Here are some images of Edu Toy's Leonardo Da Vinci's Mechanical Dragonfly.
The box says "Mechanical Butterfly", though its description and appearance are that of a dragonfly.
From the Instructions"
Da Vinci was the first person to apply himself to the study of animal
flight and human flight with such passion. Throughout his life da Vinci
dreamt of building a flying machine which would enable man to fly. In
spite of being unable to fulfill this task, da Vinci has the distinction
of being the first person in the history of human flight to study the
subject from a scientific point of view, investigating every possible
solution. He even devised plans for muscle powered flying, where the
pilot of the machine trys to replicate the beating of a birds wings,
gliding, without moving the wings, and mechanical flight, where the
machine flies without a pilot but only thanks but only thanks to the
movement of mechanical parts like gears and wings. In his manuscripts da
Vinci drew many contraptions, not all of which need a pilot. Many
flying machines are preliminary studies, where most of the time da Vinci
tried to imitate the anatomy of an animal; a bird, a bat, or an insect,
such as a dragonfly. One of the projects for a flying machine with no
pilot is the mechanical dragonfly,on folio 1051v of the Codex
Atlanticus. da Vinci himself advised where one can admire admire these
incredible flying insects: To see four winged flying, look near ditches
and you will see dragonflies. It is extremely difficult to create a
mechanical replica of the natural movement of an animal. The beating of
the dragonfly's four wings is particularly complex and da Vince was well
aware of how difficult it would be to create this machine. he himself
described it in great detail. It is not simply wings beating up and
down; it's a jointed motion. Whilst beating down the wings are "flat" in
order to push as much air as possible, whereas when they are raised,
they are angled so that they create less resistance. If the dragonfly
and therefore da Vinci's machine, was not like this, it would not be
able to fly because the power created when the wings beat downwards,
would be canceled out when the wings returned to their starting point.
Da Vinci wrote: The wings must return to the top very quickly, whereas
pushing backwards with the part of the wing which pushes the air must be
done at the speed required by the engine each individual time. The
movement of each four wings is synchronized with the others. Da Vinci
resolved the problem by designing to pairs of wings, one for the front
and one for the back, exactly as on a dragonfly. When the wings are
beating, the pairs of wings around their main linch-pin. The energy of
this movement is provided by two spring loaded motors which drive a
mechanical system made by gearwheels, a camshaft and connecting rods
which in turn allow the pairs of wings to move alternately and in
synchrony. Whilst the wings move more quickly up and down pushing the
air, rods of exactly the right length fold the wings downwards ensuring
they are angled when they come back up, exactly as it happens in the
animal movement. The mechanism is very delicate and in order to make the
machine work correctly it must be very fine tuned. Furthermore, the
power the motors were able to supply would definitely not have been
sufficient to lift the machine off the ground. In spite of this, the
machine plan is absolutely fascinating and even if they are too slow,
the wings move exactly in the same way as a dragonfly's.
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