February 17th, 2011
A bit of a break from shooting today. Back to office and leaving for home on time. I had to get home on time because Jenny was going out with her friends tonight. I drove home with thoughts of the music video in my head. It turns out the pan & tilt which records camera moves is much to expensive to rent and we are going to have to go au natural. I thought about my telescope pan and tilt conversion and how I have let it fall by the wayside. I still want to finish it but I think it might not be the best choice for using on the day. The problem is that you can’t be panning and then start tilting whilst in motion. You have to stop and then press diagonally which would unfortunately dirty the slitscan effect. I think I should rent a remote pan and tilt but a cheap one without all the bells and whistles.
A couple of days ago I received 5 DC motors in the mail. They’re the same motors I got for the Harmonograph table. They’re great because they have a good amount of torque and slow speeds. At lunch today I ran by Robin’s Hobby in Glendale to sift through they’re inventory for attachments for the motors. I’ve had the hardest time finding attachments or connectors for DC motors because my google searches seem to bring up a broad array of subjects. Anyways, they were very helpful there and while there was nothing perfectly designed for my motor he showed me a connector that was pretty all purpose. It was this propeller adaptor meant for RC planes which you could unscrew and lock down just about any kind of gear onto it.
While I searching through all the connectors I remembered a project I had found while I was building my harmonograph table. Through Karl Sims tutorial site on building a harmonograph table there was a link to Fran McConville’s site where you can find a device she called a Pintograph. It’s another drawing machine but it’s smaller and a little more simple to build.
It’s a drawing surface with two DC motors at the bottom, each with they’re own 2 inch disc attachments. Loosely connected to each of the discs is a pair of wooden arms that are connected together in an accordian-style. Kind of like those classic boxing-glove-in-a-box guns you see in old cartoons. At the end of it the arms come together to hold a pen. If you vary the speeds of the motors you can get all sorts of interesting geometric shapes out of it. Here’s a video of one in action.
After Jenny went out with her friends my pal Steve came by. We had a drink and talked for quite awhile. It was a great talk but of course it got quite late fairly quickly and I was, as usual, only just starting my creative thing. I tried to come up with something creative but I wasn’t interested in anything but building this Pintograph, or at least starting.
I thought I just might have a 2” hole saw. Sure enough I did so I moved my sawhorses into the studio. I hate creating sawdust in my studio but I don’t have much choice when I can’t make a bunch of noise. So, it’s not much but I cut my disc attachments out of a bit of wood. I also hack-sawed the ends of my motor attachments so that the discs will be flush and the arms will be able to pass over it when it moves. I couldn’t find a strong glue or epoxy around the house so I will glue them to the attachment later.
I probably will try to continue this project on the weekend when I can make trips to the hardware store.