Helve hammer setup doesn't work

[Jan2607]

First time playing around with mechanical power. As soon as I connect my helve hammer, everything stops spinning. And I don't understand why.

I'm using a windmill with 4 sets of sails, windspeed is around 60%. Besides what is seen in the pictures below I have no other connections. I watched tutorial videos about mechanical power, but it seems I'm something missing. 

 

[LadyWYT]

Welcome to the forums! Have you tried connecting the windmill to the side of the big gear rather than the main axle? I'm not the most adept at the mechanical side of the game, but I think that may be the problem in this case.

[Jan2607]

Thanks for the reply. But doing so would reduce the turn speed, right? 

[Dark Thoughts]

Gearing is always a compromise between speed and torque. If you want to have both you have to supply sufficient input power.

[LadyWYT]

7 minutes ago, Jan2607 said:

Thanks for the reply. But doing so would reduce the turn speed, right? 

Kind of? I'm probably butchering the explanation here, but it's reducing the speed while increasing the torque. The speed might be slower, but it's producing usable power, in other words. The helve hammer requires quite a bit of torque(power) in order to operate.

I'll also note that if you have multiple things hooked up to one windmill, you'll want to build transmissions and clutches in order to toggle them on and off as needed, or otherwise disconnect the unused machines from the power source as needed. The more machines you try to power at once, the more power you will need.

[ItzWalterino]

Perhaps too weak windmill, try adding fifth sail set. Helve hammer takes a LOT of power. Not sure what the minimal requirement is, but from my experience by the looks of it it should work just fine.

Another idea i got is that perhaps the helve hammer requires rotation on the other side and gets stuck otherwise, though i'm not sure about it. Try changing the sides the helve hammer gets its power from and see if it works

 

Edit: definitely weak windmill, noticed you have increased power because of the large gear, and thus need FAR more input. To put it to perspective (in my numbers lol, not precise), 4 sets of sails windmill gives 80 power. Helve hammer needs 30. BUT the increase of speed needs 5.5x MORE power, which is 165, and the 80 power gain from the 4-sail windmill is too low

Edited Saturday at 09:59 PM by ItzWalterino

[Jan2607]

Thanks for your replies guys.

Hmmm... I tried to get ri of most of the gears, especially the large gear. Now it's so slow that the helve hammer can' finish an ingot before it cools down too much. Well, I guess I have to wait for next summer to add more sails //media.invisioncic.com/r268468/emoticons/sad.png Spend all my fiber to get those 4 sets. 

But when I have 5 sets - that seems to be the maximum for one mill? - then I will also have not enough power to speed it up, right? So how do you guys connect everything you need to only one mill?

[LadyWYT]

47 minutes ago, Jan2607 said:

But when I have 5 sets - that seems to be the maximum for one mill? - then I will also have not enough power to speed it up, right?

Five sets of sails is plenty to power a helve hammer, provided the wind is decent. If you connect the windmill directly to the helve hammer using axles and angled gears there shouldn't be any power issues as long as there is some decent wind.

 

49 minutes ago, Jan2607 said:

So how do you guys connect everything you need to only one mill?

If you only want to use a single windmill to power everything, you will need to connect the windmill to a large gear, using an angled gear to connect it to the large gear's rim. In the pictures you provided, you've connected the windmill to the main shaft of the large gear, which in my experience will make the large gear spin quite fast but won't actually translate to power. By connecting the windmill to the large gear's rim via angled gear though, the large gear will turn much slower but actually be outputting usable power. From there it's just a matter of connecting everything else to the other empty slots on the large gear's rim, making sure to include transmissions and clutches so you can switch the machines on and off as needed. One windmill alone won't power everything at once, at least not in 1.21.

[Jan2607]

Thank you!

[pigfood]

Something like 12 full sets of 5x sails isn't overkill for an up-geared helve hammer, if you want it to work well in low wind.

You can also use multiple helve hammers with the same anvil (processing the same work piece).

[Vexxvididu]

I just want to add, use of big gears much less MULTIPLE big gears is usually a sign someone is either a real expert. ....or has no idea what they are doing.  Your basic, first mechanical power setup should just be a direct connection to whatever you want to power (axles and angled gears only).

[LadyWYT]

5 hours ago, pigfood said:

Something like 12 full sets of 5x sails isn't overkill for an up-geared helve hammer, if you want it to work well in low wind.

Really depends on how much work one wants to sink into the setup. It's not something I would recommend though due to the changes coming in 1.22. Multi-windmill setups should still be possible, it's just the Frankenmill designs that are going defunct, I think, in favor of watermills and bigger windmill options.

[Ratbatboo]

Torque and speed are opposite ends of your equation. You can think of speed as 'how fast' something turns, and torque as 'how strongly' something turns. A very light dragster can be pushed along by a high-speed engine with not a lot of torque to speeds over over 300mph in just a few seconds. Take that same exact engine, put it in a dump truck? That dump truck isn't going anywhere. The engine will burn itself out trying to get that mass moving. I'm afraid that dump truck situation is probably what you are facing.

When you go from a larger gear to a smaller gear, you increase the speed down-stream from the smaller gear. Think of it like this:
(INPUT) > Big gear > Small gear > Fast spinny result
If your small gear turns (I dunno off the top of my head what VS's ratio is, so excuse me if these figures are all ex rectum) 6 times for every time the big gear turns, then the output will rotate at 6 times the speed and (for simplicity's sake without drag, friction, parasitic friction, heat, etc.) less than 1/6th of the power (torque).

When you go from a smaller gear to a larger gear, you increase the power transmitted but slow down the speed.
(INPUT) > Small gear > Big gear > Slow but powerful result
Using the same 1:6 ratio above, your output will now be turning 1/6th the speed of your windmill but with a bit less than 6x the power (torque).

If you've ever driven a manual transmission car, you know the first, lowest gear gets the car moving, but can't get it moving very fast. Then you step up through higher gears until you end up at a gear that turns very, very fast (highway speeds). That one can't possibly budge the car when it's standing still...Your engine will just stall out. So there is an inverse relationship between torque and speed. For the same reason, vehicles having to go up hill often have to downshift to a lower gear so they don't lose speed...A higher gear isn't strong enough to carry them up the incline.

If your windmill isn't delivering enough power, you need to gear down (small gear on windmill, big gear on machine) to get the power to do the job. If that means your work isn't finished when it cools, then you're just going to have to reheat unfinished work and put it back on the anvil for the time being.

EDIT:
I found this setup for a manually-shifted three-speed transmission in Vintage Story that might help you both to understand the problem, and to possibly solve it.
 

 

Edited Monday at 09:08 AM by Ratbatboo