Quantified Backlash Drive Coupler

8/11/2024

Quantified Backlash Drive:

We have been testing the Quantified Backlash Drive (QBD) coupler for over a month now. Running the PIE 6.0 with 2 motors and the QBD keeping the synchronization within the working spec has resulted in a PIE that has minimal vibration, near constant thrust, reduced noise, low power usage, and excellent performance.

Actual thrust has not been measured, since this has been about the QBD design. The PIE 6.0 uses the rotating assemblies from the PIE 4 machine so thrust was never expected to exceed that of the PIE 4.

Thinking about the video presentation with Roy Thornson presenting his last design which was intended to go in an airplane to assist propulsion and even be the primary propulsive force eventually, we can see exactly why it never made it “off the ground”. In the video and in the very few photos available we can see there are 4 rotating wheels connected by roller chain, or timing belt, to a central motor drive hub.

Along with several other things that Roy never got figured out (to the best of our knowledge), Roy was unaware of the negative effect of reducing speed in the range of 90 degrees before the mass reaches “apex”. We reach this supposition because he did not use any kind of Speed Differential Control (SDC) system, so the rotating speed (RPM) input was constant. However, if there was a load introduced to the motor as it entered the 90-degree range it would be reasonable to think that the motor’s RPM might have dipped slightly. Even dropping a few rpm (example 150 down to 145) during that phase would be enough to cancel most of the propulsion!

Roy Thornson’s Prototype

IF Roy had timed the wheels all the same and used only 1 mass (weight) per wheel, it would work. He could have even spread it out amongst the wheels a bit to allow each to come to apex within a 20 to 30 degree range and still had some propulsion, but the only way to get that design to work is with a separate motor for each wheel, or pair of wheels, to attain a maximum of 4 pulses per revolution, AND, keep them synchronized (timed) with a QBD.

This said, it would now be possible to build a replica of his engine that, with the proper modifications, would actually work! — Any Takers? —

Successful Road Test

A few weeks ago (June 16, 2024), the PIE 6.0 was mounted in the test vehicle. A protective & sound deadening box made from steel tubing, plywood and several thick rubber mud flaps was built to cover it. Due to personal time constraints, it wasn’t run & tested until nearly 3 weeks later…

Getting The PIE 6 Mounted
Protective Cover (Doghouse

July 6, 2024: The PIE 6.0 has successfully completed its maiden voyage! The PIE design is solid so there are really no surprises there. This test was mostly about the Quantified Backlash Drive.

The PIE 6 is really two single-disc PIEs stacked on top of each other in a single framework. The two PIEs are timed 90 degrees apart to smooth the thrust pulses. Previously, this has proven problematic as the pulsing of one disc (or wheel) would detract from the pulse of the other disc when timed this way. The problem seemed to be that the rotational speed of one was directly affecting the rotational speed of the other. Also, the forward pulse of either disc was theorized to be affecting the building of energy in the other disc.

Two different design changes were proposed to test the validity of those 2 theories. The theory concerning rotational speeds seemed more realistic as rotational velocity manipulation is important to the efficacy of the design.

The Quantified Backlash Drive coupler (QBD coupler) allows the 2 PIEs to work somewhat independently, while keeping the initial 90 degree timing within an acceptable tolerance. This whole effort is only to smooth the pulsations of thrust without reducing the thrust of each rotating assembly.

QBD Coupler Being Assembled
QBD Coupler Being Set Up To Use

Proper testing of thrust on the test vehicle will now be conducted to satisfy the scientific requirements to validate the design. Even without proper thrust validation the QBD coupler’s success is allowing the PIE design to be enhanced for maximum power. Perhaps a pair of 30 inch rotating assemblies with 15 pound masses! Maybe not exactly, but you get the picture.

This is now making me wonder how many “failed” designs might have been successful if they had used multiple independent rotating assemblies tied together with something similar to the Quantified Backlash Drive… It should be making us all start seriously thinking about it!

