Tiny Chain-Link Fence Made With Hand-Cranked Brilliance

Chain link fences are woven with a mechanism that is almost hypnotic to watch, so [Levsha] decided to build his own tiny hand-crank tabletop version to make tiny copper wire fences.

Chain link consist of a series of wires bent and woven in a zigzag pattern. The zigzag bends are made by winding the wire around a rotating flat plate inside a stationary tube with a spiral slot in the side to keep the spacing of the bends consistent. [Levsha]’s version is roughly 1/10 scale of the real thing, and only does the bending and winding parts. Linking the bent wire together is up to the operator. All the components were machined on a lathe and CNC router, and beautifully finished and assembled on a wood base. The hardest part was the tube with the spiral slot, which took a few attempts to get right. [Levsha] initially tried to use steel wire, but it was too stiff and caused the winding mechanism to lock up. 0.4 mm copper wire turned out to be the best choice.

Although there is no practical use for this device that we can see, the craftsmanship is excellent, and it is one of those videos that reminds us how badly we want some machine tools.

Fine attention to detail is really what makes videos like this enjoyable to watch. Wee seen a few other such project, like a beautiful scratch-built lathe, or a pneumatic powered drone that can’t fly.

24 thoughts on “Tiny Chain-Link Fence Made With Hand-Cranked Brilliance

  1. Very cute. I want to try and drive it with one of those demonstration steam engines.

    Is it a builder thing that otherwise polished and well edited videos don’t start with a demonstration? Seems it would be good practice to show the machinein action + what it makes in the first 30s. Similar to how HAD has a photo of the finished machine + chain link on the front page.

    1. well… if you show the project in the first 30sec, than chances are people have seen enough and exit.
      But if you show the project from start to finish, then you gain viewtime (which is important if you want to monetize you channel) however you risk losing viewers because videos can become annoying if you are waiting a long time but not knowing exactly what you are waiting for.

      Anyway, it’s difficult to make a good video and be a good maker at the same time. Both require skills if you want to rise above the crowd. But also both require time… lot’s of time. So what do you want to spend your time on, making things or making videos, you may want to do both but time is limited.

      1. I’m seeing this all the time now on YouTube. People have learned that watch time is the most important of their stats, so they tease things until the end. Even to the point in one case, where on a forty-minute video, with the title saying what the outcome would be, it was only in the final two minutes that the producer bothers to say that the project had been a failure.

        This has nothing to do with making “good video”. It has everything to do with trying to game the system, and is an example of BAD video. If they showed the outcome at the beginning, they a) would be encouraging people to continue to watch to see how it was done, and b) would avoid wasting the time of people who have no interest in how it comes out.

    2. I have done this using only a length of thin flat piece of metal bar and winding the wire around it and then stretching it out to the disred length and cutting the wire. It is a lot simpler and faster.

  2. “Although there is no practical use for this device that we can see, ”

    You didn’t watch de video carefully. I don’t understand russian but I understood why he wanted to do those tiny fences when he show the cylindrical speaker enclosure which the outside is covered with such a tiny fence. Indeed it is usefull to make speaker metallic grid.

    1. It seems you are correct, as those grids have numerous applications. He showed a wireless charging mat in one area likely to prevent stray electromagnetic energy from entering into his USB speaker, he showed before (covered in mesh). So their are lots of applications, one just has to think a bit.
      This is a pretty nice application of mechanical design with some electrical automation can add a bit more to make mesh materiel for all sorts of things. Very nice build. Seems to have a better shop than most people however (LOL).
      The mechanism shown looks to work with steel as well as copper, likely aluminum brass and a few others can be tossed in that as well.
      The metallic meshes are great RF field reflection devices. :D

Leave a Reply to RW ver 0.0.3Cancel reply

Please be kind and respectful to help make the comments section excellent. (Comment Policy)

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.