Sisyphus Testing Shoes

Here's a second iteration of the sisyphean theme. This time the Little Man is pushing hard on a railing, feet slipping constantly, and getting nowhere despite all the effort. Perhaps he is testing footwear. Or maybe he's just getting a feel for his futile future.

There are three movements, controlled from 3 axles, and the gears on the axles have prime numbers of teeth (23, 43, 59). So technically the movements will only repeat every 58,351 turns of the small gear. There's also a semi-random toggle on the head motion, so it will never really quite repeat.

Almost all the parts press fit and/or lock together, so the whole thing can be disassembled to a pile of parts, then reassembled, adjusted, and set going again without tools.

A set of still photos is at:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dogrocket/sets/72157623876834510/

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• automata
• automaton
• sisyphus
• kinetic
• kinematic
• sculpture
• mechanical
• art
• machine
• gears
• weights
• cams
• soul
• crushing
• futility

[chrisose]

Great stuff.

I'm curious, did you hand cut the parts or use a c-n-c?

[djohnson16mindspring]

@chrisose This is all hand cut, mostly with a scroll saw, some band saw. On this one, the gears aren't really "proper" gears, just straight-sided teeth, I drew them up on the computer, printed them out, and pasted them to the wood for cutting.

[sweepea38]

Step 1: Patent

Step 2 : Get it in stores all across Canada+USA

Step 3: ???

[djohnson16mindspring]

@sweepea38

1) Patents are a pain, and there's nothing useful about this "invention".

2) Stay tuned: there may be a kit for a similar machine, or at least drawings to make your own, coming sometime. No promises, I have a job, but it would be a fun project.

3) ??? indeed.

[Tony62254]

Hi I was wondering if you have a set of plans because I would like to include in it a clock design. The idea is to make it look like he is powering the rolling ball clock and the clock would be called human time.

[djohnson16mindspring]

@Tony62254

Great idea! Unfortunately I don't have any plans, it was mostly just built as I went, without much drawing involved. I'd sure love to see a clock like that, though.

[djohnson16mindspring]

@yksnimus That mechanism either raises or lowers the head, and is intended to randomly choose which way to go next. Every cycle, the little see-saw with the ball is "reset" by a pair of cams to horizontal. But because the ball isn't perfectly round, where it settles is unpredictable. When the seesaw is released, the weight of the ball makes the seesaw fall to one side or the other, but which side it falls to is sorta random.

I hope that explained it, let me know if not.

[scrubs]

I'd kill to have a kit or plans of this.

[fruitycoconut]

0:10 Doggystyle

[donjgeorge]

Amazing!

[CadenBurleson]

And so Conan was trained.

[flipper184]

here is no limit to human ingenuity .Thanks for posting.

[artistkeith3]

Very interesting and fun to watch. Really like the weighted head movements, that was a stroke of genius and seems incredibly complex. Nice work!

[urchinfive]

This is so beautiful...

[TheIkawatay]

This is perfect for a bookshelf!

[sodapoplad]

@sweepea38 Step 4: Profit.