Angst Lesspork

[Graeme Dunbar]

The turtle moves!  :D

Looks super!

[Hugh Norwood]

I found a suitable box at The Wooden Box Mill.
Here it is with the drive shaft in its sleeve coming out of the lid




The Wooden Box Mill: https://www.thewoodenboxmill.co.uk/ {usual disclaimer}

[Hugh Norwood]

Under the lid I added some thin plywood strengtheners and mounted the turntable motorising kit. The red gear takes a 4mm diameter shaft; I used a length of 4mm OD brass tube – this goes up through a length of 5mm OD (4mm ID) aluminium tube which is secured through the hole in the lid.

The lower bearing is a short piece of 3mm brass tube inserted into a small piece of plywood as shown.

[Hugh Norwood]

The turtle and the elephants have a 5mm hole drilled through and these sit on a small ply spacer so the turtle should look as if it is floating above the lid.

[Hugh Norwood]

Meanwhile, the Disc is being painted...

[Robin Webster]

The world on a Turtles back. A story of creation by the Iroquios of North America, and from India with Elephants standing on the back of a Turtle, with a Z scale narrow gauge railway joining us all together.
I like it very much.
Robin.

[Ian Jopson]

I suppose the real challenge would hav been to make the flippers move in unison, so the turtle appeared to be swimming. Bow that would require considerable surgery and much micro-engineering. As it is, a beautiful little rendition of which any Pratchett fan could be proud.

[Hugh Norwood]

Someone else has wondered that... I guess it might be possible by editing the 3D design files to make the turtle articulate, but that's way out side my capabilities. :)

[Graeme Dunbar]

Looking good!

Animated flippers is perhaps getting into Grandmaster Laurie McLean territory.  ;)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xl70y5faL3M

[Hugh Norwood]

Nearly finished....

[Hugh Norwood]

After some reflection, I decided that since the lid opens, the box should have teeth.

The teeth are made from 40thou (1mm) styrene sheet and the supports (gums?) from various styrene strip



They are hinged and sprung so that they collapse into the box when the lid is shut but come out when the lid is opened.

[Hugh Norwood]

I think the teeth need to be yellowed a bit.

(Now got to source some feet....)

[gtmspyder]

Well done Hugh, I like what you do, there's nowt like bit of complication to keep us amused 8).

Brian. ;)

[Hugh Norwood]

Update on the Discworld.

I wasn't too happy the motor from the turntable kit - it was very noisy and drew too high a current to be battery operated. I recently had a good look at these N20 motor/gearbox combinations that  a lot of people are using.

They are certainly small enough, and come with a variety of gearbox ratios (this was a big issue to begin with; which ratio should I go for?) The output shaft is 3mm diameter; the worm shaft from the turntable kit is 4mm diameter, so some sort coupling would be needed. I decided to chance a N20 with a 298:1 gearbox and sent off for one, a 3mm/4mm coupling, a motor bracket and a couple of plastic bearings for the worm shaft.

Everything worked; the motor, when driven from a 4.5V battery box, drove the Disc round at a suitable speed. So it all got installed in the box.

[Hugh Norwood]

I wanted also to have the Turtle swimming over a starlit background, so I cut 8 lengths of plastic optical fibre, used the heat from my soldering iron to form a blob at one end of each length and installed these into holes I drilled into the black lid of the box. I glued them in from the underside using GlueNGlaze

The free ends were gathered together into a short piece of sleeving which was pushed into a short piece of brass tubing with a 3mm bright white LED stuffed in the other end. This assembly is held together with GlueNGlaze.  NOTE I've used heat shrink tubing because that was what I had, but I did not shrink it as the optical fibers melt before the sleeving starts to shrink...)


here you can see some of the "stars"...

I took it along to the East Midlands Group show at Portland College.