This video from the University of Dayton narrated by Prof. Andrew Murray provides an excellent illustration of the important concept of mechanical advantage.

My 1990 book is now on-line as an iBook. It is available as of March 31, 2013. This 2013 version has corrections to errors and language, and includes a glossary and animations of various linkage systems. I hope you like it.

You can see it at the link: Introduction to Theoretical Kinematics.

Select this link to download a .pdf version of A. Svoboda, Computing Mechanisms and Linkages, Dover Publications, 1965, (17MB). This book was originally published by McGraw-Hill in 1948.

Select this link to download a .pdf version of A. B. Kempe, How to Draw a Straight Line, MacMillan and Co., London, 1877. (1.8MB)

The NSF Workshop on 21st Century Kinematics at the 2012 ASME IDETC Conference in Chicago, IL on August 11-12, 2012 consisted of a series of presentations and a book of supporting material prepared by the workshop contributors.

The book is now available at amazon.com: 21st Century Kinematics–The 2012 NSF Workshop.

And here are the seven primary presentations given at the workshop.

1. Computer-Aided Invention of Mechanisms and Robots. J. Michael McCarthy, Professor, University of California, Irvine.
2. Mechanism Synthesis for Modeling Human Movement. Vincenzo Parenti-Castelli, Professor, University of Bologna.
3. Algebraic Geometry and Kinematic Synthesis. Manfred Husty, Professor, University of Innsbruck.
4. Kinematic Synthesis of Compliant Mechanisms. Larry Howell, Professor, Brigham Young University.
5. Kinematics and Numerical Algebraic Geometry. Charles Wampler, Technical Fellow, General Motors Research and Development.
6. Kinematic Analysis of Cable Robotic Systems. Vijay Kumar, Professor, University of Pennsylvania.
7. Protein Kinematics. Kazem Kazerounian, Professor, University of Connecticut.

Colleagues joined in with two additional presentations:

• Development of Fast Pick and Place Robots. Jorge Angeles, Professor, McGill University.
• Kinestatic Analysis of Mechanisms with Compliant Elements. Carl Crane, Professor, University of Florida.

Many thanks to the contributors and the attendees for an outstanding workshop.

Here is the schedule for the IDETC/NSF Workshop on 21st Century Kinematics:

The presenters for the 2012 IDETC/NSF Workshop on 21st Century Kinematics, August 11-12, 2012, Chicago, Il, have gathered background information into this book published by Springer. It is a guided compilation of work by the presenters found in their recent papers and books. We are grateful to ASME, IJRR, Robotica and Springer for the permission to reprint these excerpts.

This site has photographs of a large number of devices used to teach physics. It is fascinating.
Select the link: http://physics.kenyon.edu/EarlyApparatus/index.html

Recently, I became aware of the overall poor quality of the articles on machines in Wikipedia, and I have spent quite a bit of time revising these articles over the past month. I hope my contributions are an improvement. Please take a look:

• Machine (mechanical)
• Mechanical system
• Linkage (mechanical)
• Screw axis
• Burmester’s theory
• Four-bar linkage
• Mechanism (engineering)
• Instantaneous center of rotation
• Screw theory
• Dual quaternion
• Mechanical advantage
• Overconstrained mechanism
• Kinematic pair
• Virtual work

As you may know anyone may edit Wikipedia, and it is intended to allow user communities to maintain the quality of particular sets articles. It is important that we take this opportunity because Wikipedia is an important resource to our students.

The training videos that Smitty developed for our design classes at UCI can be access at the YouTube site: Engineering Training Site.

The videos include basic welding 1 and 2, hand tools, soldering, metal forming 1 and 2, cutting, filing grinding and fitting metal for welding, measurements and layouts, and fasteners.