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Imagine you're defending a fort against a siege and the enemy brings out this ferris wheel of archery. When they park it, the big man leading this machine's crew turns to face your rampart and belts out "let me show you its features" and lets out a laugh that shakes your bones
After the demonstration, the guard on the wall shouts: "Hé, you forgot to show one feature! How quickly it disassembles with the use of a canon-ball. Fire!"
Or what about you and your lads try to storm said rampart and suddenly 2 or 3 of these show up on top of the gatehouse. The shock this puts into the first lines of attack could be immense. Let some of the darts be those noise making ones and it feels like demons defend this castle
Pretty good attempt! A few issues... first, you need to "fire" earlier as the arrows still have the downwards vector from the spinning wheel. You WILL need fletching to stabilize the flight, as you can clearly see that the downwards force makes the arrows tumble in flight. A "real" trigger/lock instead of the "push upwards" system would also increase reliability and flight. My verdict on Leonardo's invention is fairly negative though. It somehow works, but loading the weapon is cumbersome and outright dangerous. It would be almost useless in battle. If all you want is 16 shots in a short time, then it would be much easier to simply mount them in four stacks with four crossbows each, then pull all of the triggers at once.
But what if you were outfitting a secret jungle temple with booby traps and wanted all the shots to come out a single hole facing down a long hallway with flagstones carefully set to trigger a counterweight to drop and rotate the mechanism at the slightest touch but also wait in perfect condition for at least a 1500 years to protect a golden idol which has to stay in the temple despite its obvious spiritual significance to your culture which is obviously still active enough to create large monuments yet will soon disappear from prominence mysteriously, leaving clues only someone with the ability to connect an obscure and arcane system of clues and historical facts or assumptions would be able to decipher? What about then?
maybe a pull pin release would be easier. Yes, quite useless as 16 shots and a long time to reload. 100 shots would be what you need out of it, but as a siege weapon, reload time isn't as important.
That guy was waaaaaaay ahead of his time. If he was alive today everybody will just bash him with "that's too complicated", "that's tol expensive", "that's unpractical", "who are you"
@@Koushakur People tend to be more polite to your face than they are on an Internet platform. They still talked behind your back, though, so it's fully well possible that lots of people were talking shit on Leonardo when he wasn't around.
Fun fact. The term civil engineer only came in to use to differentiate between military engineers and civilian ones. But both were generalist engineers, sub divisions are a recent, 20th century phenomenon.
I make bows as a hobby out of wood. You are one of the first guys out there I have seen understand the concept of the "loose laminate" where you create the tiller of the bow by using longer and shorter slats. I know Leonardo had some drawings with laminated spring mechanisms, So that's especially great.
never thought of it that way, thank you, all makes sense, probably more in tuned with muskets than todays weapons but same shit different smell, the bullet still fires up the gun
@@33mavboy It's more that the operator applies fire to the weapon to make it do something. The first gunpowder weapons the user literally applied a flame to them, and cannons retained this approach for many years. Because waving a flame at something is pretty annoying to do and prone to the flame going out, hand held weapons developed quite quickly to generate the fire for the operator relatively automatically with this moving from match lock (consumable fire starter) to a wheellock (sparks through friction), to flintlock (reusable spark generator) finally to the percussive charges that we have now which are integral to the bullet casing.
I feel like the only practical use for this would be on top of a fortification with several side by side, aiming up 45° or so with heavy headed bolts that can rain down on an attacker. As for the heavy trigger of the original design: wrap a rope around the handle shaft with a heavy stone in the other end, so you just need to kick it over the inner edge of the battlement to shoot it. One crossbow man/ DaVince machinegun that then picks up his normal crossbow. A good first salvo that gives the impression of far many more defenders.
Loading speed isn't as big of an issue if you look at this as a crew served weapon. You're going to need multiple people to move this thing around, anyway; they may as well be trained to load it. You would need four experienced people who communicate well. Two on each side, with one pulling the string (probably with a lever) and the other setting the bolt in place. As long as they communicate what they're doing and make sure each person is ready to rotate the wheel, they could probably get a rhythm going and load this pretty quickly.
Joerg Sprave and Tod of Tod's workshop made a crossbow with a magazine that would hold 5 arrows. If you collaborated with them you could have a machine that could fire 80 rounds before needing to be reloaded with the possibility of an auto-magazine hot-swap mechanism that could see your creation firing endlessly, or until you ran out of magazines of quarrels.
Crossbows and repeated ancient artillery nobody ever talked about nitol call titanium the nickel titanium programmed by different temperature changes even electricity to carry a lot a lot of power you can even use piezoelectric crystals to maybe control nitinol power the Sterling motors as well a Sterling engine as the way to fire a patrol motion machines in Sterling engines to build this repeater German motors in in 94 engines are not very good acceleration like cars for vehicles but something repeated stats like for something like a repeater crossbow or a ballista they would be excellent at
Yeah... I didn't see his girlfriend for a few videos now, do you know if they are still together? Is it too soon for asking him her phone number or should I wait a bit more?
My first thought was to put this in gate houses or to use it to harass people sieging your castle. Basically use it like a booby trap. Even with a low draw weight, it would definitely be a huge problem to deal with, and it would give defenders free time to do all kinds of things. Either way, great job with this one!
We talked a little bit in the studio about timing the shots. I was thinking of maybe having a vertical post on the end of the trigger arms that you could just raise and lower, but there's probably lots of ways to do it. @@LyteRetro
@@ElliotKrueger what about a tiny lift you can crank at the front base of the post. I doubt you would need to use that on top of a castle but you could put it at the opposite end to raise the back end to point it down. and what do you mean you talked about it the studio you work for HTME?
Considering how quickly this came together into a working prototype and the amount of available skilled labourers at the time it seems like you could realistically actually have a working high fire rate self reloading crossbow/Ferris wheel/turret thing. I think you could reach 500+ rounds per minute sustained if you had a internal track that caught the string and drew it right after firing rather than a rope attached to the axel so you are only adding one or two bows draw weight to the resistance rather than 16 and a loading mechanism just after the apex, maybe just an inclined track that slides the next bolt in. I’d love to see these improvements explored
This could see this as a interesting trap for D&D. Imagine trying to break into the house of a Artificer and one of these start shooting (1 D12 +4) arrows at a unlucky adventurer.
