Shaft power and the flywheel
as of 0.8.0
The forming shop runs on a second power network, separate from vanilla mechanical power. Vanilla mechanical power has no storage: a waterwheel's output is a speed, available or not. A rolling pass wants far more torque for two seconds than any period prime mover makes continuously. This network stores that, in a flywheel. The machines it drives are in Rolling and the forming shop.
The five pieces
| Piece | What it does |
|---|---|
| flywheel | the reservoir, and the doorway a vanilla axle enters through |
| Cast Iron Shaft | the run itself; each segment carries rotating mass of its own |
| Cast Iron Bevel Gear | the corner |
| transmission | a 2 by 2 gearbox, and the only place two separate runs meet |
| Rolling Mill Axle | the bus cells a machine takes its drive on |
The flywheel
The flywheel is a vertical disc on a horizontal shaft, in two sizes and two orientations. The normal disc claims a clear 3 by 3 by 1 volume; the large one claims 5 by 5 by 2. Placement is refused unless the whole volume is clear.
One cell of that volume is the hub, and the hub is where a vanilla axle couples. A waterwheel or a windmill on that axle feeds the run, so shaft power exists long before a boiler does; later the producer is swapped for an engine and nothing else about the network changes.
| Quantity | Normal disc | Large disc |
|---|---|---|
| volume claimed | 3 x 3 x 1 | 5 x 5 x 2 |
| inertia | 10 | 150 |
| energy held at full speed | 20 | 300 |
Energy held is one half of the inertia times the square of the network's maximum speed, which is 2. The large wheel holds about fifteen times what the normal one does and takes about fifteen times as long to spin up, because inertia sets both.
A flywheel is inertia, not a battery. A drive that cannot out-torque the load plus the standing friction never spins it up at all, so a pulse cannot be trickle-charged. The bridge from a vanilla axle applies 1 N.m of drive torque at an axle speed of 1.0 or above, scaling down linearly below it. Standing resistance at full speed is 0.6 N.m, which leaves 0.4 N.m of headroom on a single waterwheel. A hot rolling pass draws 0.34 N.m of that, about 15 per cent to spare.
There are no verbs on a flywheel. Looking at it prints the charge, the speed, the supply and the draw, and the disc turns at the run's speed, so its visible rate is the reservoir's charge.
Shaft, bevel and transmission
A Cast Iron Shaft segment adds 0.5 of rotating mass to its run, so a shaft line rides jitter a little on its own without a dedicated flywheel. Segments run north-south, east-west or vertically.
A bevel is made in place: hold a Cast Iron Bevel Gear against a shaft and it consumes one gear and swaps that cell for a bevel on the same axis. A bevel connects on every face, and its branches follow whatever perpendicular shafts are placed against it, with no face to pick and no support to choose.
The transmission is three shipped variants: x2 and x4, which are always coupled and have no
verbs at all, and clutch, whose lever cell is right-clicked to engage or disengage. A disengaged
clutch leaves the two runs fully independent and shows it, one main shaft turning while the other
stands still. Each transmission is raised in place for 2 Spurgear and 6 iron ingots.
Gears mesh at a 2 per cent loss.
Step by step
- Clear a 3 by 3 by 1 volume and place a flywheel in it.
- Couple a vanilla axle from a waterwheel or windmill to the flywheel's hub cell.
- Run Cast Iron Shaft from the flywheel toward the machines, turning corners with bevels.
- Seat each machine so its own two drive faces lie on the shaft line.
- Let the wheel spin up before working anything. Look at it: the charge readout is the gauge.
What goes wrong
A machine refuses to work rather than working slowly. A machine on a stopped run refuses outright, by design. Spin the run up first.
The run will not spin up at all. The drive cannot out-torque the load plus 0.6 N.m of standing friction. Shed machines from the line, or add drive, before adding a bigger flywheel: a bigger wheel makes the problem worse, not better, because it takes longer to reach speed.
The flywheel refuses to place. Something is in the disc's volume. All 9 cells of a normal wheel, or 50 of a large one, must be clear.
A bevel will not connect. It connects on every face; the shaft it should connect to is not perpendicular to it, or is not adjacent.