have the formal education, but you have to have the grounding to know what has or hasn't been tried and why.

 

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