So 3 things would need to occur to make this a more viable implement than say 16 individuals with crossbows. 1. Automating the drawing process: You could use a hook plus gravity to help mitigate force needed to draw. 2. You would need a resetting trigger system: Which already did exist in the form of a rolling nut system, which would be period accurate. 3. A semi automated feeding system: You could use the Chinese hopper system with a flapper that only can be engaged when the crossbow makes contact with the flapper, maybe via some "teeth" at the head of the crossbow. And maybe a spoke and gear system could cut down on the amount of force exerted by the operator and maintain a more consistent speed, in addition maybe a treadwheel could also lessen the force exerted by the operator.
I agree with everything you said, but I also think that reducing the number of crossbows could make everything simpler and easier. Something like 6 or 8 should be enough if it were able to be loaded, drawn and fired continuously.
Hook and lever would work for the draw. In theory you would only need to engage the hook and draw. Once this is done you could load. Either by spinning the wheel once to unload, twice to draw, thrice to load. The unload trigger can be adjusted to the arch in which would mark yard/paces to about where they would hit. Trial and error would get this and I am almost sure that archers of the day would know how far their arrows would fly based on the angle to which they would release. Someone with some skills could do a cad design and make it work quite well. Though I have a feeling the war department did not spend much on research and development. Most of this was done by single persons who would either sell their new wares in a market or has connections to get it in front of someone. This thing is quite cool.
@@benhoward2619 Yes mobility or rather thereof is the only downside, tho you maybe could mount it on a cart to help increase the mobility ever so slightly. I thought about using animal power as well, but I came to the conclusion that since they would have to move in a clockwise motion (much like they would in a mill) it would likely increase the size to the point where the weapon would become cumbersome, so I opted against the idea.
only difference is Jorges would be twice as big and shoot razor sharp light weight bolts at super speed. HA. HA. HA. HAA, just saying, it is Jorge the giant afterall
I absolutely love this, I remember seeing you when you just started and I'm so happy to find your channel again! In relation to your video, had a small idea for you to maybe try? Though it will be a pain and need some major work. Instead of 16 mounted crossbows, maybe make 16 housings for single crossbows to sit in? That way, at least in my head, you have one person loading the crossbow "bolts", one person spinning the device and another person loading the device with the loaded crossbows once the crossbows are empty. Higher reload, higher rate of fire(with extended usage), "easier" to use...maybe. Just an idea, but I never said it was a good one 😅
To find the centre of a circle, draw 2 chords (not intersecting at the assumed centre). Draw a libne perpendicular from the mid-point of the chord; where they intersect is the centre of the circle. If you want to verify the accuracy draw a third chord and perpendicular. Nice build
a suggestion for if you decide to revisit this would be to introduce a ratchet gear. this way you could have a forward rotation be an equal 1:1 input for a high fire rate, then have a reverse rotation with gears in a 50:1 total input. this way the handle would be cranked 50 times for a single rotation of the weapon wheel, but due to the heavy reduction in force needed could be done quickly. allow for two reverse rotations to pull back each crossbow. with this reduction, with 50 lb. of force on the input, you could wind up sixteen 150 lb. bows. connecting the input shaft to your roman crane wheel would make the process nearly effortless. if you design the trigger mechanism to be equal to two rotations forward + the amount needed to position the crossbow, you could do one slow rotation to reload the bolts then a second faster one to actually fire. even if the total rate of fire isn't any higher, each one of these could be manned by one or two persons. thus the 16 persons become 8-16 crossbow wheels. pair them in sets of three or four, and you'll always have one firing while the others reload.
14:20 or better yet, have one soldier shooting a crossbow, with another loading a second crossbow bow. Fire the first, hand it off to be reloaded, fire the second, and so forth. Bonus points if they have a large, self standing shield for portable cover.
that wont speed up things over just two crossbowmen loading and firing their own crossbows. loading takes way longer than firing obviously, so you'd have guy number 1 firing both crossbows (assuming they started out with 2 loaded crossbows) before number 2 has even reloaded one of them. theyre better off each reloading and firing their own crossbow. the only viable scenario i can come up with for this method would be if it's about marksmanship rather than volume of fire, and the one firing is a pro marksman who is then aided by some hastily drafted noob tasked of reloading.
Wonder if you could add a fixed golden spiral near the center and have the closest to center piece opposite the firing side, so as it winds around it would draw the line back into the drawn position. Then drop an arrow/bolt onto the crossbow near the top to reload it as it passes by.
Impressive that Leonardo Da Vinci invented this specific rotary process in the 15th century, which is the same rotary process used in the 18 century Gatling Gun, which went on to be used in the process for the modern day Mini Gun we use today
Really impressed with how well that worked. I wonder what the limit is for how tightly packed you could go with crossbows - like could you have one every 10 degrees for 36 bows?
There comes a point where the shaft of the previous shot hasn't cleared the device and the next crossbow strikes the shaft as it is leaving deflecting the bolts trajectory. Of course you can make the wheel even bigger and space the crossbows far enough apart that the bolt has time to clear, but the device will quickly grow to the size of a Ferris wheel and require a significant amount of strength to turn.
I think Andy is right. 16 crossbowmen would be far more effective and practical than one of these. The challenges with loading and aiming it seem to negate any benefits of the brief quick volley.
well obviously, but I think the idea is that you dont need 16 people to operate this machine, you probably can go with 2 or 3 per machine. So if you can get even just like 5 peoples worth of efficiency out of 2-3, you can boost your effective defensive power. Gotta remember that people are a finite resource as well. Although the main drawback would be how this thing cant be aimed properly. It doesnt really offer enough efficiency to offset the lack of aiming. Maybe if it actually gave 16 peoples worth of efficiency while only needing 2-3 in terms of fire rate you could just pelt the enemy with so many bolts that the lack of aiming doesnt matter, but the device has no automated reload function, so thats not really possible.
@@TheSpencer1000 I think the point is each person would be better off just reloading and shooting their own crossbow. It really offers no reloading speed advantage at all. The main benefit I see to it is if you put it on wheels it could be pulled behind cover for reloading and then just brought to bear to quicky fire a volley. I really don't see you reloading this thig even once before the enemy is upon you though.
i dont want to be that guy who starts a comment with "as per my 10 years experience as a carpenter..." hahaha if you drill holes at the base of your mortises, you re gonna save a lot of chiseling time and make it cleaner. I love using hand tools, but when i find a good shortcut, i put it in my bag. Good work, I love the concept of your channel
I think the fact his invensions could only be made centuries after he initially conceptualized and described them alone is enough of a proof to just how ahead of his time Da Vinci was. I mean, a working prototype of a *chaingun* that seems feasible to had been built in *his* time? That is impressive, surprising that I didn't know about this specific invention of his.
