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Designing a Mechanical Calculator

28 points by surprisetalk

by beeforpork

2 subcomments

Maybe have a look at the Curta for inspiration of a mechanical calculator. There's a 3D printable version of it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9uRckJLqLk https://wudev.digitaltorque.com/articles/curta-1/

by orbital-decay

0 subcomment

There are probably designs that are more print-friendly than gears (rod logic?). I wonder how far you could go with just a 3D printer if you really optimize for the efficiency.

by mkreis

1 subcomments

Reminds me of the purely mechanical computer Z1 with 16-word floating point memory, Keyboard and punch card reader: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z1_(computer)
Would be interesting to reconstruct that using a 3D printer... if anyone has too mich time to spare.

by zokier

0 subcomment

I feel there is very little calculation going on in the design. To be useful like pascaline you'd need at least some convenient way to input numbers.

by ErroneousBosh

0 subcomment

This looks like a really fiddly way to re-invent the odometer.