How an ingenious 400 year old drawing predicted the future

They make pumps that operate by a similar method, but the angle of the swash plate is variable. It lets you use a constant speed motor and get variable fluid output or constant output at variable speed. Amazing designs!

That design isn't just for compressors! It's an engine too! If you take a swash plate compressor, reverse the reed valves, drive it the other way using propylene glycol dinitrate, you get the motor that powers many torpedoes!

Swash plate pumps and motors have for the most part taken over hydraulics in the efficient use of power and control. I've worked on or experienced their use in such divergent applications as excavators, dozers and wheel loaders to cranes, heavy haul trucks, rock drills, compactors and more. They are used as main propulsion in torpedoes now. I had no idea that the basic design went back so far. I've heard a few time that most machine designs have been invented in the distant past, but their use is never fulfilled until materials science catches up to the demands of the applications. Thanks for the video.

Making these animations must have been so much work - just wow! Machine Thinking is one of the extremely few channels that started out with a video of outstanding quality five years ago (I still occasionally go back and watch it). Since then, the quality has only improved (Though I am hoping for some more really foundational videos, like the first few were)

Babe wake up. Machine thinking just dropped a video

11:37 *"hundreds" :) I think just implementing a swash plate to change the angle of points on a spinning mechanism could have been influential in a ton of machines, but helicopter rotor swash plates come to mind. Helicopters weren't practical until the stability issues were fixed with variable pitch wings.

I love the 3D modeling and digital rendition on these.

10:47 as a follow up you may be interested to know that the electric compressors found in nearly all home appliances responsible for moving heat use much the same mechanism. You'll need a cutting wheel to get into those, however; they're usually hermetically sealed

Fantastic animation (and that ending 😅) and very interesting about A/C pumps – so that ingenious complexity is why they are so expensive...

That design is also used in hydraulic pumps like in lawn mowers with hydrostatic drive rather than gears and to supply high pressure for all kinds of industrial machines like excavators, bull dozers, back hoes and so on. I don't know for sure but I imagine the first use of that design on an industrial level was along those lines rather than air conditioning and there might be credit given in those examples?

Happy you are back please keep uploading! I show all my friends this channel to help them better understand what I do. Also gives me a wider sense of gratitude and wonder for the world around us ❤🎉

You are having far too much fun with Blender or it's equivalent. Thank you for the excellent history lesson, graphics and practical example. An episode on how you make your models would be interesting too. They are excellent.

Welcome back! I've been waiting impatiently for the next video in the series. Edit: as a former automotive repair pro for almost 20 years I instantly recognized that mechanism but was surprised when you broke out a compressor yourself. The last time I felt like a message was tailored to me so well is when my doctor described my diverticulitis as being similar to a separated tire 😜

2 stage pump generally has smaller pistons on the hi stage. My guess is just one is just double acting to get double the displacement/cooling power from one swashplate.

Ramelli's notes were required reading in my mechanical engineering, but I didn't even think of it being in an A/C compressor. That"s actually pretty enlightening :) I know the common well pump is based on his rotary pump. and a steam engine piston is based on his wood & leather pump piston, an internal combustion piston also for that matter.

Pressure washers sometimes use a design like this. Other pumps arrange the pistons on a crankshaft, but use the same multistage pistons. A/C compressors also utilize a very similar mechanism.

there was a special kind of aircraft engine that only ended up being used on blimps but Barrel Engines are one of those weird what-if technologies because they are very close to radials in size

It looks to me a lot like a hydraulic piston pump, but with a couple extra steps. I had no idea that's what's inside that pump you took apart. Thanks for the info!

I rarely find a channel in which I find myself watching every video. Even rarer is that I learn, not so much retain, a lot of information. A gem find.

Thank you for continuing to make these videos. Always worth the wait.