I think angling the trigger mechanism upward so that the bolts have a longer arched range would help, in addition to a stronger pull as mentioned in the video. This would make it more effective for at least slowing down a larger group of opposing soldiers. Also, reinforcing the ends of the crossbows with connectors between them would help prevent that issue with them breaking at the base.
I’m so proud of you bro! You have done so much that a lot of people would not ever try or even think about trying! Also you have done this after a major set back! Keep it coming! Good work
Love me some over-engineered stuff like this! You could get the same result just stacking a bunch of crossbows and hooking up a rope to trigger them all at once or set it up so the further you pull the rope the more shots that are fired- would probably be easier to reload that and you wouldn't have the chance of firing in a random direction if one of them went off by accident. That's just me rambling though. I love this thing!
So did i ! - we built Mummy 3 's - multi dragon head rapid firing crossbow ! - only cinema art directors would approve such design - no ancient engineer would have ! We also did the " dragon drops brass ball into frog month " eartuhquake sismagraph !🇨🇦
im picturing 30 of these machines atop a castle wall , i think it would be effective for an initial defensive burst, and not reloading but rather grabbing the regular bows and crossbows.
Idea: to make it reload you could have used something like the spiral pattern from the automatic hammer in reverse so the string are pulled in evenly in the rotation and unload at a specific point. i think that should also work with the chinese design to have multiple bolts per crossbow
I would say 1000 pounds is on the lighter side for windlass crossbows. 1200 to 1500 were pretty common. Sir Ralph Payne Galway had a 2000 pound one from the 17th century
totally fun and impractical for all the reasons you mentioned. I'm not sure you could ever really make it practical but if you could incorporate a mechanism to pull the string back as you turn it on the opposite side of the wheel, then you could put two of them side by side and fire one while someone reloads the other. forge welding f the trigger finger to the release at a 90degree would mean you only need to place the arrows in it. Alternating between two of them could enable a constant stream of arrows. Now for aiming it...
Build a lever to a trigger that leads to the front, and have that be a piece of bendable material that will snap back into the lever and reset, then put the tripping mechanism in the front, and you can Fire accurately by dialing in where that tripping mechanism is aimed.
I'd imagine that the fire rate could be made more consistent if there was one loader, and one operator. So the top half of the machine would be constantly reloaded. So it wouldn't need to be MG rate of fire, but it would be faster than typical crossbow fire (which crossbows were hard to reload at the time).
Intresting fact: Leonardo DaVinci was actually a pacifist, but he had to invent and draw war machines for the lords that he worked for. So many of the machines are drawn so they would fail if someone ever got the guts to actually construct fullsized versions of them.
That would make a cool trap though. Weighted pully to operate it, and a tripwire to set it off... leave a couple armed in abandoned locations as you retreat
This has potential. If u were to figure out how to make the repeating crossbows work here by adding a device that pushes the ammo well forward and a device that pulls the ammo well back into place, you could have a fully automatic crossbow machine gun that has multiple shots per a crossbow.
Thats an interesting thing^^ I think changing the rotation on shooting would help to get more range on that thing so that the arrows dont get forced down but upwards. And a moovable trigger so you can maby prespinn the weal and then shoot for more constant arrow flights from beginning. Very cool Machine^^
This is great as a trap for D&D campaign. Since I play Pathfinder 1e, I would make this a CR 7 trap hidden behind a wall that falls into the floor revealing this at the end of a corridor. Perception DC 22 to find, Disable Device DC 25 to prevent. 16x light crossbow of +10 to hit and 1d8 19-20/x2 damage. maybe even have them covered in poison for +1 CR. Excellent work making this!
I would argue that the maxim was not the first machine gun. The Chambers flintlock machine gun was the first. It was used in the war of 1812. The puckle gun historically is also a machine gun used even before the chambers but had a very low ammo count.
You state that the only limiting factor is the speed that you can turn the wheel, but I beg to differ. As you watch them shoot out in the slow motion you can see the next crossbow descending as the shaft of the previous shot is still leaving the device. If it goes to fast the next crossbow will literally strike the shaft of the previous shot before it has time to clear the device. I'm not sure at what speed that would occur, but it is a limiting factor on the rate of fire. Shorter bolts would allow for faster fire rate, but would also entail a shorter draw distance. It would be interesting to play around with the numbers to find the optimum bolt length vs draw distance vs rate of fire possible.
I could totally see this being put on a lazy susan so it's manuverable then adding the hooks you were talking about with some sort of pully system so that way all 16 crossbows can be reloaded at once. If perfected it would be an amazing defensive fortification against a besiging army. Imagine the horror of those down on the bridge when this monstrosity starts raining down a hailstorm of arrows.
just make each crossbow a self reloader and make the spinning of the wheel tied to drawing the string back, add a pully system or cog wheels to reduce the strain of spinning the wheel. have each crossbow with a reloadable "clip" for faster reloads on the field THEN you got yourself a gatling gun crossbow :p
Good attempt at making it work. And yeah, intimidation is probably its best side. Although for any situation where few people need to hold against storming attempts? THAT is where it would absolutely be useful, as, lets say 4-8 of these covering the only 2 major openings to a position would make trying to storm in decidedly more dangerous to attempt. So, how about trying to make a lot more of those crossbows and set them up as a salvo gun? Preferably with some sort of improved reload system. For example, a simple system would be that you could have lets say 8 horizontal rows of 6 crossbows each on a mount/wagon, with each row being quick dismountable/mountable, with each row being possible to trigger individually, or several at once. This would mean operating it like a cannon, with reloaders dismounting fired rows, reloading them and then putting them back, while the gunner just stands by waiting for the best time to trigger one or more rows. Although, the idea has a serious downside, that it's made totally obsolete by the very historical H'wacha.
I think that a Gin Gang or horse/ox wheel could provide enough torque to power up that wheel with the autoreloading mechanism and all. Said mechanism could be done with a cam that would "guide" the hook/cord of each crossbow to position, similar to how a Gatling gun moves and prepares its bolts while it spins, while the crossbows themselves could have a Chukonu or Instant Legolas Design to autofeed the arrows.
the bolts are leaving with a downward force on them as they come out of the end, this makes them start rotating in mid air, some serious fletching would be needed to make them not spin
Just like the Chinese repeating crossbow, the utility of a weapon like this would be limited to defending a static position like a fort or castle, or being mounted on a ship, chariot or cart. The upside of using it as a static emplacement is that you could make it bigger and thus offset its biggest drawbacks (low range and power) somewhat. But like the repeating crossbow, its utility against armoured troops would still be pretty limited, hence why I don't think this was ever considered by anyone for use as a military weapon (in Da Vinci's time, heavy metal plate armour was quite common on the battlefield, making this a very ineffective weapon).
