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Designing a Mechanical Calculator(signoregalilei.com)
16 points by surprisetalk 5 days ago | 5 comments
  • zokier10 minutes ago

    I feel there is very little calculation going on in the design. To be useful like pascaline you'd need at least some convenient way to input numbers.

  • beeforporkan hour ago

    Maybe have a look at the Curta for inspiration of a mechanical calculator. There's a 3D printable version of it.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9uRckJLqLk https://wudev.digitaltorque.com/articles/curta-1/

    • donkeybeer23 minutes ago |parent

      Curta is over complicated. I eould rather focus on a design thats easily made with plywood and common wood tools.

  • mkreisan hour ago

    Reminds me of the purely mechanical computer Z1 with 16-word floating point memory, Keyboard and punch card reader: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z1_(computer)

    Would be interesting to reconstruct that using a 3D printer... if anyone has too mich time to spare.

  • orbital-decay2 hours ago

    There are probably designs that are more print-friendly than gears (rod logic?). I wonder how far you could go with just a 3D printer if you really optimize for the efficiency.