This is an idea that I have been kicking around for a long time. We went to the local High School football game last night and they had an exercise bike sitting next to the home team benches, possibly so runners can stay limbered up? Seeing that reminded me of this idea and I decided I better write it down. It's not much of an idea. Put a fan in front of the person riding the exercise bike so it blows air on them to keep them cool. Okay, anyone can do that with a floor fan that's plugged into the wall. The trick is to connect the fan to the bicycle so that the rider is driving the fan, and that's probably why nobody has done it yet. It is a bit of a trick. Any kind of mechanical linkage is going to need a pretty solid frame to support and keep the moving bits aligned. An electric drive would be good, you wouldn't need the complexity or rigidity of a mechanical drive, just some wire. But I don't know whether you could make the efficiency high enough.
A long roller chain with a couple of idler pulleys and a half twist might do the trick.
No comments:
Post a Comment