from Hacker News

Magnetically Assisted Gears

by Cherian on 1/4/21, 4:43 PM with 5 comments

• by 0wis on 1/4/21, 5:03 PM

  It looks like a Stirling engine : Perfect on paper but no real world application. Reddit comments seem to agree. However, it really looks like magic. Must have been really fun to build.

• by mikewarot on 1/4/21, 10:36 PM

  Having made gears for 5 years, the idea of two non-rigid, non-involute surfaces lasting for more than a few seconds while rubbing together just doesn't seem plausible as a "backup when overloaded".

  It makes for a nice toy, but there will be losses, primarily through eddy current. Any time you move an magnet past a conductor, it sets up currents in the inductor which oppose motion, those currents create heat while losing energy. You see magnets approaching and departing each other, there will be some current induced, and thus heat generated, and loss incurred. It may, or may not, actually be less friction than proper hardened ground gears properly meshed and lubricated, but I doubt it.

  If they can show a system efficiency, then I might be interested. Until then, it is a fairly nice object of art.