Originally published at: Does Da Vinci's power hammer design actually work? | Boing Boing
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I just saw this design realized, among his other machines, in the Museo Leonardo da Vinci in Venice.
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I’m generally not a fan of these kinds of videos, but that was pretty cool. Heck of a small axe for cutting down a tree, though.
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If you don’t want to watch the last minute of the video: yes, it works, if all that you need is a hammer blow of 6 inches/15 cm.
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IANAME (i am not a mechanical engineer) but i don’t think they built this as da Vinci intended. It seems that da Vinci was designing a trip hammer, and they ended up with something else. The distinction is on which side of the hammer pivot the snail cam goes. The effective result is if you rotate the cam slowly with this video’s build then the hammer is eased slowly down onto the work piece (as can be sort’ve seen at 11’28). Whereas if you put the cam after the pivot so that the free end of the ‘see-saw’ drops off the cam then no matter how slow the cam is turned the hammer free falls entirely due to gravity [shrug]
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This was a nice but totally unnecessary video…These are called Helve hammers and have been used in blacksmith shops for centuries…Your model was slightly backwards as the goal is to have a hammer that DROPS onto work…
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right-The article was not in the least bit researched…Called Helve hammers we blacksmiths have used this design for centuries with some helve hammers being HUGE
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I’d be much more interested in seeing someone build a da Vinci V-twin motorcycle engine as envisioned in his sketch in the upper left part of that drawing.
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I thought that was a model for rudimentary binary ball dispensary, for a lottery or for the game GO (the not-as-successful precursor of BINGO)…
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Leonardo: “What, a power hammer? No no, it’s a cough personal massager cough.”
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