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Old 15th Nov 2018, 6:43 pm   #61
TonyDuell
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Default Re: Electronics versus plumbing?

I've seen some old books on electricity where what we now call a 'transformer' (2 or more magnetically-coupled coils) was called a 'static transformer'. Back then the term 'transformer' also covered motor-generator sets.
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Old 15th Nov 2018, 7:11 pm   #62
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Default Re: Electronics versus plumbing?

Later more commonly known as rotary converter.
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Old 15th Nov 2018, 7:50 pm   #63
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Default Re: Electronics versus plumbing?

'Rotary Transformer' was a very common term used in aircraft electronic equipment from the valve era (my main area of interest), along with 'rotary convertor', 'motor-generator', or in the US, 'dynamotor'. The picture is of a post-war example.

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Old 15th Nov 2018, 10:28 pm   #64
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Default Re: Electronics versus plumbing?

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Originally Posted by kalee20 View Post
Allow a bit of water to flow in the secondary and the 'pump' vane will slowly turn, which grabs motion from the primary motor, which then sucks some water flow. Just like a transformer.
One interesting thing is the notion of "suction" which appears on the face of it to be an entity on its own which can grab things or pull on them, when in fact there is no such thing as suction, it is a conceptual fantasy.

In fluidic or gasseous systems, the molecules of fluid or gas can only ever be transported or transport other matter within them, from a zone of higher to a zone of lower pressure. This is why a vacuum value can never exceed the value of atmospheric pressure, but a pressure value can increase without bounds. A vacuum is merely the absence of an amount of positive pressure with respect to atmospheric pressure or some higher positive pressure value.

So nobody has in fact been sucked out of a plane, they were pushed out by the escaping air. Likewise, if you were in a spacecraft and it vented to space through a large hole, there would only be forces trying to push you out the hole, while the air was leaving. If you could hang on long enough and let all the air go, the forces trying to push you out the hole would drop to zero. The "vacuum of space" cannot pull on you. They did this pretty well in 2001 Space Odyssey in the air lock scene.

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Old 15th Nov 2018, 10:40 pm   #65
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Default Re: Electronics versus plumbing?

David, you refer probably to a Blakes Type B hydram, the type A pumps clean stream water, the type B separate clean water. I have a copy of Blakes' (of Accrington) Hydram Catalogue in front of me now. Plus loads of stuff from the Montgolfiers onwards.
I would have loved to take it off your hands, but maybe no longer here and now.
Les.
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Old 15th Nov 2018, 10:41 pm   #66
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Default Re: Electronics versus plumbing?

Here's John Scott-Taggart's Mechanical-Hydraulic analogies of the operations of thermionic Diode and Triode valves (from "The Manual of Modern Radio", 1933).
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Old 15th Nov 2018, 11:03 pm   #67
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Yes, Les. It's quite a big beastie, in the pit of an old water mill set in concrete and covered in water (spring not river. It has two incerted mushroom valves (with lots of bracing webs looking like mushroom gills) There's a large accumulator and a cylinder which must contain a free piston separating clean and river water. In the building there were spare gaskets etc hung all over the place. It must have been a maintenance nightmare. A tree trunk had been hefted into place across the building for block and tackle for lifting the top parts off.

In the sixties a couple of Stewart Turner screw-in-rubber-sleeve pumps were put in place, drawing from an added tank. Twenty years ago I built a new pump house up in the stable yard with a 1000 litre new feed tank in the 6" pipe from the spring. A little Italian turbine pump does the job with a float valve in the new 8000 litre tank up the hill. The Stewart Turners had just been on a timer! and spent mosst of the time with the old top tank overflowing.

The Hydram will take a lot of getting out. The mill leat and race need rebuilding before I could run a new wheel, or maybe a Banki or a small screw? Ah, dreams!

Be nice to work the Mills on the air QSO party on water mill power.

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Old 16th Nov 2018, 3:26 am   #68
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Default Re: Electronics versus plumbing?

I wish my electronics lecturer, when we studied magnetic recording, had explained the hysteresis-loop B-H curve in terms of mechanical backlash.
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Old 16th Nov 2018, 8:03 pm   #69
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Default Re: Electronics versus plumbing?

