Hi welcome to Teardown! Tuesday We've seen this one before. this was sent into the mailbag segment recently by Chris Bowden from the geek group. So I'll link in the Geek Group down below thank you very much. Chris Went to a lot of expense and effort to send this to us and what it is is it's an analogue computer for an inertial navigation system and Astro compass our system used on the B-52 bomber.

so let's check it out. Awesome! And it's manufactured by Cole's Man Instrument Corporation in the US and it says it's the MD one, but there's an MD three label on it so maybe it was upgraded you know, retrofitted at a later point and it comes from an Air Force Base in Utah that's where they yam presumably maintained and serviced these things. I Believe this one might have gone out of was retired in the 80s because today let's have a look there you go. This is the apparently that like the decommissioning stamp whatever 20th of November 1985 I think that's when they would have well last I checked it or whatever.

but yeah it's um I don't think they use these suckers anymore. in the B-52s which are still flying, these airframes are like 50 years old. Absolutely crazy. Anyway, let's check it out Now this is part of a much bigger system for the inertial navigation system with the asteroid compass which should be on top of the plane which actually has optical sights, little telescopes that actually are sight stars and things like that and that's how that you used to navigate before GPS with the and before.

that used to use sextants and things like that. I You know the old school pilots probably still whack out their Sexton occasionally and go. Yeah, we're about here. You know she'll be right.

But yeah, this is a small part of it. We believe it's some sort of analog computer or something like that. so it's a basically in a fool like pressurized type container and after the mailbag were a viewer who knows about these things said that this is manufactured. There's some screws on here we can take out from the front, but it's actually held in here with tape and the tape is like with welded tape or something so maybe we should be able to cut around that.

Hopefully I don't have to grind the thing open because well, ya can't do that here in the lab. That's going to be nasty and it's already getting a bit messy. Hmm actually I believe he said it was like I'm soldered on with that metal tape or something. You know, some sort of process like that.

So yeah, I don't know I might do. Maybe we can once we get the screws off. Maybe we can just whack it with a hammer and I don't see if it cracks the joint or something like that. and I don't really know what this nut on the front does I assume it's some sort of pressure port.

can't feel anything. So yeah. oh okay. yep, it's a valve.

There you go, you can fill it up. Tiny little bit of air came out. That's it. So I don't know what would they have pressurized it with some sort of gas or something? but anyway, yep, that looks like like a standard bike valve.

almost actually. I've got an interesting last story about that when I was working in underwater sonar stuff I had to go to the local bike shop and buy a hundred bike inner tubes so we could actually cut the valve on these things. And then we drilled a hole in a metal plug similar size to this in our product sorry, our plastic plug in our product and then we epoxy dit on the inside so that we could actually fill these things up and do it for a right. like in like a refill them for test purposes and things like that.

So yeah, you know, try walking the local bike store. I'd like to buy a hundred inner tubes please? huh? Well, the hammer thing didn't work. Wah wah wah. All right.

time to get medieval on its ass. You can really start to see the sort of join around this thing crack. Very interesting. I presume it's some sort of soldiering method I Don't know what this metal is either.

It's quite lightweight for its you know its size and everything else so it's not steal some I don't know I don't know anyone out there. Got a clue? some sort of alloy thing I don't know and there it is. she's coming apart. Look at that so smooth inner surface and you really see where they've sort of soldered that thing shut so it's like cracking right around the top here.

so this isn't a bad way to go. I think it's I hope it doesn't damage anything inside, but not functional anymore. really. Um, but you know probably better than grinding the thing open I think and I think she's about to pop.

Maybe a few more whacks and ER and we're in like Flynn Wow Check it out. Spit sharp. Wow Look at that beauty and if you want to see what's inside the can, well, nothing much. it's just an empty can he go I knew it.

the B-52 was just a cover. it's from a downed UFO Wow Check it out. This really is engineering porn at its finest. We have ourselves a genuine mechanical analog computer now I wasn't actually sure I what one it would actually be I thought I Was hoping it to be a mechanical and a little computer like this because analog computers affi basically come in two different types.

You got analog ones like this, which actually use gears and cogs and and everything else to actually do the calculations. and that's effectively what it's doing. It is actually doing mathematical calculations, and the other type is an electronic analog. a computer where it uses Op amps.

Basically, that's what Op Amps. were originally developed for. Op Amp stands for Operational Amplifier, hence the name Operational. It performs mathematical operations addition, subtraction, multiplication, etc.

You can actually do using Op Amps, so I wasn't actually quite sure which one it would be, but we've got ourselves mechanical analog computer, so you won't actually find hardly any. I can see a resistor in there, can see a couple of resistors, but you basically will not find um, electronics. or you know, hardly any of it inside here at all. It is all gears, cogs, and everything else.