The romans had a stationary self feeding ammunition drum, by crank ballista nearly two thousand years ago, which was WAY simpler then this and worked perfectly fine and didn't need to worry about a extended reloading period.
That got me thinking, maybe a ball pitcher machine designed is also viable for ancient times which you feed bolts through a set of fast spinning wheels🤔
Should make the piece of wood that triggers the crossbows pivot forward and backwards so you could get the wheel spinning and then push that wood forward whenever you’re ready to fire the cross bows.
I would love to see if it could not only fire but draw and load. I guess you could possibly do that with the box fed ratcheting crossbows. Maybe do a modern twist on the idea and do a joint project with The Slingshot channel..(”Let Me Show You Its Features”)..
Im still imagining it could be done. Each crossbow would need its own loading device and magazine. Then, pwrhaps as you turn the weheel the individual loading mechanisms pushes against a system akin to a piston/steam engin/ train wheel looking thing. On the crossbows it would need to catch and pull to engadge in one stroke them lift and release in the other.
If you put in some type of ratchet setup so it couldn't spin the wrong way, you could potentially set up another crank to pull the string back on all of them at one time. Then youd just have to load each bolt. Easier said than done, i know.
if you study Leonardo in any depth you realise he didn't actually invent anything nor did he claim to. He speculated on other peoples ideas as in the parachute. When he heard a monk had died testing his version of the parachute he calculated how big it should've been to work and as it happens , he was correct. As for the helicopter, there's a painting from 1430 in the Louvre of Christ playing with a helicopter toy which was a common child's toy at the time. ( Leonardo was born in 1452
I could easily have engineered a better striking plate like a hair trigger system if you round the top corner of the grove the string would only need to move millimeters to hit the round and have a 100% fire rate as for the reloading you could have used the force of the spin to reload each bow.
Looking at the reloading mechanism of the Chinese repeating crossbow it looks like it should be possible to combine that with this design with a feasible amount of Mechanical engineering to get a much more sustained fire rate
It would be cool to attempt to build an automatic crossbow with linked bolts (fabric links?) Combine a crank with the repeating crossbow mechanism and run it similarly to a gatling gun (but belt fed vs gravity). Have a pawl linked to pull next bolt into the mechanism. Another linkage to pull the string back and lock it into position.
Could be positioned behind filled a filled in gap on the ditch, would be very effective on what armor remained in this period Also I suggest you make a vid going over and possibly making mechanical tools used to create the pyramids using small blocks
It might be easier to just get 16 people to fire the crossbows, or use these machines and make the enemy think you have 16 people firing when they are actually sneaking around the attacking army's flank.
The rotation makes it so that all the bolts are flying downwards, because they are moving downwards when they are released. This really limits the range, on top of the crossbows being pretty weak. You might get more range if you release the bolts a bit earlier, while they are still pointing upwards, or if you reales the bolts upside down, so the are spinning up when they are fired. The design also makes it hard to put heavier crossbows into the mechanism, or not? Heavier crossbows use pulleys or cranks or levers or a hook at the front for you to put your foot into so you can pull with your whole body etc. How are you going to put any of these mechanisms on the wheel design and make them somewhat ergonomic to use? I think something might be possible. The crossbows are also very thick, which adds a lot of extra weight to this mechanism, but that could actually be good, especially if you want to use automatic tensioning. Some more momentum could help with that.
Andy my man, you really should invent yourself a lathe of some kind. It would save you so much time and effort and your projects would become so much neater.
Leonardo usually has some flaw to his mechanisms to ensure someone wouldn't just steal his stuff as there were no copy right laws, examples include the tank, glider, and diving bell... also in order to get someone to take him in and cover his bills he sold the ideas of war because it was a period of warring states and no one wants to employ an artist when you need better ways to ensure you and your fortress survive the next attack...
Rather than 16 people, you could just have 16 loaded a ready to fire crossbows and a three man team; one loads the crossbows, one gives the crossbows to the shooter and the shooter aims and fires them or just have one guy shooting them and two loading them.
I would spin the wheel in the opposite direction. Because the crossbows move downwards the arrows also have a downwards momentum. So the crossbow has to compensate this downwards force and the arrow shouldnt fly that far compared to a stale crossbow.
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Imagine you're defending a fort against a siege and the enemy brings out this ferris wheel of archery. When they park it, the big man leading this machine's crew turns to face your rampart and belts out "let me show you its features" and lets out a laugh that shakes your bones
Underrated comment
After the demonstration, the guard on the wall shouts: "Hé, you forgot to show one feature! How quickly it disassembles with the use of a canon-ball. Fire!"
Or what about you and your lads try to storm said rampart and suddenly 2 or 3 of these show up on top of the gatehouse. The shock this puts into the first lines of attack could be immense. Let some of the darts be those noise making ones and it feels like demons defend this castle
You've just summoned Joerg Sprave 😁
I would love to see a HTME/Joerg Sprave colab
Pretty good attempt! A few issues... first, you need to "fire" earlier as the arrows still have the downwards vector from the spinning wheel. You WILL need fletching to stabilize the flight, as you can clearly see that the downwards force makes the arrows tumble in flight. A "real" trigger/lock instead of the "push upwards" system would also increase reliability and flight.
My verdict on Leonardo's invention is fairly negative though. It somehow works, but loading the weapon is cumbersome and outright dangerous. It would be almost useless in battle. If all you want is 16 shots in a short time, then it would be much easier to simply mount them in four stacks with four crossbows each, then pull all of the triggers at once.
But what if you were outfitting a secret jungle temple with booby traps and wanted all the shots to come out a single hole facing down a long hallway with flagstones carefully set to trigger a counterweight to drop and rotate the mechanism at the slightest touch but also wait in perfect condition for at least a 1500 years to protect a golden idol which has to stay in the temple despite its obvious spiritual significance to your culture which is obviously still active enough to create large monuments yet will soon disappear from prominence mysteriously, leaving clues only someone with the ability to connect an obscure and arcane system of clues and historical facts or assumptions would be able to decipher? What about then?
@@PatrickKniesler Then you are effed, obviously. :)
Whacha?
maybe a pull pin release would be easier. Yes, quite useless as 16 shots and a long time to reload. 100 shots would be what you need out of it, but as a siege weapon, reload time isn't as important.
@PatrickKniesler this commentd my favorite 😂
That guy was waaaaaaay ahead of his time. If he was alive today everybody will just bash him with "that's too complicated", "that's tol expensive", "that's unpractical", "who are you"
And what makes you think he didn't get those types of comments back then
@@Koushakur People tend to be more polite to your face than they are on an Internet platform.
