Chain pump animation

I quickly put this together in flash to help me understand how it works.

Basic Flash User Interface

Worked on this while waiting for a copy of the translated version of the book to arrive. At the moment it is very basic but all the images and text can be replaced easily for better items.

Researching how the book will look

The books around that time didn't have modern book binding methods of glue or staples so in order to keep the appearance looking correct in the flash CD of it I had a look at what it could look like.


It looks like it should be bound with string and worn down due to wear and tear.

The Automata Chosen + Presentation

With talks with Phil and Alan I have decided to go with three of the automata, two of which can be quickly done the third will take a bit longer due to the immense detail of the design.

The two easier ones are the:

Hydropowered Sagiya Chain Pump

Hydropowered Water Pump

The third one that will be much harder to model is:

The Elephant Clock

The elephant clock does have a real world re-production I can use a reference:

I am going to present these automata in the form of a flash based educational CD stylized as a 'pop-up book' copy of The book of knowledge of ingenious mechanical devices.

More reference found

I have found some more helpful information to assist me with the creation of these automata.

Muslim Heritage

Automation Robotics In Muslim Heritage

I have also with help from the University's library managed to locate a borrowable copy of the translated book which will help vastly with this project.

Techniques and materials

Of course Al-Jazari didn't have access to today's level of technology and metalergy he had to make do with what was available in that era.

Surprisingly medivil islam had quite a high level of technology for that time meaning thay had the resources to produce steel and cast iron.



(From Wikipedia)

"Iron technology was further advanced by several inventions in medieval Islam, during the so-called Islamic Golden Age. These included a variety of water-powered and wind-poweredmills for metal production, including geared gristmills and forges. By the 11th century, every province throughout the Muslim world had these industrial mills in operation, from Islamic Spain and North Africa in the west to the Middle East and Central Asia in the east. There are also 10th-century references to cast iron, as well as archeological evidence of blast furnacesAyyubid and Mamluk empires from the 11th century, thus suggesting a diffusion of Chinese metal technology to the Islamic world. industrial being used in the

Geared gristmills were invented by Muslim engineers, and were used for crushing metallic ores before extraction. Gristmills in the Islamic world were often made from both watermills and windmills. In order to adapt water wheels for gristmilling purposes, cams were used for raising and releasing trip hammers to fall on a material. The first forge to be driven by a hydropowered water mill rather than manual labour was invented in the 12th century Islamic Spain.

One of the most famous steels produced in the medieval Near East was Damascus steel used for swordmaking, and mostly produced in Damascus, Syria, in the period from 900 to 1750. This was produced using the crucible steel method, based on the earlier Indian wootz steel. This process was adopted in the Middle East using locally produced steels. The exact process remains unknown, but allowed carbides to precipitate out as micro particles arranged in sheets or bands within the body of a blade. The carbides are far harder than the surrounding low carbon steel, allowing the swordsmith to make an edge which would cut hard materials with the precipitated carbides, while the bands of softer steel allowed the sword as a whole to remain tough and flexible. A team of researchers based at the Technical University of Dresden that uses x-rayselectron microscopy to examine Damascus steel discovered the presence of cementitenanowires and carbon nanotubes. Peter Paufler, a member of the Dresden team, says that these nanostructures give Damascus steel its distinctive properties and are a result of the forging



Below are the methods Al-Jazari used to creat his ideas.


(From Wikipedia)


"Camshaft

The camshaft, a shaft to which cams are attached, was first introduced in 1206 by Al-Jazari, who employed them in his automata, water clocks (such as the candle clock) and water-raising machines. The cam and camshaft later appeared in European mechanisms from the 14th century.

Crankshaft and crank-slider mechanism

The eccentrically mounted handle of the rotary handmill in 5th century BC Spain that spread across the Roman Empire constitutes a crank. The earliest evidence of a crank and connecting rod mechanism dates to the 3rd century AD Hierapolis sawmill in the Roman Empire. The crank also appears in the mid-9th century in several of the hydraulic devices described by the Banū Mūsā brothers in their Book of Ingenious Devices.

In 1206, Al-Jazari invented an early crankshaft, which he incorporated with a crank-connecting rod mechanism in his twin-cylinder pump. Like the modern crankshaft, Al-Jazari's mechanism consisted of a wheel setting several crank pins into motion, with the wheel's motion being circular and the pins moving back-and-forth in a straight line. The crankshaft described by Al-Jazarirotary motion into a linear reciprocating motion, and is central to modern machinery such as the steam engine, internal combustion engine and automatic controls. transforms continuous

He used the crankshaft with a connecting rod in two of his water-raising machines: the crank-driven saqiya chain pump and the double-action reciprocating piston suction pump. His water pump also employed the first known crank-slider mechanism.

Design and construction methods

English techonology historian Donald Routledge Hill writes:

We see for the first time in al-Jazari's work several concepts important for both design and construction: the lamination of timber to minimize warping, the static balancing of wheels, the use of wooden templates (a kind of pattern), the use of paper models to establish designs, the calibration of orifices, the grinding of the seats and plugs of valves together with emery powder to obtain a watertight fit, and the castingmold boxes with sand. of metals in closed

Escapement mechanism in a rotating wheel

Al-Jazari invented a method for controlling the speed of rotation of a wheel using an escapement mechanism.

Mechanical controls

According to Donald Routledge Hill, al-Jazari described several early mechanical controls, including "a large metal door, a combination lock and a lock with four bolts."

Segmental gear

A segmental gear is "a piece for receiving or communicating reciprocating motion from or to a cogwheel, consisting of a sector of a circular gear, or ring, having cogs on the periphery, or face."Lynn Townsend White, Jr. wrote: Professor

Segmental gears first clearly appear in Al-Jazari, in the West they emerge in Giovanni de Dondi's astronomical clock finished in 1364, and only with the great Sienese engineer Francesco di Giorgio (1501) did they enter the general vocabulary of European machine design."

The Automata

These are the automata created by Al-Jazari in which are illustrated within the book and i hope to re-create in 3d and hopefully correctly animate their actions.

Hydropowered Sagiya Chain Pump

Hand Washing Automata With Flush Mechanism

Candle Clock

Musical Robot Band

The Elephant Clock

Hydropowered Water Pump