Setting Up The Control Box
Setting Up The Speed Controller
Ready To Test

Preparing for Road Tests

The PIE 6.0 is ready to install for road testing. We are currently prepping the vehicle by building a multi-purpose hood for it to protect it from the weather, reduce noise, and contain it for safety purposes.

Although the relays and their wiring are still visible, the rest of the wiring has been greatly neatened and properly secured. A heavy duty 4-wire connector is being used to connect the engine to its control system & power source.

An easily removable galvanized steel angle is installed near the rear of the truck bed where the PIE 6.0 will “pull” the vehicle forward in the test sequences instead of “pushing” as we have done in previous tests.

Once the PIE is installed, a simple remote activation switch will run to the console by the driver’s seat. Road test updates will follow along with videos and photos.

Quantified Backlash Drive for the PIE

The PIE.xx or PIExx is the newest iteration of the original PIE which was based on the work of Roy Thornson. This build is using the masses, or weights, from the PIE 4 series as they are the most advanced masses built to date with their “dead-blow” properties. It is using the “stacked” or “double-decker” design of the PIE 2 series for the smaller footprint and for the implementation of some new features. It is using the non-contact switches from the PIE 4 series as they are simple and inexpensive to interface with multiple speed controller designs.

The newest and most radical feature added to the mix is one I am calling the “Quantified Backlash Drive” or QBD.

The QBD: The QBD is a 2 input/output “jackshaft” that allows partial uncoupling of the two while ensuring the uncoupled halves stay within a specified range or have a specific backlash between them. The entire purpose of this is to allow the two rotating assemblies (“wheels”) to use separate drive motors each with its own separate SDC but not allow the two wheels to get out of their approximate 90 degree synchronized relative positions.

Premise: The need for the QBD stems from wanting to have additional pulses per revolution (ppr) which will make the end-user feel less pulsations because they are much closer together. Previous attempts at having more than 2 ppr yielded no stand-alone thrust. Using 4 ppr, thrust was measured as an aid to propulsion for a vehicle with a large enough mass to absorb much of the pulsations. When dropping the ppr to 2 ppr, self-propulsion was achieved without the need for as much overall vehicle mass. Note: Some overall mass is still required to absorb reversion pulses.

The reason for the lack of self-propulsion is the interaction of pulses and the requirements of the SDCs. The SDCs add more than a speed boost through part of each rotation, they add a momentary deceleration when the mass nears apex causing the mass to impact its stop with much more force. This is incredibly important and cannot be done if there are other masses needing to accelerate at the same time. This makes the SDC combined with the QBD a truly operational “acceleration and deceleration” mechanism!

The new Quantified Backlash Drive being set up.

The SDC & QBD Ready for Testing.

2023 Already Half Way Through…

Hello Everyone,

Sorry, no photos in this post…

June, 2023. What a crazy last few years this has been and 2023 is no exception! When I started building inertial propulsion devices, it was approximately 20 years ago. Those initial devices failed miserably because I did not understand the principles I was looking for. At that time I was working with energy converters and at that time I just wasn’t thinking about propulsion as moving of energy I was thinking about it as moving of mass. I couldn’t have been more wrong! So now that I do understand these things, and as I came to a fairly clear understanding of these things in the late 2010s, it brings us to where we are today!

So the first of this year, 2023, on New Year’s Day, we had the very first ever successful duplicatable test of the Trammell engine! We had had some successes before, but I don’t call those true successes because they were not duplicatable. On January 1st I could stop the machine, start the machine, rev the machine up, slow the machine down and watch the same exact reaction with every single change that I made. That is what I call success! So since then the travel engine has undergone a couple of changes. We’ve gotten better at backfire control, we have a much much stronger engine that is the electric motor, and we can duplicate on demand the fact that it produces thrust. This thrust is in the upward direction it is and it is hanging from a balance beam type scale. Thrust begins while hanging in me there not sitting on a table top or floor to make sure that we are not pushing off against something. As the machine comes to speed it’s thrust is actually the strongest and then tapers off just a bit I suppose if the vessel had several of these travel engines it could start and stop them in sequence creating large quantities of thrust in short duration pulses. 

