so outdated.. but very good nonetheless

your voice is amazing

I have to ask. Is that your real voice? If so, i gotta say. Thats one fucking awesome voice

Thank you so much, this was a great help in learning how to use and make pistons. Thanks!

p.s. your voice is amazing xD

summation.....

Cont. from below…

3) I believe your Second Arm formula is incorrect. @ 19:53 in video: As per your directions: The minimum length of the Second Arm = Length of First Arm (5) + 2 = 7

For some reason, you decided to use a Second Arm block length of 13, although – according to your formula – a length of 7 (5 + 2) should have sufficed.

@ 22:28 in video: it is clearly visible that if you had used a block length of anything less than 11 or 12 for the Second Arm, your First Arm would have smashed into your railing.

I tested this myself (using a block length of 7) for the Second Arm, and the First Arm smashed into my railing.

I appreciate your map & video tutorial – they are very clear and well done. My apologies if I somehow missed some crucial step - or if I did something absolutely wrong - but I found the directions so clear and concise that I was quite baffled when things didn’t turn out right. I recommend the Second Arm formula be changed to: Length of First Arm + 4 or 5.

1) At 19:25, you voice-instruct how to build the pistons in the reverse order by which you actually build them. It would have been nice (for those of us with no engineering background) to have a warning, such as: "By the way, I am describing this entire process in the reverse order from how you will actually build it."

2) You named the first arm you described in the video the "Third Arm", the second arm as the "Second Arm", and the last arm (third arm) you showed us how to build you named the "First Arm". Again, this is unnecessarily confusing (at least for us laymen). I can only assume that in the field of Engineering, you are probably 100% correct to call the arms in the order that you did; however, for a How-To video, I believe it would have made things much simpler to just name them in the order you built them; i.e. the "First Arm" would have been the first arm you actually built (which you, instead, named the "Third Arm").

If I had a womb, I'd say have my babies... but I don't, so I'll settle for, "well done, chap. Well done."

very concise guide sir.

Boris sir, I commend you for your genius. This. Is. AWESOME! I wonder if you could, in theory, make a trash compactor like this for all those noob ships that clutter your home base in multiplayer... assuming you use heavy armor so it doesn't crumple itself.

@Captain In principle they should work, but in real life under the different strains you put pistons through you generally need much more complex systems, and as such much more complicated formulas. The sorts of things you could use pistons for in the game you'd use other things in real life to accomplish. I could include many more variables in the ones I came up to take into consideration lots of other things (such as piston shape or possible wobble) but kept them simple and to the point so that people could remember them and they could be useful.

I made a whole piece of paper devoted to how to make a piston. Unfortunately space engineers lags like heck for me, so I can never put it to work.

Oh, and thanks for adding the formulas to the Desc!

Hey, does the math for the pistons also apply in real life? Like, if I build a piston making the blocks 1 cubic inch and used all of the formulas, would it work?

you sir should be doing voice overs for documentaries and national geographics, you have the perfect voice. Amazing tutorial thank you very much.

Awesome, thanks!

@Lukefeed Rails need to be heavily customised to suit the need of each particular design so I didn't talk about them much as I couldn't generalise, but if you're using the same design as I was in my first demonstration then the minimum distance back from the first rotor the rail can be is the same as the minimum length of the second arm, so in your case 7 blocks. This is because you need to allow room for your first arm (5 blocks), plus an extra 2 because landing gear are two blocks long.

This will mean that if you're using the minimum length of the second arm, when the piston is fully retracted (the first arm pointing directly away from the rails) the back end of the third arm should be aligned with the back of the rail. I'm guessing you are placing the landing gear too close to the crank (or vice versa). If you want to leave both where they are then you would need raise the level of the first arm up one block so it sweeps above the rail, and then lower where the third arm sits.

I'm having issues with the formula. If I try making a piston that travels 9 blocks, then the first arm should be 5, and the second arm 7 or more. However, when I set it all up that way, it will rotate about 65 or so degrees, and the first arm will make contact with the rail. I know the easy way to fix this is to make the second arm longer, but I want to know what I'm doing wrong with the formula.

По русски может кто объяснить...?! - Как соединяется часть с двигателями, с трущейся частью между посадочных шасси?

Also as shown in the link below, to make an exception with the length of the first bar, the only time you can use an even number is if you only use 2. An elevator uses the x = ( 3 + 1) / 2 then adds two for the second bar, leaving just barely enough torque to allow a total of 3 full block travel. Hope it helps for the more compact minded

Following my prior comment, I would like to follow through, if you would like to view it yourself or if you would like me to view it with you I can certainly oblige.

http://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=248592437

I am very excited to watch your third part!
In the meantime I created a world with a double sliding door and a door with four parts, connected to one rotor, and I uploaded it in the steam workshop. I guess this is more of a help (than my videos) because you can look into the details yourself, not that there are much innovations :P, but maybe you will find some inspiration ;)

http://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=248574263

You are permitted to use all of the stuff you need.