Isn't it? just gorgeous. Absolutely gorgeous. Oh, now at first you might think that this part here is a gyroscope. It looks quite a gyroscopic, if that's a that's the correct term.

You would think that this thing you know spins around here and all that sort of stuff on its own axis, but it doesn't like. I can't physically get in there and move that. But if I turn some of the cogs, of course you might be able to see that spinning. I'm actually spinning a little bar on the on the top here and I'll show you this more up-close later.

But basically I can make this consider slowly moving around like this. So this part swings around like that. There's another one in here which then spins this like that. and there's got to be another one which actually spins this whole rocks this whole top mechanism.

This whole top bar is not fixed. It's actually it's on a bearing there and connected up to the top here to these cogs. So it's all you know. It all spins around in there like that.

But it's not a gyroscope like as in actually, you know it holds a reference frame for a moving object. This is does all this stuff in here is designed to actually compute something using the cogs. So I believe this is how it works. By the way, I Am certainly no expert on mechanical analog computers and things like that, but all these cogs down in here are going to do all the computational stuff.

Now do my best to show you all of the parts of this thing, but it's going to be incredibly difficult and I don't want to take it all apart ie. because there's you know, not much point in it. you're not going to be able to. You know there's no real huge value.

and B and somebody might know how I can power this thing up and possibly make it do something. So we see this threaded rod here as I turn that that spins around and then that spins. Whoa. Something just released down the bottom.

I'll show you that in a second. but then this basically spins this large outer cog here. Here we go there, you go, and then that in turn turns other ones down in the base. You actually see down there.

that one down there which is spinning. That one's actually got a. It almost looks like it's got a band on it. And what I mean by that is.

We'll have a look at this one down here. Look at these two. Here we go. This thing is something that just sprung back.

look. it's got like a look. It's got. Ah, there we go.

Look. It's got a band on there. You can see it actually come out. Look at that.

So the exact purpose of that I've got no idea whatsoever. If any ones are really into mechanical analog computers, I'm sure they're screaming at me and you can actually see. Yes, we have a little bit of circuitry down in there. Look at that.

Or do we have some sort of a solenoid type thing? perhaps? I Don't know, but sort of. You know. that's kind of like the extent of the electronics inside this thing. Basically, it is one big mechanical computer.

So we're basically going to have motors and sensors in this thing. Motors are the inputs of course, so you can think of those as you know the inputs to this control system. This analog computer are driving the motors and then the motors drive the gears and the cogs which do all the computation based on how many teeth they're got and the configuration of them and everything else. And then the outputs will come from sensors.

hopefully we are. You know, rotational sensors. and all that sort of stuff which can find. Now here's a motor.

I'm not sure if you're going to be able to read that, but this is a Colles 'men Motor Dublin. Is it made in Dublin? I Don't know. Um. Anyway, yeah, it looks like a thing.

Actually, not only do they manufacture this whole thing, they manufacture the motors. They go in them as well. Awesome. And yes, in case you're wondering, it does have that vintage military electronic smell.

haha. Then we've got things like this sir that says it's a synchro control transformer I believe. So that's obviously taken like the it's going to have a cog on the other side. so you know, obviously maybe it's got its own cogs inside that's doing something else.

You know, things like that? we go Coleman Motor Corporation Dublin It's a motor tachometer, tada generator. So what that does is basically output a voltage that is proportional to its shaft speed in there. basically so it can get the rotational speed of the rest of or whatever is hooked up to the cogs way deep down in the system down in there somewhere. Why it needs that? I don't know.

Could be like a rate of change input or something like that, perhaps. Hmm. Anyway, there's several of those as spread around here in various places. so I think there's two or three of those.

You can see these synchronous control transformers here. You can see that they are actually attached to a cog on this side which then goes into this one. I can't turn these manually and then they go into you know here and go into the base of the system and basically I don't know what you'd call that Anyway, you can see it down in there. There we go.

all the cogs right down in there and then that's also wired into that spring. ah, belt mechanism there that does something I don't know, does it take up tension or something which are prompt which may actually have some sort of mathematical function to it Because that's effectively what we're doing here. We're translating mechanical spring and coggan everything else motion into basically to simulate Um formulas, doing calculations. hence why it's an analog mechanical analog computer.

It is actually doing math. You can see right down on the the base plate of this whole thing which turns at the bottom. You can see there's various other cogs and things down there and then they also go into the Transformers down here as well. and there are various limit switches in this thing.

You can see this cog here has three micro switches on it with these little plastic bits which rotate around and then turn on this micro switch. Look at that. so I don't know. You know why they got the three levels.

as it rotates. once again, it's doing some sort of maybe limit functional. Well, you know, limit switch and that's you know. Typically it could be doing something like that and we've got some limit switches on this entire mechanism on the top, which also, you know it doesn't rotate around completely.

