Here's the video of my attempt at creating a "moving picture". first the inside:

Asyou can see these are not exactly precision gears. Its always one thing or another thats getting caught on something... if i could find some real parts that I could put together and take apart so they fit properly I think it would be better. I got some plastic gears but i dont have the connecting pieces I need.

New project continued

I ended up using plastic fishing line, or trimmer line to be the joints. I melted the ends so the line wouldnt fall out. I know there has to be a better way but I dont know what anything is called so I cant look it up. I have to do more research. The hardest part is making everything go together without something getting stuck on some thing or falling out of something. Making gears out of popsicle sticks is not very precise. I'll try to get it going enough so I can post it here.

New Project

I decided to do a 3d version of a picture I had in my head. I had done a drawing of it and wanted to see if I could use it for this one.

I figured I would make the mama bird fly around while the man's eyes followed and his mouth opened and closed in surprise. All of this would be powered by a crank which the observer would turn.

So I started studying simple machines. How rotary motion can be converted into reciprocal motion etc. Once I figured that stuff out I had to decide on the materials I would use. I started out using foam core board but that was just too imprecise. I ended up using foam board for the base and wooden precut shapes and Popsicle sticks to build the gears and rods. The hardest part was figuring out how to make movable joints so the pieces would stay together but move in the way they were supposed to. The next post will have the supply list I ended up with:

Ok, this is my first entry on my blog. I don't usually do things like this but I have learned so much and made so many mistakes while starting on my new project that I thought I should record it somewhere. This blog is as much for myself as it is for anyone else who might be interested in it. So I am just going to write whatever I'm thinking at the time as a kind of diary more than anything else.

So now I will explain what's going on. I have been interested in automata for quite awhile. There is a fascinating museum in San Francisco called The Musee Mechanique. it is not exactly a museum so much as a collection of coin operated mechanical toys mostly from the turn of the century (20th century that is). As soon as I saw them I was truly intrigued with these devices and was immediately inspired to create my own. I new I couldn't do anything as sophisticated as they had there, so I decided to start with hand operated creations.

I began doing some internet investigation and quickly found that category of the creations I was interested in were called automata. They range from sophisticated feats of mechanical engineering such as I had seen to relatively simple hand-carved wooden toys. The best sites I've found for the handmade kind are Cabaret Mechanical Theatre http://www.cabaret.co.uk/ for wooden ones and robives http://www.robives.com/ for ones made out of paper.

To continue: I made one mechanically simple automata ( I suppose it qualifies because it does move a little) out of wood, clay and various found materials. Which I will show here:

But I knew I would have to do some studying in physics if I ever wanted to make something close to what I imagined. I found some books and websites with information on the different kinds of mechanical movements you can use. Most of the information I could find was regarding "paper engineering" such as pop books and greeting cards where you pull the tab and they move. So I made some of those.

This time I wanted to combine the elements of a card with that of a painting. The first one I did was a kind of a joke one of a man stabbing a woman (not too graphically). I made it out of foam board and cardboard and painted it with acrylic paint. I actually sold it for $20! That leads me to the project I am currently working on.