Occasionally, we get a tip for a project that is so compelling that we just have to write it up despite lacking details on how and why it was built. Alternatively, there are other projects where the finished product is cool, but the tooling or methods used to get there are the real treat. “Homeokinesis,” a kinetic art installation by [Ricardo Weissenberg], ticks off both those boxes in a big way.
First, the project itself. Judging by the brief video clip in the reddit post below, Homeokinesis is a wall-mounted array of electromagnetically actuated cards. The cards are hinged so that solenoids behind them flip the card out a bit, making interesting patterns of shadow and light, along with a subtle and pleasing clicking sound. The mechanism appears to be largely custom-made, with ample use of 3D printed parts to make the frame and the armatures for each unit of the panel.
Now for the fun part. Rather than relying on commercial solenoids, [Ricardo] decided to roll his own, and built a really cool CNC machine to do it. The machine has a spindle that can hold at least eleven coil forms, which appear to be 3D printed. Blank coil forms have a pair of DuPont-style terminal pins pressed into them before mounting on the spindle, a job facilitated by another custom tool that we’d love more details on. Once the spindle is loaded up with forms, magnet wire feeds through a small mandrel mounted on a motorized carriage and wraps around one terminal pin by a combination of carriage and spindle movements. The spindle then neatly wraps the wire on the form before making the connection to the other terminal and moving on to the next form.
The coil winder is brilliant to watch in action — however briefly — in the video below. We’ve reached out to [Ricardo] for more information, which we’ll be sure to pass along. For now, there are a lot of great ideas here, both on the fabrication side and with the art piece itself, and we tip our hats to [Ricardo] for sharing this.
Development of my kinetic art installation
byu/musicatristedonaruto inEngineeringPorn
Wow, this is so cool, the art installation looks amazing, and the custom CNC machine is impressive. this is video is awesome, I’d love to learn more about how it all works. thanks for the share.
I could watch the coil assembly CNC run for a few more minutes. That was absolutely fascinating.
If the cards were a bit shorter, metallic silver with a gold light behind and moved slower then you would have the Alphy computer from Barbarella.
With all due respect to the creator, I think it only checks the 2nd box. The “art” might be better if it quickly snapped from one state to the other without bouncing. For the work put into it, I think I would rather see a regular (unstaggered) grid of squares used as pixels to spell out messages, the time, etc. Something like the wall of servo-driven foam cubes (I think it was at an automotive industry expo, IIRC) that was featured a few years back.
However, the basic idea is cool, and the mass-production aspect is very well done, so kudos to Ricardo for that.
Maybe the rectangles could hinge in the middle and rotate instead of popping out. If you mount the coils parallel instead of perpendicularly, and use a fork to hold a magnet near each pole of the coil, you could rotate each rectangle both up and down from vertical. It’s starting to sound similar to a d’Arsonval movement at this point… 😅
Should do one like the A380, it’s aileron waltz.
As long as there are no Boeing engineers involved it should be safe.