Torque

Torque and RPM

Rotary Power

Axles drive the majority of machines in this mod, due to the simple expediency that most devices require rotation. A device driven by an axle imposes a torque load on it: You need to turn the gears hard enough for work to be done. Not enough torque means the machine locks up until more force is applied. Sometimes this depends on the work being done. It's much easier to grind flowers into dye than it is to grind a diamond down!

Motors (including the humble hand crank) have a constant torque value, even while turned off. However, power = torque * velocity, so as expected, when not moving, the motor isn't supplying power. When a Motor is turned on, it will take some time to spin up to the operating velocity. Once at velocity, unless the operating power is dependent on some external circumstance, such as wind speeds, the velocity should not change.

Gearboxes are a way to split and combine power, and double as transmissions which try to achieve the highest rotating speed possible to drive the load imposed on it. Gearboxes are not differentials, however! Each output face is supplied exactly the same amount of torque and velocity. They're driven by the same gear ratio. If the gearbox can't step down velocity far enough that it can supply every face with the highest torque required by any of them, it will lock up and refuse to supply power to any of them.

Be careful when setting up gearboxes: Just like three gears won't turn in euclidean space, pointing output faces of gearboxes towards each other in a ring can result in infinite torque lockup.

Getting Motive Power

The most basic motive power is the hand crank. However, it's insufficient torque to even turn a long axle; you need to plug it directly into a load object, and even then, it can barely handle the load for many tasks. As mentioned, it can grind up flowers, it can churn butter, it can wash clothes. It can't smash rocks.

Mysterious visitors from the far lands speak of even further lands where they make water or wind turn wheels. We've never seen technology like that, but if it did exist, we're sure it would be inferior to the hand crank in some way. After all, energy doesn't just happen for free over time.

In large industrial systems, typically you get motive power out of a conversion: Either you use heat energy to drive a turbine (through either air or water convection), or you spin up an electric motor (from forge energy).

The final method, which we hope to have the technology for some day, is the horse mill. However, we imagine we'd have to feed those horses quite a bit more in order to work them that hard.