R&D LAB Computational Design Shipped Teaching instrument
Mechanism Lab
Sixty mechanisms across ten chapters, each driven by exact kinematics, each reporting numbers that are true of what is drawn.
- 60mechanisms
- 10chapters
- 1derivation each
- 0canned animations
Mechanism 45, the deadbeat escapement. The panel on the right is computed from the geometry on screen, not written into a caption.
Why this is published
An animation can be faked. Exact kinematics cannot. Mechanism Lab is our proof that we model machines as equations first and pictures second, which is the same discipline a facade, a nesting layout or a parametric assembly demands.
Most mechanism references show a moving picture and a formula, and quietly leave a gap between them. This one closes the gap: every part is placed by solving the mechanism, every number in the panel is measured off that solution, and every entry ends with a derivation showing how a person could have arrived at it from first principles.
The numbers are measurements, not labels
Each mechanism reports a live panel: mechanical advantage, travel, angles, wasted motion, energy in against energy out. Those values come out of the same solve that places the geometry, so if the drawing is wrong the numbers are wrong with it, visibly.
That constraint is the whole point. It is very easy to ship a linkage that looks convincing and is kinematically impossible. Tying the readout to the solution makes that class of error self-reporting.
A curriculum, not a catalogue
The sixty entries are ordered so each one is built from the idea before it. The lever earns the compound lever, which earns the toggle press, which earns the trigonometry that makes the escapement readable later.
Two panels carry the teaching load: where the formula comes from, written as a chain of steps, and how anyone thought of it, which reconstructs the reasoning rather than crediting a name.
Same solve, different reading
Four ways to look at the same instrument
MotionDrive it by hand or let it run. Callouts stay attached to the points they describe.
DerivationThe formula is built up line by line from the constraint that starts it, not quoted as a result.
Later chaptersBy chapter six an entry can assume the earlier ones, which is what lets the explanations stay short.
DarkA second theme for projection and long sessions. Geometry and material are separate layers, so nothing is redrawn.
How an entry is built
One kinematic solve feeds everything on screen
No entry stores a keyframe or a rendered image. The geometry, the callouts, the readouts and the derivation all read from the same solved state, which is why they cannot drift apart.
A closer look
Under the hood
Where it fits
- Manufacturers explaining a moving product to a buyer who will never read a drawing.
- Engineering teams that need a shared vocabulary before a design review, not after it.
- Training and onboarding where the wrong mental model is expensive to correct later.
- Any brief where the honest answer is a mechanism and the usual answer is a video.
How this was made
The application and this article were produced by AI. No person has read through the underlying data in full.
Checked
- Every figure in the readouts is computed by the solver from that mechanism's own equations rather than entered by hand. The numbers follow the geometry by construction.
- All sixty mechanisms were confirmed to render and animate, by headless Chrome capture.
- Individual mechanisms, the Jansen linkage among them, were verified numerically during construction.
- The claims are about the application's own arithmetic rather than about the world: no assertion about a real person, company, patent or measurement.
- Every image is a screenshot of our own application.
Not checked
- Forty-six of the mechanism modules were built by agents and have not been verified by a person against reference kinematics. A mechanism can render smoothly and still be wrong.
- The first-principles derivations have not been reviewed for correctness.
- The chapter ordering and the pedagogy are editorial, checked against no teaching standard.
Image credits: every frame on this page is a screenshot of our own application.
“What I cannot create, I do not understand.”
Why this is published
What this means for your project
More from the lab
Method Contradiction Our TRIZ application: state what has to improve and what gets worse, and get the principles that resolved that exact pair, with inventions that actually did it. 
Data Visualisation Cosmos-Scale Sixty-two orders of magnitude in one continuous zoom, from the Planck length to the diameter of the observable universe. Have a product that only makes sense when it moves? We can make that legible.
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