The biggest problem with the travel engine right now is that I built the damn thing so heavy that it is difficult to move around, and there is no way in the world it would ever be able to lift itself. Currently it weighs somewhere around 320 lb. So not wanting to destroy what actually does work now it is time to duplicate it. Science tells us if something cannot be duplicated it’s reasonably worthless, so V2 has been started, that is Trammell B2.

This new version of Trammell is seeing the framework change shape just a little bit. It is no longer going to be a box design, it is also not going to be heavy steel parts making up the frame. The hubs are also going to change, they are not going to be automotive bearings, and even the discs are changing quite a bit as The originals were half inch thick steel, and these are 3/8 thick aluminum plates. I am shooting for under 50 lb for the entire machine, although I don’t know what motor I’m going to use yet so that is going to determine the final weight.

So a little bit about how the Trammel works, although currently we are not giving away all of the secrets. If one was to think about a fisherman sitting on a dock or better yet in a boat, and he had a fishing rod with a 1 lb weight at the end instead of bait to catch a fish, and if that one pound weight was able to be pulled back and thrown out quickly and effectively, one could imagine the fisherman in his boat casting that weight out into the water but before it sinks into the water he jerks on it really really hard and pulls it back into the boat just as quickly as it was cast out. The act of casting it out took much more time than the act of jerking it to a stop and starting its pull back. That time differential along with the hard jerk versus the nice slow smooth cast is exactly how a mass displacement machine works. The mass is actually attached in one component where it is removed temporarily attached to a second component which is already moving at speed, and then that second component brings the mass to a stop and reverses its direction brings it back to full speed and then hands it back off to its first component. That first component brings it back around to where it’s going to meet the place where it will disconnect from that component and be transferred to the second component again. It will do this thousands and thousands of times! If the electric motor input is running at 1000 rpms, it will do this transfer in two different places within the machine twice her RPM making 2,000 actual pulses but 4,000 actual transfers every minute. This is why the faster the machine runs, the more power it produces! Hopefully soon we will have new models coming out which will be tested out in the real world on real vehicles. Either wheel vehicles, floating vehicles or even flying vehicles! I don’t see us taking this to space right away since I don’t currently have a ride, but as the tech develops it just might take itself there!

I am not going to just “give away” the secrets before we have a chance to properly develop the Trammel technology but in the upcoming series of posts, pictures and videos, the principles of operation will be discussed. Perhaps a series of YouTube videos as well…

The upcoming series will be, “The Trammel Engine”.

That’s it for now, thanks for sticking with me through this crazy journey and waiting so long between posts. Please be good to each other and have a great day…

Trammel Update for mid-March 2023

3/10/2023

Whew… It has been a really busy 4 months since I posted here! So here is a “snapshot update” of the highlights followed by videos.

  1. Nov. 2022: The PIE 5.0 works. No where near as well as I wanted, but one more time I learned sooo much that I call it a win!
  2. Dec. 2022: I took what I learned and applied it to the Trammel engine.
  3. Dec. 2022: The AMP, or “Active Mass Point”, design is put into service. “Game changer”!!!
  4. Jan. 2023: New years day, the Trammel displays repeatable “proof of principal” thrust!
  5. Feb. 2023: Partial overhaul of the Trammel. Several weak points proved where many of the mechanical stresses are and where they are not.
  6. Feb. 2023: Built a new balance beam with a 20:1 ratio. The Trammel again displays repeatable thrust.
  7. Mar. 2023: The special ordered brushless motor gives out & looses so much power it is affecting thrust output.
  8. Mar. 2023: Revamped the motor drive and installed 2 identical 24 volt motors with a 1:2 overdrive gear ratio.
  9. Mar. 2023: Theory of  “mass displacement” is better understood.

Like I said, I have been busy! Here are some of these highlights on my YouTube channel and mirrored on my Bit Chute channel.

PIE 5.0
Thrust!
Repairs & partial overhaul complete & still has thrust!
Thrust demo on new balance beam
Two motors at full speed

So next up will be back to the balance beam and we will be making adjustments to improve thrust. In the near future, an improved build is on the docket using everything learned thus far including improved versions of the highly successful AMP design.