Greetings
Bal

@Boris, nevermind, I somehow figure how to put a arm inside the rail... I put the rails not one in front of another but one block left, that way, the arm slide into them, with a small rotor speed, after that, was just a matter of making the arm bigger... anyway, thanks for the help and your awesome work!

@Boris Thanks for the reply man! Yeah, I put the rail down first, seems to me the rotor isn't "straight" the arm looks a little to the side, yet in the controls the rotor shows 0º, I've put brake at maximum torque and upper and lower limit at zero, to make sure it stays on that position, but no success either, the funny thing is on large blocks I do it without any trouble... once again, thanks for the reply!

@Razor I have tried small ship ones before and they seemed to work fine under the same principles so it should work. Have you made sure you put the landing gear down first, and not extended the piston arm before the rail was laid? You can't place the landing gear while a block from another entity (like another 'ship', which is what the game counts the piston arm as) is touching it, but you can place down the piston arm while the rail is touching it. That's a problem I've had people message me about a lot, so I'm guessing it's that, but let me know if it isn't.

Thanks for the excelent work Boris, however, I do have one doubt, I'm trying to build a piston on a small ship (scavation purposes) but I can't make the holding path (landing gear) work on a small ship. the piston doesn't fit in. Am I doing something wrong? thanks again man, you work is inspiring!

Howdy Partner... next - lets go rob a bank ;)

i just wnated to say:

1. thx for an awesome comment.

2. your patience and atention to detail is nowhere to be matched.

keep up the GREAT work.

thanks very much excilent tutorial

also you sir have a lovely voice

Thanks for keeping making those videos, Boris. I'm sure many noobs rejoice at seeing them, and less-nooby-but-still-not-pro space engineers like myself find efficient solution for their projects.

Hopefully i can replicate this and start making ships with Elivators and sliding doors now as blast doors great idea for pistons this video helped alot

I must say this is a verry informative and understandable discription of how pistons work. Thank you for this video. it helped me alot. so now i go on and make my blastdoors slide open instead of just pull them up sideway with only 1 rotor in the upper cornor XD

I must say, that while I did not subscribe the the "Mod", it is super informative and I now have a working elevator. Cheers, and thanks for the videos.

my head hurts...

@ [QAI] Jovan then build one! I haven't got any plans for one in the next couple of weeks, so if you build it and I like it then I'll feature it, if you want me to of course.

@JandCandO Thanks for that, makes things even easier.

The one thing going through my mind in both videos is an Elevator.

this map is bad

Holy hell this is AWESOME!

and the kids in school said you'd never need algebra...

Great! Helped a lot!

"Hopefully this helps someone" he says...

Dude, I'm 33, and this is one of the best tutorial i have ever seen.
Thank you for your time and dedication. Thanks for the good work

o/

I made a quick Batch program to calculate the length of the first and second arms for you if you're too lazy.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/q65x2u8xvqtopfs/Piston%20Calculator.bat

Excellent tutorial, well spoken, concise and clear detailed information, which you have made easy to understand. Thank you kindly for this excellent guide :)

I forgot to mention, that you only use 90° instead of 180° of the rotation so the piston length/range for the doors is halfed.
It's also possible to build structures which will move with different relative speed, controlled with one rotor, by just adapting the length of one side of the first arm (it's effecting the range limits though).

I've actually already teamed up with AW Great Dane for the double sliding door Animattronic suggested, which I will be making a video tutorial on very soon. I will watch yours though Bal when it's ready and see if I can learn something new, the great thing with Space Engineers and engineering in general is that there's rarely only one way to do something. Thanks for the suggestion!

I thank you for making the tutorial series, the videos and explanations are great.
I tried a few things myself after watching it.
If Animattronic hasn't found a solution yet, I suggest to build a doublesided first arm. The rotor of the first arm is not attached to its one ending but to its midpoint and on the two symmetric endings two second arms are being attached pointing outwards. Then the two "doors" are connected via the third rotors.

It worked for me, so I made a short video for visualization (http://youtu.be/tB47wNUWsss) .
Feel free to make a tutorial out of this or use this information in maybe Part 3 of your series, I'm not used to do video editing and I'm not a native english speaker, so it will probably be a mess ;)

PS: The video is still uploading and being processed, so it may take a while until you can watch it. 2 hours remaining, because it's a 1 GB big file (As I said, I am bad at it :P).

Greetings
Bal

UR REALLY GREAT

this is really great. perfect explaination and everything

Hi all,I have made a part 2 which expands on this, adds some more designs, and includes some of the suggestions that have been made here. Thanks for those, you've been credited where I could.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnamEDTxYmE

Thanks for the tutorial - after watching it i just HAD to make a Giant Asteroid Drilling station - much like an offshore oil rig. On the workshop now if anyone want to check it out :)

You`re fucking genius!
10/10