From What I Have Researched, I Found That the Treadle Pump Utilizes a Piston Cylinder System
From what I have researched, I found that the treadle pump utilizes a piston cylinder system to draw the water out of the ground and then pump it out the other side. Using the paper Chris posted in his email, ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/005/x8293e/X8293E01.pdf, you can see the dynamics of the treadle pump is just for drawing water out of a well or lake for irrigation. Treadles were also used in the 18 and early 1900’s for sewing machines and machine lathes. In this fashion, there is a rotating shaft attached to the treadle which rotates a wheel. Usually this wheel has a rope or belt around it that drives another smaller crankshaft. Think of an old time train wheel or this lathe.
I came up with a way to utilize this concept with gears and DC motors. What if we had each treadle on a pivot point and the shaft driving the larger gear with 2 motors on each gear? We would need to include some sort of way for the user to stabilize themselves and apply a force downward should they not have enough gravitational force. Similar to an elliptical or an arc trainer. I can show you in class with a drawing if you like.
So here we see this fit woman working out using a mechanical treadle design. Here’s my thought. In similar ways that solenoids are taking it a step backwards, so are treadles. There used to be treadle bicycles:
Treadle
Pros / Cons●Potentially cheaper
●Potentially more fun
●Simple mechanical design
●Utilizes easy to find DC motors for power generation.
●Proven concept through other developments
●Same moving parts as chain or direct drive.
●Can do some engineering feasibility easily
●While not quantifiable could produce upwards of 30W / ●Potentially harder to design, if it is designed like the treadle pump we have to create handlebars
●Less intuitive than bike
●Might be less efficient
●Still have the issue of alternating power. When switching feet
●Force is a factor as well as speed
●Custom sized parts
●While a treadle pump can pump the water, this leaves no room for power generation
●Children may have a harder time depressing the treadles since much of the work is relying on the weight of the kid.
●Even if we convert the water flow energy to electrical, it lacks efficiency
●Large and Bulky
Bike Design
Pros / Cons●More comfortable
●Sitting is a more desirable position / ●Bulky
●Expenses are only increased due to it just adding onto the idea of the original BWM