I can easily speculate that the Trammel Engine will become more compact but much stronger within a protective enclosure that will also reduce the noise level dramatically.

Stay tuned for more!

PIE 5.0 Update & “Scientific Heresy”

The PIE 5.0 does work! It is not as good as I was hoping, but it does show just one more way this “impossible” propulsion becomes possible! The things learned by actually putting hands to work in the shop far outweigh the mainstream physics falsehoods still perpetrated in many (or most) of our “higher learning” institutions.

What I am about to say is considered “heresy” in the “religion of science”:

Science is supposed to be available to everyone.

Science is supposed to be FUN.

Scientific information is supposed to be openly available and shareable.

Science and physics are supposed to be shared and debatable among all of us, not just the PhD’s. PhD’s who unfortunately tend to believe what they were taught in their final years of education, which is that their Graduate Degree somehow makes them “better” than everyone else. Science is not supposed to discriminate, science (by definition) is to “observe” with an open mind, not “dismiss” with no regard to the idea of actually learning what is possible.

That said, the PIE 5.0 did work, but just not as well as I hoped but that is actually a large part of what makes testing it successful! Every test, every build, every experiment, every failure, every debate & every argument lost has taught me something and makes me who I am today!

Latest Test of the PIE 5.0

The data and understanding gained from development of all of the PIE versions (including the PIE 5.0) is now being poured liberally back into the Trammel Engine project with a renewed enthusiasm! That alone is worth the time spent planning, laying out, building, and testing! And as a bonus, it is “fun“!

More to come soon, please check back here for updates!

PIE 5.0 Becoming a Reality & 1st Picture

So the first successful test of the PIE 5.0 concept is in the books! Although it is only a bench test with one “wheel”, built on the PIE 4’s frame, and sitting on roll pipes, there is no doubt that there is strong forward thrust with reversion at a level of “little to none”.

Adding more weight will definitely increase thrust as seen in experiments completed. An increase of RPM may also increase thrust, but that has not been experimentally confirmed.

So, what is the big deal with the PIE 5.0? No sun gear! No planetary gears! No impact zones! No stops to get broken!

What does this serve to accomplish? Less noise! Less potentially damaging pounding! Longer thrust pulse duration! No need for a pivot point to swing the weight! Virtually no reversion!

The one thing I struggle with is the need to make this work public while also wanting to build a business around it. Conventional thought says that it needs to remain secret, while every fiber of my being screams “make it public”. With guidance from above, I have built this, & with that same guidance will come the reveal.

Below is a photo of the first tested prototype. Much continues to change so more details will be added as work progresses.

Updated Website & Upcoming PIE 5.0

11/9/2022

It has been a long summer of trying to balance my time in my workshop/lab and my career as a Parts Associate, now promoted to Supervisor. Sometimes I think that I must be doing a good job, but there are some difficult days when I think that I am the supervisor because nobody else wants the headaches…

Trammel Update: The Trammel Engine has been rebuilt over and over and now 99% of the internal motion is now working as expected. There are internal components I call con-rods (connecting rods) which only pull and never push, then there are push-rods which can only push and cannot pull. The con-rods are now of a very strong design and their length is adjustable. We had multiple con-rod failures until this design was implemented.

The problem appears to be with the push rods. It was originally thought that their purpose was more of “timing” between the lower halves of the motor, so they would only need to basically “take up slack” with a spring load. This now appears to be incorrect. It seems that they must actually provide a “hard stop” which only pushes but cannot pull. Springs will still be used, but more as an ant- rattling device (I think).

The constant trial runs and failures precipitating rebuilds and repairs have really taken their toll on me mentally… I need a freakin’ win for crying out loud! So I am now (on an opposite workbench) building a PIE 5.0! It is a culmination of PIE and Trammel knowledge gained over the last 3 years and preliminary tests are incredibly promising.

It is still an ugly “Frankenstein” of a machine, but I will post pictures as it becomes something to look at! The good news is that even though it is still in the earliest stage of development it is already making pounds of thrust (too bad NASA)! With one wheel! With one weight!

