Our second design relied on a geared system that would have 4 shafts arranged along the corners of the square. There would be a motor shaft that would be always rotating attached to a differential to allow the two halves of the shaft to be rotating in opposite directions. A base and arm shaft would be connected to the fixed gears on the motor shaft via free gears on those respective shafts. The arm shaft would transmit the rotation to the arm via a bevel gear attached to a shaft in its first link. Opposite the motor shaft would be a hold shaft that would act as a locking mechanism for either the arm or the base if need be since that is stationary and could slow the shaft to a stop.
This was a rather good design except for a few major flaws:
- If the base is rotating it will disengage from the other shafts unless it carries the entire structure with it when rotating.
- The system would effectively require 6 clutch systems total for the engaging or disengaging of gears in each shaft.
- Would be rather complex to build and maintain in general and thereby needed to be simplified
- This lead to the creation of design 3
Below are a sketch and an assembly of this iteration of the design:
