Great Fairy Fountain - 30 Note Chromatic Music Box

I got my first diatonic music box a while back, and then started searching for a chromatic one. I finally found one here: http://www.deanorgans.co.uk/order_musicalmovements_mbm30hp.htm

The video above is the Great Fairy Fountain theme, adapted by me for the music box.

I'm working on modifying the gear system a bit. The problem is that the holes on the same line (same note) have to be a certain distance apart in order to play the same note twice in succession. The solution is to scale the piece so that all the holes are farther apart. The problem is that then you have to turn the music box handle really fast to make the same tempo as before. I'm going to pick some gears out of my collection (yes I have a gear collection) and try to fix this problem.

The next music box related project is to get large sheets of cardstock and use a laser cutter to cut them out and also punch them with tunes I've adapted for music box. I also want to write some code to create either an easy system for writing music for the box or for adapting pieces from the tool I already use, Noteflight.

Finally I'll want to build a permanent 'box' for the music box--something nice, maybe cherry wood. I'll need to think carefully about the design in terms of resonance, but also handle placement, weight, ease of use, etc. The design of any particular project is always way more complicated than I expect it to be.

Lasercut Holiday Gifts

As I promised, here are photos of the gifts I made with the laser cutter for the holidays.

Magnetic Tessellating Escher Fish. Based on this design. I made these out of plywood, then stained them.

Tea light enclosures, based on this design. I added a base piece with a circular hole, which keeps the tea light in place (they come in a standard size).

I made these with thin planks of what I think is called red oak, sold in the hobby section of Home Depot or Lowe's.

First order logic blocks. Design based on the idea from http://spikedmath.com/475.html.

I made these from a longer piece of oak. My roommate is a woodworker, and let me cut the blocks  with his table saw.

I made 18 blocks. Choosing the set of symbols, frequency of symbols, and which faces of which blocks to put them on was not easy. Credit goes to my boyfriend Scott for helping design this piece.

Jewelry tree based on this design.

Didn't change anything but the slot thickness (to match the plywood thickness).

Lissajous coasters. Original idea, though the svgs for the curves themselves come from Wikimedia.

I made these from thin poplar planks, sold in the hobby sections of Home Depot or Lowe's.

This piece is a giant version of this design. Due to the variance in the thickness of the plywood I picked, I wasn't able to make some of the last few pieces fit. I scrapped this and decided to remake it again later, smaller, with new materials, and stain the pieces different colors for better visual effect.

Another tea light design. This one is 'modular,' in other words the panels are not glued together and it is meant to lie flat for storage. The design was made with resources from this amazing collection of free, high quality traditional Japanese designs. The site is in Japanese. I found it through dezignus.com, another useful resource.

The gifts during the gluing, staining, drying, finishing process. I loved doing this but I have a job and school that eat up all my time...so next year I will probably won't be able to justify doing all this again.