They still talked behind your back, though, so it's fully well possible that lots of people were talking shit on Leonardo when he wasn't around.
If Da Vinci were alive today he'd be really, really old.
That's how they talked about Elon Musk though.
No, Leonardo is alive. He works for Kel-Tec.
Fun fact. The term civil engineer only came in to use to differentiate between military engineers and civilian ones. But both were generalist engineers, sub divisions are a recent, 20th century phenomenon.
"Sir, are there any weapons in your house?" "just the casual 16 crossbows mounted on a wheel of death" "....what?...."
Tzang tzang tzang... No witnesses
No just a water wheel i have been making. The wife is very cross about it and i had to scape and bow to get it to what it is now.
Just excuse those cadavers I'm dissecting.
DaVinci's Tank next?
cannons first
What fish would go in it? The bigger the fish the bigger the tank..... 😐
@@Slikx666 probabbly Guppys then you can gro them to shark size and fire them from the crossbow
@captainbagel7512 the shark crossbow now lives rent free in my head.
I make bows as a hobby out of wood. You are one of the first guys out there I have seen understand the concept of the "loose laminate" where you create the tiller of the bow by using longer and shorter slats.
I know Leonardo had some drawings with laminated spring mechanisms, So that's especially great.
You shoot a crossbow and fire a gun. The distinctive word here is FIRE. From "Give Fire".
never thought of it that way, thank you, all makes sense, probably more in tuned with muskets than todays weapons but same shit different smell, the bullet still fires up the gun
@@33mavboy It's more that the operator applies fire to the weapon to make it do something. The first gunpowder weapons the user literally applied a flame to them, and cannons retained this approach for many years. Because waving a flame at something is pretty annoying to do and prone to the flame going out, hand held weapons developed quite quickly to generate the fire for the operator relatively automatically with this moving from match lock (consumable fire starter) to a wheellock (sparks through friction), to flintlock (reusable spark generator) finally to the percussive charges that we have now which are integral to the bullet casing.
I feel like the only practical use for this would be on top of a fortification with several side by side, aiming up 45° or so with heavy headed bolts that can rain down on an attacker.
As for the heavy trigger of the original design: wrap a rope around the handle shaft with a heavy stone in the other end, so you just need to kick it over the inner edge of the battlement to shoot it. One crossbow man/ DaVince machinegun that then picks up his normal crossbow.
A good first salvo that gives the impression of far many more defenders.
Park it at a trap entrance, drop the gate behind them; and a single operator can clear out the cell.
put it at the top of the stairs
Loading speed isn't as big of an issue if you look at this as a crew served weapon. You're going to need multiple people to move this thing around, anyway; they may as well be trained to load it.
You would need four experienced people who communicate well. Two on each side, with one pulling the string (probably with a lever) and the other setting the bolt in place.
As long as they communicate what they're doing and make sure each person is ready to rotate the wheel, they could probably get a rhythm going and load this pretty quickly.
Joerg Sprave and Tod of Tod's workshop made a crossbow with a magazine that would hold 5 arrows. If you collaborated with them you could have a machine that could fire 80 rounds before needing to be reloaded with the possibility of an auto-magazine hot-swap mechanism that could see your creation firing endlessly, or until you ran out of magazines of quarrels.
Crossbows and repeated ancient artillery nobody ever talked about nitol call titanium the nickel titanium programmed by different temperature changes even electricity to carry a lot a lot of power you can even use piezoelectric crystals to maybe control nitinol power the Sterling motors as well a Sterling engine as the way to fire a patrol motion machines in Sterling engines to build this repeater German motors in in 94 engines are not very good acceleration like cars for vehicles but something repeated stats like for something like a repeater crossbow or a ballista they would be excellent at
Really neat build. Cool to see the tech tree expanding.
Yeah... I didn't see his girlfriend for a few videos now, do you know if they are still together?
Is it too soon for asking him her phone number or should I wait a bit more?
I think you mean the tech tree branching out lol
My first thought was to put this in gate houses or to use it to harass people sieging your castle. Basically use it like a booby trap. Even with a low draw weight, it would definitely be a huge problem to deal with, and it would give defenders free time to do all kinds of things. Either way, great job with this one!
this could be effective if mounted at the end of a hallway
Put paint on the tennis balls so we can see the spread pattern. Or take it to a field and tilt it upwards slightly to give it some arc.
Oh yeah they should be timed to when they shoot with a slight arc instead of directly straight
We talked a little bit in the studio about timing the shots. I was thinking of maybe having a vertical post on the end of the trigger arms that you could just raise and lower, but there's probably lots of ways to do it. @@LyteRetro
@@ElliotKrueger what about a tiny lift you can crank at the front base of the post. I doubt you would need to use that on top of a castle but you could put it at the opposite end to raise the back end to point it down.
and what do you mean you talked about it the studio you work for HTME?
Considering how quickly this came together into a working prototype and the amount of available skilled labourers at the time it seems like you could realistically actually have a working high fire rate self reloading crossbow/Ferris wheel/turret thing. I think you could reach 500+ rounds per minute sustained if you had a internal track that caught the string and drew it right after firing rather than a rope attached to the axel so you are only adding one or two bows draw weight to the resistance rather than 16 and a loading mechanism just after the apex, maybe just an inclined track that slides the next bolt in. I’d love to see these improvements explored
for a first full fire that worked really well! and it looks cool af
Looks like it would be possible to automate the reloading as well. Place it on a swiveling platform and you can aim it.
This could see this as a interesting trap for D&D.
Imagine trying to break into the house of a Artificer and one of these start shooting (1 D12 +4) arrows at a unlucky adventurer.
So 3 things would need to occur to make this a more viable implement than say 16 individuals with crossbows.
1. Automating the drawing process: You could use a hook plus gravity to help mitigate force needed to draw.
2. You would need a resetting trigger system: Which already did exist in the form of a rolling nut system, which would be period accurate.
3. A semi automated feeding system: You could use the Chinese hopper system with a flapper that only can be engaged when the crossbow makes contact with the flapper, maybe via some "teeth" at the head of the crossbow.
And maybe a spoke and gear system could cut down on the amount of force exerted by the operator and maintain a more consistent speed, in addition maybe a treadwheel could also lessen the force exerted by the operator.
I feel like this would be more useful as a stationary defense piece, where you could use an ox whim to turn the wheel at speed.
I agree with everything you said, but I also think that reducing the number of crossbows could make everything simpler and easier. Something like 6 or 8 should be enough if it were able to be loaded, drawn and fired continuously.
