Product Description

• The descriptions and illustrations are confined to the important and fundamental elements, so that time is not wasted reading a lot of useless or irrelevant detail.
• Readers are told plainly and briefly what each mechanism consists of, how it operates, and the features which make it of special interest.
• The particular mechanisms have been selected because they have stood the test of actual practice.
• Among the mechanisms described and illustrated by working diagrams are: cam applications and special cam designs; intermittent motions from gears and cams; interlocking devices; valve diagrams; reversing mechanisms of special design; tripping or stop mechanisms; drives of crank type for reciprocating driven members; feeding mechanisms and auxiliary devices; feeding and ejecting mechanisms; and many, many more.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #96388 in Books
• Published on: 1930-01-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 4
• Binding: Hardcover

Customer Reviews

Invaluable Resource for Beginners and Experts
This set of 4 volumes are chock-full of information on various mechanical devices, and how they work. The text explains how each device works, along with illustrations that point out what each part does in the mechanism. Since the all of the mechanisms are from real-world applications, the designs are proven. The organization of the 4 volumes are similar, for example: Cams & Special Cam Designs/Intermittent Motions.../Tripping or Stopping Mechanisms/Feeding Mechanisms/Etc. Also, the fact that the text is broken into 4 volumes, Its very convienient to browse through. I recommend this set to the beginner, up to the advanced application engineer, because most people don't have the time to re-invent the wheel.

Patent information repackaged
Have you ever read a US Patent all the way through? That's what this book consists of -- a group of interesting and ingenious patents. Ie: very text based and very tediously written. For example: "Shaft A rotates within the proximity of cam B in a concentric manner producing a force C which exposes gate D to a level of thrust.... and so on"

While you don't have to be an engineer to read a patent document (but it helps), it's very time consuming to read through them and gain a summary understanding of how the device/mechanism is supposed to work. Patent lawyers write patents to protect the invention and not to make it easy for the average person to understand them.

I was hoping that this book was more descriptive with better diagrams than just a collection patents. A better title would've been "Ingenious Mechanisms - A collection of patents for Designers and Inventors".

Very comprehensive, detailed set!
These books are very comprehensive. There are lots of multi-component mechanisms described in great detail for mechanically inclined people.

The machines depicted are of an historical nature. I don't see this as a shortcoming, however. Mechanisms of the sort found in these volumes were state-of-the-art at one time. There were no electronic sensors and computer controls at the turn of the last century. Everything had to work -- and had to work mechanically. The mechanisms explained in these volumes are a testament to a certain real-world ingenuity that most of us can't comprehend until we read books like these.