I was pretty impressed by the actual walking “Thing” from the Netflix Wednesday! program. The behind the hand view is amazing.
Watching it, and more specifically the finger movements, showed how little I know about bar linkages. Yeah, I can toss together a 4 bar linkage for lifting with the best of them, built a few working scissors, things like “X” linkages, etc. presently elude me.
This four bar linkage demo is nice because all of the linkages can be changed. I did have an ahah moment when I watched the one end of the linkage complete the circle rather than be bounded, and watched the curved motion on the other end. (Yea, I’m a software / project management person)
This site has links to built models which is easy to then conceptualize how to build some common linkages. (scroll about 2/3 the way down).
This encyclopedia of linkages has 1700 YouTube animations to go along with it. It’s the best so far, it’s just mesmerizing.
Can you recommend other sites or books that cover the design of linkages?
Easily the best 2D linkage simulator I have used. The best way to learn (at least for me) is by playing and trying to recreate things. You quickly learn what knobs you have access to and what does what. Couple that with a basic understanding of mechanical advantage and you are in business.
The learning curve on this software is kinda steep for the first hour. I recommend just playing with the samples to start, then do a basic 4bar driven by a crank.
A few hints:
It defaults to mm, changable on the top ribbon.
You can select everything and scale/rotate it. Getting rotate mode to show up for large selections is fiddely though.
If you pause the simulator you can use the arrow keys to step forward /back.
You can select any connector and have it trace a motion path.
You can always add a point to a link by selecting a standalone point and a link then clicking combine on the top ribbon.
You can attach measurements to any point and they will update with the simulation, you can toggle dimensions by pressing d on the keyboard
Here are some resources I used in a linkage class I took, however, they are mostly kinematic-based, which is useful for figuring out where the linkage will move, but not its true dynamics which both much harder but also pretty important.