Like a variable speed transmission or gearbox. The large round dish with the teeth are different ratios and the rotating ring moves along that shaft to turn it at different ratios depending on where it is vs the diameter of the dish.

Am I right?

 

A view of the other side?

 

My guess, the drive mechanism for a siesmograph

 

PoLak,

What are some of the instraments that Enviromental science covers? What are some of the tools of the trade?

 

ha! my first thought after reading the first post was code machine. a bomb site is a good guess as well. ima gonna read the rest of the thread now to see if there was an answer yet.:D

 

Its nothing related to the course, the bombsight guess was "on the right track".

More pics

 

Some kind of speed reducer for packeging production line

 

Bombsight was on the right track huh?

In that case it could be used to compute barrel elevation-vs-distance used for large artillery peices... Howitzers and the like. That would kind of make sense if it wound up and then wound back down.

 

makes me think of some kind of surveying device.

 

Interesting new photos.

Come on PoLaK - you sadist - give us some more clues! :D

Age? Civil or military? Run at slow or fast speeds? Used for part of one disk cycle at a time, or a full cycle, or a continuous stream of cycles alternating from one side to another....

Any hints at all, please?

 

A guess..

Could it be part of a device for cranking engines (perhaps aero engines) - starting with a lower speed (higher torque) crank, and building up to a fast spin??

Chocks away chaps... :p

OK, I'm clutching at straws here...

 

It's not a high-torque device.

I'll say it's part of an alt-azimuth control for a radio telescop.

(I'm clutching too )

 

Another straw clutch..

A device for putting 'spin' on bombs before dropping them. I seem to remember that some bombs (dropped to bounce on water and then blow up dams for instance) were spun before dropping them, to help achieve a particular trajectory.

 

I thought that spining was due to the fins being sloped...?

 

It's the missing WMD

 

this is getting as bad as the thread about guessing what kind of car she got-

what the hell is it polak!!

 

You're right. In fact, a couple of days ago I was talking to a friend of mine and he told me that another of his friends had been involved in exactly that - the design of the various shapes and angles of such fins, to achieve various outcomes for different bombing applications.

However, the bombs I was thinking about were designed to bounce on top of the water (like skipping stones across a pond) and then sink to the base of the dam wall before exploding. If I remember rightly, they didn't have fins (which would have interfered with the bouncing across the water).

Of course we could be on the wrong track. Maybe it's just the drive mechanism for an early prototype personal vibrator..

 

I'm no engineer but it looks like a piece from one of the primitive computers

 

It appears to me to be a device to indicate when the angular input of two shafts are synchronized

 

It's the "device that makes ya' say 'Hmmmm...'"

WE GIVE UP!!!!!

 

I never said i knew....... teacher wont tell me unless i guess right....

 

Going from the bombsight clue... what if it is part of a device to help calculate the lead angle for old anti-aircraft artillery? Perhaps the two wheels are for the X and Y axes. There would have to be other devices for input on speed and altitude... but those disks may do the angle. If the altitute was a constant (above gound distance of the airplane), then the lead amount would have to increase at an increasing rate given the angle of the gun to the ground... and speed would probably be factored in linearly.

I'm not so great at math, so thats just a gut feeling sorta thing... I'd love to know what it really is, the suspense is killing me!

 

Does it look like it would fit in this setup?

 

How about a film (or chart recorder paper) advance device with integral drive for the supply and take-up spools? Those spools need to change the rate of rotation in opposition to one another (the supply roll speeds up as the take-up spool slows down)while the film (or chart paper) advance must remain constant. The picture in the link looks like drum recorders, but inspired my guess.

 

why is this in the Tech Garage again? :D :p