The B-Roll » Archives » Day 194 / DIY Glockenspiel And More

Yesterday I found myself pretty inspired by a couple of links that a fellow follower of the blog named Marc left in the comments for Day 192 / One Man’s Junk. I asked for ideas of what I should do with the stuff I found in the alleyway behind my office and he led me to two really interesting ideas.

I found myself pretty attracted to the first link in particular, this one. It’s a table called a Harmonograph. Using three pendulums swinging with weights geometric patterns are formed on a drawing surface located at the top of one of the pendulums. It’s hard to describe but check out this video to quickly see the device in action.

Marc’s idea was to use the record player I found in the alleyway as the drawing surface, which would add one more element of movement to the whole device, the spinning of the drawing surface. Who knows how this would effect the geometric patterns but I bet it would be cool.

I checked into the record player to see if I could get the motor running and found out that it needed 117volts to run. Not a very safe voltage for tinkering. So I will have to change out the motor altogether and get something with a -17 to +17 voltage. That way I can use one of those model train set variable power supplies to control the speed of the spinning.

I was led to another page which demonstrated a drawing device called a Pintograph. A smaller, simpler version of the Harmonograph. Both of these devices are really interesting to me and I plan on building them both as well. They sort of remind me a bit of my Processing sketches from earlier days except in a very analog way.

All of this information has almost nothing to do with my creative thing for today except for the fact that I was led to it by Marc’s links. I can’t remember exactly the way I got there but I saw this video for a device called the Bearing Glocken.

Basically, a timed pulse releases ball bearings onto tuned metal bars and the natural momentum of the ball bearing leads it to hit four notes before ending up in a catch at the end. I thought this seemed like a pretty cool device to create for myself.

The website touts the fact that these ball bearings were made specifically for them with the top of the line precision technology to create almost perfect spheres but I would be willing to experiment with some imperfect ball bearings. Who knows how perfect they really need to be and how much of it is meant for publicity of the ball bearing company.

I’m still trying to figure out how to best release my ball bearings because rather then a timed computer do it I think it would be fun to do it manually. It could be fun to challenge four of my friends to perform a song each using their own manual trigger. So, I googled the term “DIY glockenspiel” and found a site selling some plans. And that, in a very roundabout way, leads me to last nights creative thing.

Last night I cut the bars to my glockenspiel device. Something in the back of my head tells me that I should have gone with Xylophone rather than glockenspiel because the bars are not very wide. The wider the better when it comes to chaotic falling ball bearings. Anyways, I may be in over my head or I may be on the verge of something awesome. Either way we shall see.

By the way if your interested in cutting your own glockenspiel tines I have the lengths shown in the picture above. All you have to do is get a 1/8 thick, 3/4 wide Aluminum Flat Bar from your local hardware store and cut it into the various lengths noted above.