11. Mechanical design - machine building week.¶
This is at some point going to be a group page. I’ll write what we did first, and discover later how to adjust it.
After some brainstorming we decide to design a machine that is a zoetrope plus: an apparatus that can draw animation, and in it’s second manifestation also project those.
Questions to be solved:
-what are the individual parts of the machine? -how to drive the disk(s)? a) at what speed (considering persistance of vision) b) with which motor? (we need differing speeds) How to program it? -what kind of drawing arm do we need, what is the reach for example? -what is the material to draw on / with? -which kind of light is best for projection? -how to program disks and light relative to eachother? -if an extra projection unit (mirrors?) is desired, how will it function?
EDIT
Things I worked on: -A pcb with a mosfet to steer the solenoid.Spent almost an entire day with Paola and Saco designing and milling it and we did not use it in the end. I had many fights with mods and the millingmachine, a mysterious issue with the border of the design not being framed right. We solved it in the end, but still not sure what happened there. -Researched and made different kinds of animations, and researched and made the prints for them. The svgator site I experimented with first did not give very satisfying results. I then resorted to Sketchfab, in particular Denys Almaral, of whom I downloaded a few animated designs. I then imported them into Blender, organized the right camera angle, light, and speed, and then exported them into 24 images.
Bas wrote a program to make these into a projectionable circle - but I could not get that to work. So then Paola helped with Adobe Illustratering (I do not master that software, and she has a design background) them into a full circle, and then it was off to the printshop.
I tried to record the stuff we were doing as best as I could, and wrote up in notes in our git. With my background it was kind of obvious I made the presentationfilm Theatrum Anigraphicum. Too easy maybe. When it comes to learning, I found this week, again, that the pace of things in the Academy is very high. I keep track of what I do, but often I find that it is not sufficient if I need to use my documentation a few days or even weeks later for any job. Falling back on what others did is not always reliable, and in situations like last week, where a group depends on my skills, I stress out. Not easy to break that cycle.
edit june
This project spiralled into something I worked to keep up with - the design, building and programming of the thing all demanded skills I do not sufficiently have, or was able to develop at such short notice. So I assisted where possible, tried to think along, learned something more about animation, and recorded. All the files are in the shared repository: machine repository notes on page