Suppose that a genie gives every human on earth access to infinite power, with no externalities like CO2 or radioactive waste. Would it make the world a better place or would it turn into a dystopian nightmare?
I think it would be like pouring sugar over a bacteria colony. The earth's crust could be economically strip mined. Ore could be smelted into metal at negligible cost, which could in turn be used to make more machines to strip mine the crust at a faster rate. Oceans could be boiled to access rare metals, or maybe just for fun by a bored teenager.
This isn't to detract from OPs practical comment, but it's an interesting thought experiment.
It's confusing because the drawing omits a pulley attached to shaft "a". Shaft "b" is hollow, shaft "a" turns inside shaft "b". As drawn, shaft "b" will rotate and turn bevel gear "B". If the belt were moved to the [undrawn] pulley on shaft "a", bevel gear "A" will rotate, causing "C" to turn in the opposite direction. The topmost pulley presumably slides left or right to engage the different bottom pulleys.
>> I've always found it a little surprising that companies haven't built/funded a open-source organization for parametric mechanical CAD, similar to Blender for games or KiCad for electronics/PCB design.
Unigraphics was owned by McDonnell Douglas and then sold to EDS, which was a subsidiary of General Motors. As far as I know, GM still uses Unigraphics as their primary CAD system.
I think it would be like pouring sugar over a bacteria colony. The earth's crust could be economically strip mined. Ore could be smelted into metal at negligible cost, which could in turn be used to make more machines to strip mine the crust at a faster rate. Oceans could be boiled to access rare metals, or maybe just for fun by a bored teenager.
This isn't to detract from OPs practical comment, but it's an interesting thought experiment.