Sorry I don’t have pics yet of the PIE 5.0…

Our web site (http://stclairtech.tech) is revamped and rebuilt with new fresh graphics and a much nicer interface which is easy to navigate. I also have a page showing some pictures of UAPs (UFOs) over the St. Lawrence River on the US & Canadian border. The pics show black, odd-shaped objects in the air which might be explained away as birds or insects, but they are 100% real photos of objects which only show up on the digital camera! These are completely invisible to the naked eye! See these photos here: http://stclairtech.tech/UAPs/

Thanks for reading and following along… Talk to you again soon!

The Origins of the Trammel Engine and Recent Activity Update:

4/17/2022

Happy Easter!

Although work has slowed a bit progress continues, and here is a synopsis of recent activity:

1- The Trammel engine got a new (more powerful) motor with speed controller.

2- Trammel displayed thrust only during acceleration with new motor.

2- LOLA or Linear Oscillation Linear Thrust experiments began.

3- Linear component analysis showed it is useless without proper energy storage and release.

4- LOLA v.1 is a linear drive experiment where dual linear components rotate parallel with the axle.

5- LOLA v.2 is a linear drive experiment where a single linear component oscillates which also builds and releases energy by building spring tension and releasing it as the mechanism rotates “over center”.

6- Both LOLA experiments allowed some better understanding of the movement of energy between the mechanism and “etheric inertia” which creates propulsion.

7- The term “etheric inertia” was coined by me. It is the inertia which is not part of the machinery itself, but instead is the inertia which is manipulated and is observed as the movement of the drive and is usually expressed with terminology such as “inertial thrust”. Where thrust would be the verb and/or adverb, “etheric inertia” or EI would be the noun and/or pronoun defining the “environmental force” not just the action of that environmental force.

Note: Inertial Doppler was also coined by me as the observable increase in thrust which happens as the vehicle using the inertial thrust engines move faster, mimicking a type of Doppler effect.

8- During recent APEC conferences which included presentations by Ross Small, myself, and others, it has been mentioned that the RBI machine of Ross’ an my PIE X/Trammel Engine are derived from the work of Mike Marsden who was the inventor of the Mac-Quan. Mr. Marsden dropped out of sight before the unveiling of his second-generation Mac-Quan which was set to occur at the annual Wright brother’s celebration in Kitty Hawk, NC around 2011 or 2012. The Mac-Quan has long been the “gold standard” that all inertial propulsion developers have hoped to duplicate. Mr. Marsden was rumored to have passed away, but I believe he has retired and is now living in relative seclusion somewhere in North America, no longer having anything to do with the technology. The reason(s) is/are up for speculation as he never actually said why he closed up all of his businesses in Texas and dropped out of sight. Even his old web site (www.earthport1.net) is missing from resources such as the Wayback Machine.

I have been fortunate enough to have made the acquaintance of some people who knew Mike Marsden firsthand. Although he did not “give away” the full secret of the internal mechanisms, he did guide these people toward the correct answers. Their information and engineering skills combined with my mechanical background and “get it done” work ethic has produced the PIE X or Trammel Engine as I like to call it.

I have agreed to not divulge the inner workings publicly in return for the engineering data. Hopefully in time the design will be perfected and surpassed at which point it will be part of textbooks around the world.

If anyone here has ever been in contact with Mike Marsden, knows anyone who has been in contact with him, or knows anything about this technology, I would love to hear from you. I will gladly keep any information anonymous and secure and not share anything without your express approval. Email me at stclairtech@stclairtech.tech.

Notation:

Testing rotation speed with a sensor and lab scope setup is now showing that the assembly built to eliminate backfire is keeping the internal speed change reaction times to be too slow to provide proper output thrust. Internal components will now be modified, probably using a pair of timing chains instead of cam-like lever assemblies.

Personal note: I truly long for the day where this is fully functional, and we can have open discussions regarding the design and inner workings of the Trammel Engine. Maybe I should be creating a Power Point presentation as I go…