Hook and lever would work for the draw. In theory you would only need to engage the hook and draw. Once this is done you could load. Either by spinning the wheel once to unload, twice to draw, thrice to load.
The unload trigger can be adjusted to the arch in which would mark yard/paces to about where they would hit. Trial and error would get this and I am almost sure that archers of the day would know how far their arrows would fly based on the angle to which they would release.
Someone with some skills could do a cad design and make it work quite well. Though I have a feeling the war department did not spend much on research and development. Most of this was done by single persons who would either sell their new wares in a market or has connections to get it in front of someone.
This thing is quite cool.
@@benhoward2619 possibly, like, yeah, more useful, but, still less useful then just, hand firing it, cause, you can aim it
@@benhoward2619 Yes mobility or rather thereof is the only downside, tho you maybe could mount it on a cart to help increase the mobility ever so slightly.
I thought about using animal power as well, but I came to the conclusion that since they would have to move in a clockwise motion (much like they would in a mill) it would likely increase the size to the point where the weapon would become cumbersome, so I opted against the idea.
HTME goes full Jorge Sprave!! (The slingshot channel) 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
having said that, with all the love, please make sure you fire -proof the workshop
It would be so much fun to collaborate with Jorge!
only difference is Jorges would be twice as big and shoot razor sharp light weight bolts at super speed. HA. HA. HA. HAA, just saying, it is Jorge the giant afterall
I absolutely love this, I remember seeing you when you just started and I'm so happy to find your channel again!
In relation to your video, had a small idea for you to maybe try? Though it will be a pain and need some major work.
Instead of 16 mounted crossbows, maybe make 16 housings for single crossbows to sit in? That way, at least in my head, you have one person loading the crossbow "bolts", one person spinning the device and another person loading the device with the loaded crossbows once the crossbows are empty.
Higher reload, higher rate of fire(with extended usage), "easier" to use...maybe.
Just an idea, but I never said it was a good one 😅
To find the centre of a circle, draw 2 chords (not intersecting at the assumed centre). Draw a libne perpendicular from the mid-point of the chord; where they intersect is the centre of the circle. If you want to verify the accuracy draw a third chord and perpendicular. Nice build
This is cool. I was just looking for another project. Might give it a try. Thank you for sharing..
a suggestion for if you decide to revisit this would be to introduce a ratchet gear. this way you could have a forward rotation be an equal 1:1 input for a high fire rate, then have a reverse rotation with gears in a 50:1 total input. this way the handle would be cranked 50 times for a single rotation of the weapon wheel, but due to the heavy reduction in force needed could be done quickly. allow for two reverse rotations to pull back each crossbow. with this reduction, with 50 lb. of force on the input, you could wind up sixteen 150 lb. bows. connecting the input shaft to your roman crane wheel would make the process nearly effortless.
if you design the trigger mechanism to be equal to two rotations forward + the amount needed to position the crossbow, you could do one slow rotation to reload the bolts then a second faster one to actually fire. even if the total rate of fire isn't any higher, each one of these could be manned by one or two persons. thus the 16 persons become 8-16 crossbow wheels. pair them in sets of three or four, and you'll always have one firing while the others reload.
14:20 or better yet, have one soldier shooting a crossbow, with another loading a second crossbow bow. Fire the first, hand it off to be reloaded, fire the second, and so forth. Bonus points if they have a large, self standing shield for portable cover.
that wont speed up things over just two crossbowmen loading and firing their own crossbows. loading takes way longer than firing obviously, so you'd have guy number 1 firing both crossbows (assuming they started out with 2 loaded crossbows) before number 2 has even reloaded one of them. theyre better off each reloading and firing their own crossbow. the only viable scenario i can come up with for this method would be if it's about marksmanship rather than volume of fire, and the one firing is a pro marksman who is then aided by some hastily drafted noob tasked of reloading.
Mythbusters would get a kick out of this fancy device...🤔
Modern mithbusters are lame.
Original Adam is god.
@@Splarkszteramen
Wonder if you could add a fixed golden spiral near the center and have the closest to center piece opposite the firing side, so as it winds around it would draw the line back into the drawn position. Then drop an arrow/bolt onto the crossbow near the top to reload it as it passes by.
Impressive that Leonardo Da Vinci invented this specific rotary process in the 15th century, which is the same rotary process used in the 18 century Gatling Gun, which went on to be used in the process for the modern day Mini Gun we use today
Really impressed with how well that worked. I wonder what the limit is for how tightly packed you could go with crossbows - like could you have one every 10 degrees for 36 bows?
There comes a point where the shaft of the previous shot hasn't cleared the device and the next crossbow strikes the shaft as it is leaving deflecting the bolts trajectory. Of course you can make the wheel even bigger and space the crossbows far enough apart that the bolt has time to clear, but the device will quickly grow to the size of a Ferris wheel and require a significant amount of strength to turn.
So nice to see you still at it and you never gave up after the shop fire.
I think Andy is right. 16 crossbowmen would be far more effective and practical than one of these. The challenges with loading and aiming it seem to negate any benefits of the brief quick volley.
well obviously, but I think the idea is that you dont need 16 people to operate this machine, you probably can go with 2 or 3 per machine. So if you can get even just like 5 peoples worth of efficiency out of 2-3, you can boost your effective defensive power. Gotta remember that people are a finite resource as well. Although the main drawback would be how this thing cant be aimed properly. It doesnt really offer enough efficiency to offset the lack of aiming. Maybe if it actually gave 16 peoples worth of efficiency while only needing 2-3 in terms of fire rate you could just pelt the enemy with so many bolts that the lack of aiming doesnt matter, but the device has no automated reload function, so thats not really possible.
Sometimes, you don't have the gold to train 16 crossbow men..
What do you mean, life is not a game? 😅
@@TheSpencer1000 I think the point is each person would be better off just reloading and shooting their own crossbow. It really offers no reloading speed advantage at all. The main benefit I see to it is if you put it on wheels it could be pulled behind cover for reloading and then just brought to bear to quicky fire a volley. I really don't see you reloading this thig even once before the enemy is upon you though.
That worked surprisingly well, that is wild
I think we were a little surprised ourselves!
I'd like to see you combine the two engines - basically a crank and mount for the Chinese one.
Next level? Combine the repetition of the Chinese into a Davinci wheel that drives reload cycle. Maybe 4 repeating crossbows on a wheel?
You should make da Vinci steam cannon. That one is actually a legit war machinw
i dont want to be that guy who starts a comment with "as per my 10 years experience as a carpenter..." hahaha
if you drill holes at the base of your mortises, you re gonna save a lot of chiseling time and make it cleaner.
