Saturday, December 5, 2015

Bike Crank Spin-Art Machine for Alameda Arts

I built this spin-art machine for my daughter's after-school arts program. It's build from nearly all found materials. The main structure is solid polystyrene sheet material that came from a lab sink. It's easy to cut and bend, but you need sharp tools with big teeth because the melting temperature is quite low so it can easy clog tools. 

The base is from a discarded retail display. It has four nice, small, locking castor wheels. One drawback is the small wheelbase makes it  a little easy to tip over.

The bike crank drives a 3:1 right angle gear-box that I found in some bushes near my work. It had a big lead screw that I cut down and ground the end to fit a ball bearing and the square bike crank hole. The gear box has a chain-ring on the output that connects to a road-bike cassette by a small bike chain ($10). The spinning wheel is mounted to a used bike hub ($10), cantilevered from the bottom. 

Not shown in the pictures, there is now an additional bike handle and a bike brake used to counter the crank forces and stop the spinning wheel.


Here's a sample of the kind of art that you can make with it: