Orrery and Gear Spreadsheets from Mike Shuter

Thanks to Mike Shuter, who commented on the previous entry, for sending me his two spreadsheets with Orrery gear ratios and the “continuous fractions” method of determining wheel/pinion pairs. He has permitted me to post them here but please contact “m [dot] shuter [at] ntlworld [dot] com” if you find them useful. Please do not repost without contacting Mike as he is the creator.

Mike Shuter’s Spreadsheets

One thought on “Orrery and Gear Spreadsheets from Mike Shuter

  1. Good day

    I have been trying to design a mechanism for an orrery I´ve been working on an off for months now, I could make a Copernican orrery and that would be it but I want to have all the planets , including Pluto just for Nostalgia, I just don´t know why you have two sets of gear ratios, I’m imagining it as a more complex version of a copernican orrery with the stacked gears, so I’m grabbing each gear pair (driver and driven) and stacking them , like so http://imgur.com/S33OBrQ Would I be correct in this assumption? if so … which one of the ratios do I use? the one on top or the second in the calculations file.

    Also I’m not sure what you mean wheel / pinion pairs I suppose its to calculate accurate speeds,… I did find a mechanism that I want to replicate which is this one http://imgur.com/wd1Grtt, I just observed the orrery till I figured out the motion, altho I really cannot know the gear ratios, do you think I could convert the stacked ones into that one? and do I need the continuous fractions sheet? if so I must admit I have no idea how to use it

    Not sure if you could help me with this, if you have time and are willing of course.

    Thank you.

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