Pendulum wrist watches. (automatic winding watches) uses the motion of your wrist moving to swing a pendulum in circles winding a spring and storing the potential. in theory couldn’t this be shrunk even more and used as an alternative power source to an implant?
If this ha already been discussed sorry to repost
and sorry if this a obviously dumb question/topic
To generate electrical power? It exists that way (seiko spring drive). But these mechanisms are already very small, to make them any smaller would be very difficult and expensive. Mechanical components also need regular servicing.
It could be done, but there’s definitely some pros and cons. Any implant with mechanical parts will wear, so it has a limited lifespan. Pendulum watches can easily be opened up and repaired, but not so with an implant. Also the mechanical action of the pendulum winds a spring which stores the small amount of mechanical energy and uses it directly as mechanical energy to turn the watch mechanism. There’s no conversion inefficiency into electricity in that scenario.
Could you look around and see if there’s any examples of storing that energy as electricity and what kind of conversion efficiency they got? The best angle is probably piezoelectric elements, and they’re not very efficient. Also an estimate of how many Joules of mechanical energy the spring can store or Newtons of force the pendulum can produce when spun would be helpful, then I could do the math on a hypothetical maximum yield from one of those devices.
hey man its just food for thought really…
And they’re chewing on it haha. I think they’re trying to lead you down the right thought path to discover if using a pendulum could be a viable, implantable, device.
Yeah, definitely. I don’t think any of us here can say for certain. Do some research and find out. Maybe we’ll all learn something.
Seiko kinetic watches do this. The generator is just another magnetic rotor and coil. But I think that the iron core might be different from the one that drives the hands of the watch.
If you can tolerate a large implant that might not be as reliable as an x series, can manage to make something safe with a rechargeable battery or super capacitor inside, and have a large budget to develop it, it might be possible… Also, the oils required to make the mechanical components last for years might not be biocompatible.
I think that it’s doable but very hard. And the amount of power available will be rather small.