It's only got a limited travel path from here to here, but it's basically got some limit switches on there which will stop that. And you know I don't know is that? are we? You know, out of luck or something like that? That's as far as it can actually compute and it can't you know? do anything more I don't know your your planes upside down and doing something stupid and yeah, it's just chucking a wobbly. There's yet more limit switches around here. There we go.

once again. look micro switches. We got four of them there with various sub wheels and that all comes from God knows where inside there. It's just.

ah, crazy trying to understand this thing Anyway, don't you just love all the lumen in here? It's all tied in everything in. individual wires are branched off all the looming parts. I Love these little are tag little crimps and they're actually tied individually. Screw down on there.

Are they join us? Or you know, maybe can? They'd be very convenient test points. Um, and look at this tonneau, you might recognize D20 fires. What the hell? we got D25 All they are a military-style connector a Millett version and it's basically a D25 each. wires individually he trunk.

No worries whatsoever. just the cable tie bundles in there. or just, ah, look at them. Wow, what a gigantic what is it? A little lead screw? worm? screw? whatever your call? I Don't know.

sorry. I'm no mechanical engineering expert in there and that is on this arm which does eventually. Probably you know you probably have to rotate the other parts a thousand times or something to have this thing swing over and you can see the big cog there that this thing is going to swing on. So hmm.

but I can't force it to actually do anything there at the moment. so all I can do was just you know, turn these screws here and play around with that internal mechanism. You can see that spin along there. There you go.

see that spin that'll go all the way with LBJ Actually that my imagination or is this moving as well I Don't know. Oh, it's spinning back now I'm getting a bit of resistance. That's probably not a good thing. It's probably not good to spin this by hand by the way, but you can see how it travels.

It can travel all the way along that arc and it can come all the way out this other side as well. I'll sorry. it's a bit dark in there I Don't think you can adequately see it but can't see it on the screen anyway. and everything you can see the cogs all turning down the bottom as well.

The engine, like the complexity of this mechanism, is just absolutely incredible. We're getting towards a limit here at the moment. we'll hit some sort of limit in a second. Don't know what's going to happen? It probably shouldn't go too far.

Should I know? Don't like that. Yeah, so all of this, while it does look sort of gyroscopic, probably shouldn't pick it up by that, but that's a convenient handle. It's It's so robust, it's just incredible. You know? I was smashing this thing apart with a hammer and it's just tight.

No damage whatsoever. It's built like a brick. Danny really is bit dumb. Yeah, so you know if you now with this thing up, you know it's not like it's going to stabilize and then you, you know, move this.

it doesn't Company thus does not compensate the movement. Okay, it's purely a mechanical analog computer that it doesn't almost certainly doesn't care for its orientation at all. You know there'll be gyroscopes elsewhere in the plane feeding all the data into here. There's the telescopic sight mechanism as I said, on top of the plane which gets the which gets the azimuth data of course, which is the angle from north of where the star is that you're actually trying to track and things like that.

So ultimately, I Believe what this section here is is the trigonometry math part of it. because this thing, you know it's going. it's got these guides in here which go around what goes around in a motion. you know, maybe comes back in a motion like that.

Well, sinusoidal function, right? So I expect this thing to move forward and then back and have some sort of you know trigonometry type function because you ultimately need to calculate your azimuth and your altitude as well. And that requires basic trigonometry. All the stuff you're learning school, you know, calculate you know the opposite over the hypotenuse. all that sort of stuff to get the angle in there.

You need sinusoidal functions in there. and I reckon that's what this inner part is doing. Mathematical sinusoidal operations. Aha brilliant.

Whew Man is just gorgeous. isn't it? Look at it. Think of Beauty Joy forever now. It might actually be orientation sensitive as such.

I'm not sure, but anyway, I've had it in different orientations and sometimes it allows me to manually rotate things and other times it doesn't. But anyway, I'm did well. it shouldn't be it like that. That is.

my educated guesses that it should not be orientation sensitive. It should work in any orientation. But anyway, I don't know. maybe it's gummy after all these years.

Anyway, what I'm going to do now is I'm going to do a bit of a time-lapse here and just spin this and you'll see as you know as far as I can and you'll probably see this thing. but you'll see it's sort of like turned back on itself and go one direction, then automatically go the other. even though I'm not changing direction of the way, I'm spinning this particular arm in here. Okay, so here we go.

so hopefully you just saw like this arm move down and then back up like that it didn't like go all the way around. You know this is not a general-purpose computer. it is. you know, designed for a specific to calculate a specific thing ie.

you know all your stuff required for flight and navigation and stuff like that. So to have very specific calculations you know, pre-programmed all the cogs, all the mechanism behind that and thing. It's just absolutely fascinating. see now if I turn it on its side like that I really am having a hard time actually doing that.

but if I just put it up like I heard I think I heard that tension spring go again so maybe that's got something to do with it. but now, no drama whatsoever. I'll get a deeper shot inside there, see if I can show you and while I was doing that I saw this ACOG on the back actually spin for spin one way and then back the other as well. I'll see if I can do that again.

