Archives: Blog

Planetary gear systems can be intimidating to understand. There are so many types of motions and reductions possible that it can be overwhelming. The motion of planetary gear systems is expressed...

Unlike the Lego gears and shafts shown below most motors have perfectly round shafts. This makes attaching gears, pulleys and sprockets difficult. The main methods of attaching gears to...

Never guess again what hose size to use! Automatically the proper hose size for any application. Simply input a few measurable variables and click Calculate. This calculator adjusts for oil type...

Even though my engineering career is far from over, I wanted to look back and reflect. I realized that midway through my career is probably the right point to do this because if I wait too long, I'm...

Steel design seems to be moving in the direction of self-fixturing where the weldment or assembly components will align with each other. When a tab or slot is added to a part, the stress flow is...

Connecting multiple valves together is always a challenge. You want to have individual valve functionality, but not loose sight of the overall system characteristics. Open center or through...

Beam tables give information on and assume that the deflection calculation is based on a constant cross section.  So, what do we do if our beam has a cross section that changes over the length...

Two stage pumps, often called log splitter pumps, are a great way to get better performance without increasing horsepower. A two-stage hydraulic pump is two gear pumps that combine flow...

Reading a hydraulic schematic for the first time is a daunting and confusing thing.  There are so many symbols to identify and lines to keep track of.  I hope to impart to you a systematic...

This article is going to be a bit more technical than the previous article about fasteners, “The Magic of Fasteners.”  I’m going to try to keep it as simple as I can, but this topic is so...

In part 4 of our journey to the world's Best Backyard Coaster, we encountered some issues with our capacitors. They are not charging evenly. So in order to get an accurate voltage rating of the...

Yes the last free video - sign up to see the rest of the series for creating Tilley's Terror, our backyard roller coaster. We will discuss the launch system of our backyard coaster and how error...

We are moving forward on our launch system for Tilley's Terror. Our coaster launch, well at least the prototype, is taking shape as we are now able to move the launch dog on the track. Watch to see...

We are working on our launch system for our backyard coaster. This system will work similar to Top Thrill Dragster which is an hydraulic cable launch. We don't need quite as much horsepower, so we...

So after an eight month hiatus, I've finally freed up some time to work on Tilley's Terror, a three inversion backyard coaster. I've decided that to minimize risk and maximize my current coaster,...

So I'm good at a lot of things, but there are certain things that cause me to loose it. The Rubik's Cube is one of them and I usually end up angry. I encourage you to push through these feelings...