I will keep this post pinned to the top and share what I am currently working on!
Globe Orrery Arrow
My vision is to have an bronze arrow within a glass globe set into a thick turned wood base. Around the base will be symbols of each of the ancient planets with bronze symbols embedded in resin. One of the planets will faintly glow and by touching another symbol it will glow instead. The arrow will not have any obvious means to turn but none the less will always be pointed in realtime to the celestial object and will move slowly enough that it will look stationary at any given time. The 3d design was completed in 2023, and the primary parts have been sourced and created. I am insistent that this be electroplated in copper which is where I am currently at. I have finally gotten all the electroplating equipment, chemicals and the outrageously expensive conductive paint and airbrush setup. I need to get over that hurdle and then work through the microprocessor programming and mechanical linkages, but I am not too worried about those. Rather than calculate on-board, I intend to build a webservice and handle the calculation there and have this device simply get those values via wifi. I also invested in a lathe for this project to turn a big fat chunky wood base, although after a bit of practice I am not certain my skills are there yet. The design steps were completed some time back, I just am using this to learn a couple tricky new skills that I am still not there yet on. Here is what it will look like (without the wood base):
Funny aside, I screwed up somewhere along the lines with the globe I sourced and needed to come up with a clever way to get this orb which is larger than the opening of the globe assembled within it! I sorted it out, but it was a little bit of a scramble that no one will likely ever know about or appreciate the challenge of.
Mercury Clock
My vision is to have a very large 2ft+ clock on the wall that represents the location of Mercury with respect to the Earth. The challenge I set for myself on this is that I wanted to not use the crutch of computers to calculate its position; I wanted it to be a completely un-smart design based on nothing but a clock motor! I am rather proud of the gearing design I’ve come up with. It gave me a whole new appreciation for clock makers. The way that it will work is that it will consist of on very large ring gear that interfaces with a slightly less large ring gear. Each of these have a mechanism by which they will hold a “puck” that I intend to make of fine red jewel. This jewel will be handed off from gear to gear in such a fashion that its motion describes a figure eight. This figure eight is the position, with respect to the Earth, or mercury travelling around the sun, with the reverse figure eight portion truly representing its retrograde motion from the perspective of the Earth. In short, you will be able to see where Mercury is in respect to its Earth-centric orbit and when it is approaching, entering and exiting retrograde. At this time my next steps are to do a number of tests to see if I can manufacture these giant gears by laser cutting sheets of acrylic. I have the design complete, the sheets in hand, I am struggling though with getting the cut patterns properly constructed though but I can see my way through it. I am concerned that the gear ratio is simply too severe or that I will encounter a small issue that will require an outrageous amount of rework to correct for; I think this will be a make or break sort of project, because if it doesn’t work the first shot I need to start over. One of the elements I am most proud of, but will defy description without an animation, is the way that the mechanism works to transition the puck from the top to the bottom and back. I struggled with it for weeks and came up with a rather ingenious magnetic design that I think will work awesome without any springs or mechanical latches! Here is what it will look like, at least the gearing, the wood frame and puck are not illustrated:
Horned Harp
After finishing the harp for my niece I really wanted one of my own. I jotted down a conceptual sketch of an outlandish instrument that you would play seated and it would stand off the ground with a metal foot (like a cello) and the ends of the strings found there home on the end of horns that wrapped around your head. I am also envisioning that it will be bowed and that where you grip it around the neck with have a levered back that when squeezed will, via pulley, tighten all the strings to allow for some interesting pitch shifting. Given the organic shape I intend to build it up from layers. I have it modeled and sliced and the next step is to lay it out to laser cut and start gluing up the layers.
Snake Wall Game of Life
This is quite an old idea I have kicked around for years and it is about playing Conway’s game of life as an installation art piece. What recently changed to get it back on my build schedule is that I finally came up with an idea to make it aesthetic. I really have grappled with how to take a grid layout and make it organic and fit into my visual style. It came to me that it should be a snake coiled around the entire grid and eating its own tale. It is my aesthetic in bronze wrapped around glowing green gems and it brings that art deco organic quality to an otherwise geometric build. It also is a very neat Graph Theory problem to solve and model; I am excited to blog about Eulerian Paths and how I was able to do it! I have a 5v 50w power supply on its way and all the electronic components I need, so just need to build it! This one is probably the closest to completion but still working on the design; here is the latest:
