Mechanical 1 Bit Adder (Using Logic Gates)

thingiverse

This is a 1-bit adder using mechanical logic gates. Which uses the wiring you would use (image above) if you were normally making a 1-bit adder electronically. A and B are the bit you want to add and Carry In is if there was an additional digit that was supposed to be carried over from a previous calculation (You would use this to combine 1-bit adders to make 4-bit adders. But that isn't possible with this design for reasons I'll talk about a bit later.) In order to input a 1 to an input gear, you turn it (following the arrow) a half turn and in order to input a 0, you turn that input gear a full turn. After you've done a calculation be sure to reset the carry gear to the original position. (use image as a guide) I am aware that there are way better and easier ways to mechanically do addition. This was more an excuse to make/mess around with logic gates with gears which had been on my mind for a while. The logic gates took different shapes through the design process, from gears which you would push and pull in order to input, to using clockwise/counter-clockwise rotation to input. But eventually settled on using the amount of rotation. And as for why you can't use this to make a 4-bit adder, it is because I couldn't actually make an OR gate just something that serves its purpose for this 1-bit adder. If you can come up with a solution or a better way/more compact way to do this please tell me.