I love using hand tools, but when i find a good shortcut, i put it in my bag.
Good work, I love the concept of your channel
I'm guessing the hand tools were to ensure period accuracy? I don't know a thing about carpentry though.
I think the fact his invensions could only be made centuries after he initially conceptualized and described them alone is enough of a proof to just how ahead of his time Da Vinci was.
I mean, a working prototype of a *chaingun* that seems feasible to had been built in *his* time? That is impressive, surprising that I didn't know about this specific invention of his.
I think angling the trigger mechanism upward so that the bolts have a longer arched range would help, in addition to a stronger pull as mentioned in the video. This would make it more effective for at least slowing down a larger group of opposing soldiers. Also, reinforcing the ends of the crossbows with connectors between them would help prevent that issue with them breaking at the base.
I’m so proud of you bro! You have done so much that a lot of people would not ever try or even think about trying! Also you have done this after a major set back! Keep it coming! Good work
Love me some over-engineered stuff like this! You could get the same result just stacking a bunch of crossbows and hooking up a rope to trigger them all at once or set it up so the further you pull the rope the more shots that are fired- would probably be easier to reload that and you wouldn't have the chance of firing in a random direction if one of them went off by accident. That's just me rambling though. I love this thing!
"Just too insane looking not to try and recreate it myself"
Okay I'm sold
So did i ! - we built Mummy 3 's - multi dragon head rapid firing crossbow ! - only cinema art directors would approve such design - no ancient engineer would have !
We also did the " dragon drops brass ball into frog month " eartuhquake sismagraph !🇨🇦
im picturing 30 of these machines atop a castle wall , i think it would be effective for an initial defensive burst, and not reloading but rather grabbing the regular bows and crossbows.
Idea: to make it reload you could have used something like the spiral pattern from the automatic hammer in reverse so the string are pulled in evenly in the rotation and unload at a specific point. i think that should also work with the chinese design to have multiple bolts per crossbow
I Like the Videos where you unlock new technology way more. 🤩
Still great job 🙂
For the poundage of war crossbows go chech out tod's workshop. Heavy crossbows are 1000 pounds
Wood bows and metal bows don't measure the same poundage though
.
I would say 1000 pounds is on the lighter side for windlass crossbows. 1200 to 1500 were pretty common. Sir Ralph Payne Galway had a 2000 pound one from the 17th century
@@alternator7893 remember the more than 1200 # are very often great crossbows and are mounted like light artillery
mass manufacturability is a key in such a context
totally fun and impractical for all the reasons you mentioned. I'm not sure you could ever really make it practical but if you could incorporate a mechanism to pull the string back as you turn it on the opposite side of the wheel, then you could put two of them side by side and fire one while someone reloads the other. forge welding f the trigger finger to the release at a 90degree would mean you only need to place the arrows in it. Alternating between two of them could enable a constant stream of arrows. Now for aiming it...
Build a lever to a trigger that leads to the front, and have that be a piece of bendable material that will snap back into the lever and reset, then put the tripping mechanism in the front, and you can Fire accurately by dialing in where that tripping mechanism is aimed.
I'd imagine that the fire rate could be made more consistent if there was one loader, and one operator. So the top half of the machine would be constantly reloaded. So it wouldn't need to be MG rate of fire, but it would be faster than typical crossbow fire (which crossbows were hard to reload at the time).
Intresting fact: Leonardo DaVinci was actually a pacifist, but he had to invent and draw war machines for the lords that he worked for. So many of the machines are drawn so they would fail if someone ever got the guts to actually construct fullsized versions of them.
That would make a cool trap though. Weighted pully to operate it, and a tripwire to set it off... leave a couple armed in abandoned locations as you retreat
Finally, Biblically accurate crossbow
This has potential. If u were to figure out how to make the repeating crossbows work here by adding a device that pushes the ammo well forward and a device that pulls the ammo well back into place, you could have a fully automatic crossbow machine gun that has multiple shots per a crossbow.
Thats an interesting thing^^ I think changing the rotation on shooting would help to get more range on that thing so that the arrows dont get forced down but upwards. And a moovable trigger so you can maby prespinn the weal and then shoot for more constant arrow flights from beginning. Very cool Machine^^
This is great as a trap for D&D campaign. Since I play Pathfinder 1e, I would make this a CR 7 trap hidden behind a wall that falls into the floor revealing this at the end of a corridor. Perception DC 22 to find, Disable Device DC 25 to prevent. 16x light crossbow of +10 to hit and 1d8 19-20/x2 damage. maybe even have them covered in poison for +1 CR.
Excellent work making this!
I would argue that the maxim was not the first machine gun. The Chambers flintlock machine gun was the first. It was used in the war of 1812. The puckle gun historically is also a machine gun used even before the chambers but had a very low ammo count.
Definitely something you mount on a wall or wagon covering a chokepoint and fire once.
The end where the viking rader hammerd by arrows 😂😂😂😂😂
You state that the only limiting factor is the speed that you can turn the wheel, but I beg to differ. As you watch them shoot out in the slow motion you can see the next crossbow descending as the shaft of the previous shot is still leaving the device. If it goes to fast the next crossbow will literally strike the shaft of the previous shot before it has time to clear the device. I'm not sure at what speed that would occur, but it is a limiting factor on the rate of fire. Shorter bolts would allow for faster fire rate, but would also entail a shorter draw distance. It would be interesting to play around with the numbers to find the optimum bolt length vs draw distance vs rate of fire possible.
I could totally see this being put on a lazy susan so it's manuverable then adding the hooks you were talking about with some sort of pully system so that way all 16 crossbows can be reloaded at once. If perfected it would be an amazing defensive fortification against a besiging army. Imagine the horror of those down on the bridge when this monstrosity starts raining down a hailstorm of arrows.
HERE IS WHAT I CAME UP WITH *goodheartedly german laughter*
Wait, what, this is not Joerg video??
just make each crossbow a self reloader and make the spinning of the wheel tied to drawing the string back, add a pully system or cog wheels to reduce the strain of spinning the wheel. have each crossbow with a reloadable "clip" for faster reloads on the field THEN you got yourself a gatling gun crossbow :p
Good attempt at making it work. And yeah, intimidation is probably its best side.
Although for any situation where few people need to hold against storming attempts? THAT is where it would absolutely be useful, as, lets say 4-8 of these covering the only 2 major openings to a position would make trying to storm in decidedly more dangerous to attempt.
So, how about trying to make a lot more of those crossbows and set them up as a salvo gun?
Preferably with some sort of improved reload system.
