robotic | Time's Up Teaching

This has been an amazing day, packed with new information and a lot of fun with hand-working tools, wood and metal. Although I was a bit intimidated by the amount of time I spend for small things, I think I will manage to reach my initial goal (more or less). The idea was to create several instruments connected to motors and thus create a motorized sound collective 🙂

What I did today was to start working on the first instrument, which is a chain connected to a cam and a motor. First I had to connect the motor to a wooden cam, so I started working on a metal piece to screw to the cam. I drilled holes, countersinked them and then cut a piece out so that the motor would fit.

After that, I started shaping the wooden cam. I expect a random movement so the cam will not be perfectly round. It will also have a guide way throughout the side, so that a leverage (bamboo stick) can be used to move the chains up and down.

After roughly rounding up the cam, I prepared a metal stand’s leg part for stability, drilled holes with countersink, and connected and tested the whole stuff. And it works! One problem is: the cam is too heavy for the motor. Because of that I will cut out most of the inner parts of the cam after deciding on a shape tomorrow. Otherwise I might need a stronger motor… Let’s hope that won’t be the case.

Here are some sketches about ideas on the first part of the project: