Crafting & machines · How it works
Rotation
Shafts, gear wheels and electric motors carry movement from wind rotors and motors to pumps and back to power.
In the game
How to get it
Lay shafts like cables (wooden 2 kW, steel 32 kW), put gear wheels on them to change the speed, and an electric motor at one end: fed by a cable it turns the line; turned by a wind rotor it gives power.
What it is for
Wind turbines, field pumps (best at 30 turns a minute) and machines driven by a shaft; a motor and a rotor turn wind into electricity.
Why it exists
What turns on a shaft is power, and power is never created from nothing: a small motor cannot run a huge factory.
The same text the game shows in its progress tree and on the item's sheet (I).
Shafts carry movement the way cables carry electricity. What flows along them is power: it is shared, it is lost a little on the way, and it is never created.
The pieces
- Shaft: wooden (2 kW) or steel (32 kW), up to 32 m between two nodes, 1 % lost per metre.
- Gear wheel: small (1 m) and large (5 m) wheels placed on a shaft; two wheels whose teeth meet turn each other, the speed in the ratio of their sizes, the direction reversed.
- Electric motor: up to 2 kW at 120 turns a minute from a cable, or a generator when something turns it.
- A junction on a shaft splits its power (4 % lost).
What to do with it
- A Wind turbine turns a shaft; a motor at the end of it gives electricity.
- A field Field pump works best at 30 turns a minute: drive it from a motor through a small wheel meshing a large one.
- A powered motor also turns the blades of a wind rotor (a fan).
Why it exists
Real mechanics, simplified: no gearbox block, players place the wheels and pick their own ratios. When more is asked than a shaft carries, it slips and everything on it shares.
Meters
A tachometer reads a shaft's speed and a torque meter its torque, as signals for a display or a chip: see Sensors and meters.
On the progress path
AT3The workshopMain path
A sub-action of the step Cogwheel, bolts, spring, coil: not needed to go on, but counted in your progress.
- BeforeAT2 · Sheets and copper wire
- This stepAT3 · Cogwheel, bolts, spring, coil