The Cyclocarder by Fibershed-contributor Katharina Jolda is a wonderful update to the article on pedal powered machines. The Cyclocarder can turn your backyard, community center, or farm into a human powered wool processing station.
14 posts categorized "Pedal power"
When Low-Tech Goes IKEA
What happens when two industrial design students from Sweden end up in Kenya creating a pedal powered machine for small-scale farmers who are often illiterate and speak more than 60 languages? You get a do-it-yourself design that seems to have come out of the IKEA factories - pictoral manuals included.
"Made in Kenya", the bachelor project of Niklas Kull and Gabriella Rubin, is a textbook example of low-tech made accessible to everybody, regardless of their native tongue and language skills.
Flywheel Bicycle
Maxwell von Stein's bicycle invention uses a flywheel to store energy. Instead of braking, he can slow the bicycle by transferring the kinetic energy from back wheel into the flywheel -- which spins between the bars of the frame. Then Max can send the flywheel energy back to the wheel when he wants a boost. Watch the video. Thank you, Rasmus.
Related: Job Ebenezer's Dual Purpose Bicycle, mentioned in the article on pedal powered machines.
Pedal Powered FlatBed Truck
"Originally designed to serve the load carrying requirements of the Tri-Sled factory, the FlatBed Truck is a high-bulk load carrier. We use one of these for getting around our local industrial estate, transporting frames and fairings to our powder-coating and painting contractors, or picking up steel and other oversized materials."
"The FlatBed Truck is far more convenient than carting large items to and from a car or van. With this maneuverable vehicle, you can simple roll straight in and out of your business or factory. It even serves as a handy rolling work bench for working outside on sunny days."
"The FlatBed Truck is also incredibly easy to store. Just flip it up on its end when not in use, and use the rear rolling wheels to move it against a wall or into a small space. The rolling wheels also serve as a back bump stop." Trisled FlatBed Truck.
Bicycles & tricycles; an elementary treatise on their design and construction (1896)
"Bicycles & tricycles; an elementary treatise on their design and construction, with examples and tables", Archibald Sharp (1896).
Tricycle with Foldable Fairing
The Hase Klimax has won the Eurobike 2010 award. The Klimax is a recumbent trike with a foldable fairing and electric assist. Beats any electric city car in terms of efficiency.
Wind Powered Trikes
Pterosail Trike Systems is sailing and cycling over 3,000 miles from coast to coast across the USA this summer. The Pterosail is a street-legal recumbent tricycle with sails. It can reach up to 40 mph in good winds. No wind? Pedal. See also: the Whike, a Dutch made sail assisted trike. Related: Guido Vigevano's wind car / Sailing rockets / Kiteboating / Velomobiles.
Tandem Cargo Tricycle (1940) & More Vintage Dutch Carrier Bikes
Mechanics from the Dutch telecom department PTT (1940). Found at Transportfiets. The blog has more pictures of old Dutch carrier bikes, some of them below.
Continue reading "Tandem Cargo Tricycle (1940) & More Vintage Dutch Carrier Bikes" »
The Industrialization of Traffic: Why Bicycles are Faster than Cars
"The model American male devotes more than 1,600 hours a year to his car. He sits in it while it goes and while it stands idling. He parks it and searches for it. He earns the money to put down on it and to meet the monthly installments. He works to pay for gasoline, tolls, insurance, taxes, and tickets. He spends four of his sixteen waking hours on the road or gathering his resources for it."
"The model American puts in 1,600 hours to get 7,500 miles: less than five miles per hour. In countries deprived of a transportation industry, people manage to do the same, walking wherever they want to go, and they allocate only 3 to 8 per cent of their society’s time budget to traffic instead of 28 per cent. What distinguishes the traffic in rich countries from the traffic in poor countries is not more mileage per hour of life-time for the majority, but more hours of compulsory consumption of high doses of energy, packaged and unequally distributed by the transportation industry."
"Man on a bicycle can go three or four times faster than the pedestrian, but uses five times less energy in the process. He carries one gram of his weight over a kilometer of flat road at an expense of only 0.15 calories. The bicycle is the perfect transducer to match man’s metabolic energy to the impedance of locomotion. Equipped with this tool, man outstrips the efficiency of not only all machines but all other animals as well. The bicycle lifted man’s auto-mobility into a new order, beyond which progress is theoretically not possible."
"Bicycles are not only thermodynamically efficient, they are also cheap. With his much lower salary, the Chinese acquires his durable bicycle in a fraction of the working hours an American devotes to the purchase of his obsolescent car. The cost of public utilities needed to facilitate bicycle traffic versus the price of an infrastructure tailored to high speeds is proportionately even less than the price differential of the vehicles used in the two systems."
Quoted form "Energy and Equity", Ivan Illich, 1978. The image was found on the website Old Woodies. Previously: Cars, out of the way. More bicycle posts.
Cycle Chics
Fast cars are considered sexy, but we disagree - try to show off your legs when you are driving a sports car or an SUV. More pictures of biking boys and (especially) girls at Copenhagen Cycle Chic. Their motto: "Style over speed".
Macho pedal power
Maybe artists and fantasy are a better foothold for the future than engineers and high-tech. The pedal powered Hennepin Crawler is capable of both street and railroad track cruising and can seat four people. It is comprised of approximately 90% recycled materials and has a sex appeal that can rival that of a Porsche or a Land Rover. Via Make 17. Related: Cycle Chics. More on railcars. More low-tech cars.