Slightly off course, but it adds to the conversation. When studying CCDs for the first time way back it was normal to talk about the size of elements (pixels) in terms of jugs or buckets to be filled by Photons “ like buckets of water” and how they could overflow into the next element, “ like a bucket overflowing with water”.
Simple, but it was understood.
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Old 16th Nov 2018, 8:25 pm   #70
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Default Re: Electronics versus plumbing?

At which point I should remind everyone of the "bucket-brigade device" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucket-brigade_device - which was a sort-of serial analog memory/delay-line.

And the overflowing-bucket/funnel analogy is familiar to us ISP-types when used to explain queue-management policies in 'oversubscribed' Internet-infrastructure: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/doc.../qcfpolsh.html

This is why your "50Megabit" Internet connection struggles to get a couple of Megabits of throughput when everyone on your street is downloading the latest Game of Thrones episode.
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Old 16th Nov 2018, 9:58 pm   #71
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Where I live now, there is a derelict mill wheel directly opposite. When I lived in Staffs, my cottage was on a mill site, but the wheel etc was removed in the late 40's. 100 yards upstream, there were two wheels, side by side. They were used commercially until 1966. Two more former sites in the half mile up the hill, then the flatter area with sandstone on clay whence the water rose. It was here where the ram pumps were in use. In the two mile stretch below my cottage were 5 more mills/sites when the stream ran into the Trent.
I started my working life in the pottery industry, which had relied on water power for materials grinding in previous decades, though some of the local mills could be traced back to the Doomesday book. I have loads of relating info.
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Old 17th Nov 2018, 12:44 am   #72
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Default Re: Electronics versus plumbing?

Network engineers talk about their backhaul infrastructure etc in terms of "pipes".

Satellite transponders are called "bent pipes".

LC tuned circuits are sometimes called tank circuits.

Inductors are called chokes and ballasts.
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Old 17th Nov 2018, 4:20 am   #73
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Default Re: Electronics versus plumbing?

Quote:
Originally Posted by kalee20 View Post
Quote:
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My error...I didnt mean hydraulic pump, I meant hydraulic motor, as in a power transfer unit. We use them in all the hydraulics in aiir craft. It transfers power and pressure but not fluid. I envisage a transformer, two coils of wire but not connected.

David
That could conceivably be a transformer-equivalent then.

One hydraulic circuit with a vane motor, another with a vane pump, the two linked by a shaft - yes!

If the secondary circuit is blanked off, then pressure will be there, proportional to pressure in the primary circuit, but there'll be no flow.

Allow a bit of water to flow in the secondary and the 'pump' vane will slowly turn, which grabs motion from the primary motor, which then sucks some water flow. Just like a transformer.

Except that this seems to work with steady flows, whereas a transformer needs alternations. Suddenly I'm jealous of the plumbers...
There's also car automatic transmissions, which act like fluid variable autotransformers. There's power transfer at a variable pressure, and input and the output flows are connected.
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Old 17th Nov 2018, 6:48 am   #74
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Default Re: Electronics versus plumbing?

An analogy of the hydraulic pump/motor for DC would be a DC motor driving a DC generator.

Once a common thing

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Old 17th Nov 2018, 6:34 pm   #75
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Quote:
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Quote:
Originally Posted by kalee20 View Post
Allow a bit of water to flow in the secondary and the 'pump' vane will slowly turn, which grabs motion from the primary motor, which then sucks some water flow. Just like a transformer.
One interesting thing is the notion of "suction" which appears on the face of it to be an entity on its own which can grab things or pull on them, when in fact there is no such thing as suction, it is a conceptual fantasy.
That's true, of course - but I thought in the interests of brevity it was better to say that the primary vane motor being allowed to turn, sucks some water rather than gives a pressure drop, itself allowing the upstream positive water pressure to give rise to water flow.

Electrically, there can be 'suction' of course. Pull some electrons out of one end of a wire and you leave an overall positive charge - which actively attracts replacement electrons from somewhere. It's where the plumbing / electronics parallel ceases to be parallel. Another example where analogy fails is when a water pipe ends in a nozzle - water flows out in a coherent stream (or if greater than a critical flow, a turbulent stream) whereas electrons ejected from an electron gun de-focus by themselves, due to mutual repulsion.
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