Okay, so it's spinning counterclockwise and then there it goes. Go back. Look, this is brilliant Genes I can play with this all day long. Great stuff! There's an interesting little black part down in here.

it says Alloyed Control Something I Can't make it out - 65 degrees. See what? the? Anyway, twenty Six point, Five Volts control Five Amps whatever that is. but it's um, yeah, it's interesting. it's got.

You can see the wiring coming out of it there. So is there some electronics in there? I Don't know. Is there an Op-amp in there? Is it doing a combination of mechanical and electronic analog computing? perhaps? I don't think I don't think so. but I You know, maybe it's got something to do with.

you know, the limit mechanisms. It's got patent pending on the written on the back of it and it says blue bead with a narrow bead BA D So I don't know what that means with an arrow pointing to so like the pins on the bottom or something. really, really, quite unusual what that things doing. I'm just amazed at all the complexity of the cogs and everything in this.

It's just absolutely amazing how they can design this thing. but I don't know. people have been designed in analog computers since. uh, you know, a couple hundred.

BC And as I've shown, we've got both. this inner shaft here with this worm screw on it which connects through to that cog there and we've got this one on the other side and this one over here turns the inner part and then turns that also turns that we all down there. this one turns the whole lot like that around. see I can't can actually spin both of those at once? No idea what I'm doing and probably crushing my B-52 bomber.

but uh, hey, I think we hit some sort of hit some sort of limit there. But the interesting thing to note is that both this shaft here can cause this inner part to rotate to actually move along this part here and this one can make it do the same as well. You can see it moving inside there okay and move it back, but this one can also make that part move for a can. I was getting it to move.

trust me. So they're like, you know, it's almost like you know two inputs, two variable inputs to the system. Perhaps there we go. it is actually slowly rotating around there.

So yeah, um, two inputs which are, uh, you know, being multiplied together or something. There's some math operation happen in there I Get no idea what though. I Still have not been able to get this part to rock back and forth like that on you know, on its arm. So as I said, maybe that's you know if you spin the thing you know ten thousand times maybe it will move that back and forth.

but yeah. I I don't know at this stage. Oh, it's just ridiculous. Yeah and I've heard these little last spring things.

Oh no, oh no I need to put that back. Ah tragic. Oh shouldn't be with this anyway. I think that's enough of me around with this thing pretending that I know anything about mechanical analog computers.

so if anyone does, can shed more light into it this even perhaps how to maybe pair it up. and at least you know, make it spin or do you know something under power control? That'd be terrific As I said. I Don't see any value in taking the thing apart any further. You just get a bunch of cogs and everything else.

It's like it's it's too good to take apart so you know it's worth keeping. Just does it. You know, a fantastic ornament piece, if anything. Otherwise, you know it'd be nice to maybe be able to.

you know Drive and just make it go spin and do something all day. I Don't know. Anyway, that is inside the Coleman Industries Md1 /m d3 Astro compass automatic Astro compass slash analogue computer from a B-52 Obama To do it's a flight, computing and things like that. basically it's a star tracker I'd Love to get the optical telescope and everything that hooks up to this sort of thing which sticks out the top of the plane and that sights the Stars and I Just my hats off to the people who designed not not just this, not just the mechanism, the cogs and everything else and figured out how it all works.

And but you know the entire star tracking system. flight guidance computer. all mechanical. You know, like doing what as you know a pilot did with a sextant back in the day you know when they had to flow with that sextants.

But basically it's an electronic sextant. It tracks the Stars and lets you know where you are and guides supply and I don't know if it flies. It's not like the autopilot or anything like that, it just does the computations for the azimuth and other stuff. In fact, it might only do the azimuth maybe is another part of the system which does and computes something else.

But anyway, if you do have any info on how this thing works and I'd love to do a follow-up video actually explaining more as it comes to because I have not researched this thing at all, this is just off the cuff tear down. But anyway, yeah, if you've got any knowledge of this sucker, please leave it in the comments anyway. I Hope you enjoyed that teardown. If you did, please give it a big thumbs up.

discuss it on the forum, everything else down there, and thanks to all my Patreon supporters and that's linked down below. As always, Eevblog newsletter all link down below subscribe to my channel. You know all that sort of jazz, huh? Catch you next time you.