Dynamometer

Too much praise SheetWise.
If I see the word dynamometer an electrical solution is the first that comes to my mind. But some say I was born with a voltmeter in my head....

A disc brake with an arm attached to the caliper and a sliding weight is a simple mechanical solution.

Or the clutch from an automotive A/C compressor and a variable power supply. Sorry, electrical again.

 

how about a hydraulic pump, valve, pressure gage and flow meter

somehow that seems like a solution to me

now for the math

 

Plus an oil cooler.
Like an electrical system, that would need calibration. The brake with a long lever doesn't.

 

doesn't a true engineer complicate things?

 

In engineering the one thing above all else that you hammer into every cadet, trainee and young employee is KISS

It's the most important engineering concept of all.

 

I used to work directly with engineers and they were always trying to impress each other, it got really weird at times with what they came up with

once i worked at boeing vertol in the wind tunnel making and preparing test models, it go so bad between the developmental mechanics and engineers that the head honcho got us together and said if the engineer couldn't tell us what he wanted in language we could understand then he had the wrong man on the job

 

Ditto software development. I used to have staff that never saw a simple and straightforward problem that they couldn't make complex & baroque. Then they'd (be encouraged to) move on....

PDW

 

When you learned on 8k RAM, that was never a problem