Late last year at a craft show, [hahabird] and a friend came across a laser-cut Spirograph and they both had a go at it. After mocking his friend’s lack of fine motor skills, [hahabird] was struck with the idea of making a giant-scale Spirograph that would (hopefully) be less frustrating for kids of all ages.
He generated the gears using an InkScape plugin, and then moved the project to Illustrator for adjustments. After nesting the inner gear drawings, he was able to print them out on one 3×3′ piece of paper at the local FedEx-Kinko’s. To make a template for routing he pieces that make up the eight-foot diameter outer ring, [hahabird] first cut it out of MDF and then bolted that to plywood. The outer ring’s size was dictated by the number of sections that fit on a 4×8 piece of plywood.
The challenge of the inner cogs was to make them move smoothly and still mesh with the teeth of the outer ring. [hahabird] solved this by mounting casters on raised platforms, which double nicely as handles. Each inner cog has a series of PVC couplers that take the 1″ PVC chalk holder insert.
So far, [hahabird] has cut 22-, 35-, and 44-tooth cogs, all of which are painted in nice, bright colors. According to his reddit comments, he will have a video or gif of it in a few days. We hope he makes the plus sign cog and the tongue depressor piece, too.
that headline wins the internet
I, too, enjoy the headline. The project itself ain’t too shabby, neither!
had simular the Soviet toy
Holy Hell…..
I’m seriously considering moving some of my projects to the back burner to make this.
Finally, ‘banana for scale’ has infiltrated Hackaday.
where’s the upvote button?
How does this compare in size to an 0802 footprint?
Made me laugh. Thanx Mycotox :-)
Banana for scale?
The bananamobile comes to mind or the 2 story house side banana “art” advert that a large apartment conglomerate has here in West Lafayette.
the banana is a standard unit of measurement on reddit.
too bad the unit has an error margin of about 3db
In my day we just drew on the sidewalk freehand, my day sucked! :(
…just look at it!
Cut the chatter red 2…
Here’s the video of it in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZgI03689DA