Does Da Vinci’s 500 Year-Old Power Hammer Actually Work?

[Music] foreign [Music] work by hand kind of sucks whether it's sawing logs grinding grain or hitting things with a hammer doing repetitive actions like this over and over again is a huge pain from the perspective of industrialization Humanity's goal has been to find a way to Outsource this labor and find more efficient ways to achieve them in this video we'll be attempting to recreate a mechanism that was first sketched by Leonardo da Vinci that was centuries ahead of its time as it is now used even today in many industrial purposes and see if we can construct this device that will help with the automation of hammering with a DaVinci cam triphammer with my goal on this channel of building myself up to the Industrial Revolution starting from the Stone Age mechanisms like this are going to be a core topic of Interest as I begin to harness other forms of energy I'm most often going to be working with a rotational Force but for a lot of these tasks you need to somehow convert the force of a rotane object into an oscillating movement that a lot of these tasks require there is a few different methods have been deployed including the earliest known Sawmill and heropolis which is a slider crank mechanism historical true hammers or tilt hammers often used a method with a large wheel that catches and pushes down and releases a heavy Hammer however around 500 years ago famous inventor Leonardo da Vinci sketched to design for a simpler and more compact triphammer using a nice spiraling cam design see if we can build a device that'll help us with hammering moving forward first up let's fail a dead tree they need to come down anyways for a source of some large pieces of wood as well as some additional wood that we can use for future projects all right we need some wood to make the DaVinci cam Hammer the housing for it so found some wood right here let's see what we got I'm being pretty accurate all right I don't know if you'll believe this but this is the first tree I've ever I've ever chopped down and it's kind of hard [Music] are you impressed [Music] I just inhaled some where [Laughter] all right we got the log in studio so we're going to cut it into two pieces the first is going to be a base for the Anvil and the second is going to be a frame for the follower get out of here satisfying oh [Music] don't forget [Music] hey you know there we go we have our log we're going to now Hewitt in order to clean it up hewing is just taking the sides off making into a nice little square so I'm going to take the ax which I have right here um and making little V's in it all the way down is a good way to make sure that it kind of is even on the waist so made my V okay there we go [Music] there we go [Music] we got this one hewed we're going to clean it up a little bit it is a bit messy [Music] we got the hammer stand Anvil stand Anvil here hammer drill a hole this is the hammer it's going to go because the cam is going to be spinning and it's going to hit it while it lifts it up it's going to lift it up and then when it drops it's got back that was really good [Music] all right we're gonna auger out the hole for the hammer handle do about four or five of these holes well let's get started [Music] oh yeah all right so the hole for the hammer we're gonna do two holes coming in this way that will hold the axle so hold the hammer kind of rotate on that check this out all right so we're getting this Anvil into this log I don't want the log to split so I'm going to take the Chisel kind of get some of this material out of here all right here we go now we're going to make the cam thank you to the sponsor of today's video levoit levoit is the number one air filter brand in the United States and on Amazon they sent me the levoit 600s now the workshop is finished I've been able to use the filter in the new space I was a little skeptical at first we do have a couple forms of dust collection an air filter already to remove any sawdust and other particulates in the air so I wasn't sure how valuable another air filter would be but I actually found it to be really useful because one of the biggest health risks with a work like this is the small particles good in the air and you end up breathing in so it's really important to take care of that caught up in a project and sign some of this bunch of dust in there not even realizing that I'm breathing it in but the levoit system actually detects it and turns it on and starts filtering even nicer is the fact that it's synced to an app on my phone it gets dusty in the room I get notification and then when I should turn on the other collection systems or put on a mask this is definitely a really important tool in our Workshop thanks again to levoit for sponsoring our video check out some of their products in the link below okay we're going to assemble the cam we're going to use a simple High glue Peg kind of method to stick all the pieces together so they're nice and tight come back in a few days after it dries and cut it [Music] nice nice fit [Music] all right foreign so I have some tools here I'm going to use them to make the shape of the cam made a little ruler using a width of my finger very very accurate the hammer handle will act as the follower and track along the cam mechanism when it reaches the point at the top it will drop via gravity and strike the hammer head on the Anvil the way that we'll get the gradual increase to the shape of our cam is by using our makeshift ruler and gradually increasing the distance from our axle to the end of the cam oh yeah that's nice all right then we got to connect this one to this one oh yeah that to that love to see it then that to the final love it [Music] it's like [Music] all right so now we have the cam and we need to apply a rotational Force to it to make it actually Spin and for that we're going to make a crank uh basically you can do because some little I did with the the brace drill put a kind of a z and that allows you to spin it a lot easier I need something to help kind of help it rip the cam itself otherwise they're a circular thing in a circular hole is going to want to just spin I'm gonna try flattening it and putting a wedge in there that'll kind of grip it hold the cam to it so we can get some good Force to it [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] all right got the thing assembled got the thing okay this is our Da Vinci cam Hammer without the cam just gonna use a little marking here through the holes Mark where I want the axle to be there we go all right we're going to drill it out right in the middle all right got the axle for the hammer handle I'm gonna shove it in here see if it works nice perfect all right check this out goes like this and it works really nice we'll see if it works the same when we introduce the very heavy Sledge Hammer all right let's go it fell off so the hammer keeps sliding off of the cam I think making the cam wider would have been a good idea because it just wants to just go to the side and also this Hammer is really heavy so I am not very strong and this just keeps he's kind of sliding and making me sad make with a few tweaks it can definitely work a lot better so we'll see if Andy can make some adjustments so just took a few small tweaks to actually get this guy running a little bit more smoother first thing was just adding a second cam to this a little bit wider a little bit more tolerance for any wiggle in the handle and landing on that then also added some wood pieces here just to prevent the hammer from wiggling too much the metal crank was actually starting to bend a little bit as it was using so I reinforced it with a little bit of a wooden dowel here allows it to have a little bit more strength also just the housing here to hold the bigger axle and housing all the way around it so it doesn't bounce out so now it actually looks pretty good I think because then I was able to uh try using it out for actual blacksmithing and works pretty good I would say if anything it's a little weak just because it's dropping for like a foot we're not not getting like a full swing so this is probably more comparable to just swing with a smaller Hammer the obvious solution to add more Powers is to increase the size of the hammer or I could also try and enlarge the cam in some way so it drops further I think we're a pretty decent starting point and allows to tweak and adjust things as we go so then the last step will be uh connecting this somehow to some form of alternative power source so you don't have to actually do it yourself and it's just automatic and you can save all that energy from having to do it yourself you'll have to figure out exactly how to do that and that'll have to be its own video if you like this content be sure to subscribe and thank you as always to our supporters on patreon [Music] if you enjoyed this video be sure to subscribe and check out other content we have covering a wide variety of topics also if you've enjoyed 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Channel: How To Make Everything

Views: 730,053

Keywords: HTME, DIY, Fun, Smart, Learn, Teach, Maker, History, Science, Innovator, Education, Educational, School, Invention, Agriculture, Textiles, Industry, Technology, how to make everything, brow tidy ox, diy, power hammer, leonardo da vinci, power hammers, power hammer build, power hammer diy, power hammer homemade, ancient tools, ancient machines, historical machines, blacksmith shop, power hammer blacksmith, power hammer techniques, da vinci, cam hammer, trip hammer

Id: ZJc6YuS61oE

Length: 12min 45sec (765 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 29 2022