For example, a simple system would be that you could have lets say 8 horizontal rows of 6 crossbows each on a mount/wagon, with each row being quick dismountable/mountable, with each row being possible to trigger individually, or several at once.
This would mean operating it like a cannon, with reloaders dismounting fired rows, reloading them and then putting them back, while the gunner just stands by waiting for the best time to trigger one or more rows.
Although, the idea has a serious downside, that it's made totally obsolete by the very historical H'wacha.
I think that a Gin Gang or horse/ox wheel could provide enough torque to power up that wheel with the autoreloading mechanism and all.
Said mechanism could be done with a cam that would "guide" the hook/cord of each crossbow to position, similar to how a Gatling gun moves and prepares its bolts while it spins, while the crossbows themselves could have a Chukonu or Instant Legolas Design to autofeed the arrows.
Practicality aside, I'd consider this a success. The Wile E. Coyote aspect of it alone makes it worth building.
the bolts are leaving with a downward force on them as they come out of the end, this makes them start rotating in mid air, some serious fletching would be needed to make them not spin
Just like the Chinese repeating crossbow, the utility of a weapon like this would be limited to defending a static position like a fort or castle, or being mounted on a ship, chariot or cart. The upside of using it as a static emplacement is that you could make it bigger and thus offset its biggest drawbacks (low range and power) somewhat. But like the repeating crossbow, its utility against armoured troops would still be pretty limited, hence why I don't think this was ever considered by anyone for use as a military weapon (in Da Vinci's time, heavy metal plate armour was quite common on the battlefield, making this a very ineffective weapon).
The romans had a stationary self feeding ammunition drum, by crank ballista nearly two thousand years ago, which was WAY simpler then this and worked perfectly fine and didn't need to worry about a extended reloading period.
That got me thinking, maybe a ball pitcher machine designed is also viable for ancient times which you feed bolts through a set of fast spinning wheels🤔
Should make the piece of wood that triggers the crossbows pivot forward and backwards so you could get the wheel spinning and then push that wood forward whenever you’re ready to fire the cross bows.
What's the clip at the end from where the guy gets a hundred arrows in him. That looks hilarious
I would love to see if it could not only fire but draw and load. I guess you could possibly do that with the box fed ratcheting crossbows. Maybe do a modern twist on the idea and do a joint project with The Slingshot channel..(”Let Me Show You Its Features”)..
So much work goes into each of these episodes.
pretty amazing project
Very impressive work.
I think you'd get a faster rate of fire from just having guys firing individual bows but if you can semi-mechanise the reload rate that might help
Im still imagining it could be done. Each crossbow would need its own loading device and magazine. Then, pwrhaps as you turn the weheel the individual loading mechanisms pushes against a system akin to a piston/steam engin/ train wheel looking thing. On the crossbows it would need to catch and pull to engadge in one stroke them lift and release in the other.
If you put in some type of ratchet setup so it couldn't spin the wrong way, you could potentially set up another crank to pull the string back on all of them at one time. Then youd just have to load each bolt. Easier said than done, i know.
That worked out well. Davinci was ahead of his time.
if you study Leonardo in any depth you realise he didn't actually invent anything nor did he claim to. He speculated on other peoples ideas as in the parachute. When he heard a monk had died testing his version of the parachute he calculated how big it should've been to work and as it happens , he was correct. As for the helicopter, there's a painting from 1430 in the Louvre of Christ playing with a helicopter toy which was a common child's toy at the time. ( Leonardo was born in 1452
Perfect project to build in your suburban Minnesota backyard.
I could easily have engineered a better striking plate like a hair trigger system if you round the top corner of the grove the string would only need to move millimeters to hit the round and have a 100% fire rate as for the reloading you could have used the force of the spin to reload each bow.
Then you put it on a pivot point so you can swing it up and down left and right, would be dope.
Really awesome seeing you make DaVinci's projects.
Now paint the Mona Lisa.
Looking at the reloading mechanism of the Chinese repeating crossbow it looks like it should be possible to combine that with this design with a feasible amount of Mechanical engineering to get a much more sustained fire rate
Joerg Sprave made a crossbow with a mag, maybe one could amalgamate these two concepts 😂
It would be cool to attempt to build an automatic crossbow with linked bolts (fabric links?)
Combine a crank with the repeating crossbow mechanism and run it similarly to a gatling gun (but belt fed vs gravity). Have a pawl linked to pull next bolt into the mechanism. Another linkage to pull the string back and lock it into position.
This building so good!!!! This series killin it XD!
Could be positioned behind filled a filled in gap on the ditch, would be very effective on what armor remained in this period
Also I suggest you make a vid going over and possibly making mechanical tools used to create the pyramids using small blocks
I suspect using some sort of gearing mechanism for the Chinese repeating crossbow would get you up to higher fire rates.
It might be easier to just get 16 people to fire the crossbows, or use these machines and make the enemy think you have 16 people firing when they are actually sneaking around the attacking army's flank.
The rotation makes it so that all the bolts are flying downwards, because they are moving downwards when they are released. This really limits the range, on top of the crossbows being pretty weak. You might get more range if you release the bolts a bit earlier, while they are still pointing upwards, or if you reales the bolts upside down, so the are spinning up when they are fired. The design also makes it hard to put heavier crossbows into the mechanism, or not? Heavier crossbows use pulleys or cranks or levers or a hook at the front for you to put your foot into so you can pull with your whole body etc. How are you going to put any of these mechanisms on the wheel design and make them somewhat ergonomic to use? I think something might be possible. The crossbows are also very thick, which adds a lot of extra weight to this mechanism, but that could actually be good, especially if you want to use automatic tensioning. Some more momentum could help with that.
Outstanding, as always!
Andy my man, you really should invent yourself a lathe of some kind. It would save you so much time and effort and your projects would become so much neater.
Leonardo usually has some flaw to his mechanisms to ensure someone wouldn't just steal his stuff as there were no copy right laws, examples include the tank, glider, and diving bell... also in order to get someone to take him in and cover his bills he sold the ideas of war because it was a period of warring states and no one wants to employ an artist when you need better ways to ensure you and your fortress survive the next attack...
Just have multiple wheels pre-loaded. 3 or 4 perhaps. Also just missing an easy pull back mechanism.
Rather than 16 people, you could just have 16 loaded a ready to fire crossbows and a three man team; one loads the crossbows, one gives the crossbows to the shooter and the shooter aims and fires them or just have one guy shooting them and two loading them.
I would spin the wheel in the opposite direction. Because the crossbows move downwards the arrows also have a downwards momentum. So the crossbow has to compensate this downwards force and the arrow shouldnt fly that far compared to a stale crossbow.