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Huh, so it has been a year since I last posted. Unfortunately, being a postdoc tends to eat your life. There are several new projects and a few that are ongoing. I’ll upload those as time permits. For the moment, I needed a small box to catch bottle caps from my mounted bottle opener. Thus, I made a small box from 3/16 in plywood on the shop laser cutter at HackPittsburgh . It has a backplate with magnets to hold the box in place while making it quick and easy to remove when full. The artwork is modified from some amazing custom work done by aedensolus.

#laser cutter #hackpgh #aedensolus #beer #homebrew

So instead of watching the super bowl, I brewed some beer. I've already had experience brewing mead, wine, and cider so beer was next on the list. This is a robust porter kit from Brewer's Best. Since I already have most of the equipment, it was pretty easy. I was a little disappointed seeing how much the small, single layer, copper wort chillers cost at the brewing store so I decided to build one. This one uses 50ft of copper tubing in a double layer design and was cheaper than the pre made chillers. It was able to cool the wort from boiling to about 45 deg C in about 8 min. Granted, I was running cold tap water in Pittsburgh, in the winter. Thus, the water was slightly sub arctic. This baby beer is now comfortably tucked away in my closet. I'll see how it goes over the next few days.

It begins. So after a particularly long period without building anything (damn grant writing getting in the way), I'm building a new woodworking bench. This is going to be a petite roubo style workbench similar to the style in the lower picture. The wood is cut to length and will sit for a week or two to acclimate. In the mean time, I have a lot of chisels and plane irons to sharpen.

#workbench #woodworking #roubo

After moving last may, I haven't really been able to work on any projects. My shop is still mostly in boxes and research has taken nearly all my free time. But you can't get a good tinkerer down. I've started exploring the various national forests around Pittsburgh and have taken an interest in backpacking. With the myriad of gadgets and bits you can buy, I couldn't bring myself to buy one of the ski pole walking sticks people use. A little browsing online brought up a neat article on Instructables about a break down walking staff. Thus, I had one of those moments where "I could make that" popped into my head.

The staff itself is made of 1inch red oak dowel. All of the copper fittings are from the plumbing section at lowes. The bottom comes to a point for better traction. The top copper section is hollow so it can be filled with a minimalist survival kit or maybe a custom made flute (still debating on that one). The copper sections were etched to produce a droplet pattern. This involved spraying each piece with water and dipping them in wax to make the resist. They were galvanically etched with a computer power supply and copper chloride. The wood was sealed with 4 coats of polyurethane. The staff breaks down into three sections that can be held together with a 2 inch steel ring. I sewed a seat base from duck cloth and used paracord as supports. Cotter pins slide into holes in each staff section to create a simple and very effective stool.

 The lab is starting to become a little less hectic so hopefully I can start working on my projects more often. I am planning on gearing my new shop mainly for hand tool woodworking since I was able to move most of the heavy machinery to a spare room at the lab. The next project will probably be a new woodworking bench, but we will see how that goes.

aedensolus

Stilt Spirit

You’ve seen a photo of this abomination before, and now finally here’s the full info about it. More below the cut:

And now the Davey Jones Theme.

Huzzah, it's back together. The new drive system works perfectly and I was able to install the lighting system. The LEDs are MIDI controlled, but also have a color select mode and white light mode. I'll make more videos when I have time, but I'm preparing to move.

I've finished up the front gears and built in a nifty little idler gear that can be shifted in and out of the train as a way to turn off the gears if not wanted. Next up is to make a new control panel. The last one was a quickie that doesn't look that good and no longer fits due to the new drive system. It uses an iphone to feed midi into the pipe controller. I will eventually build a dedicated midi controller, but that will have to be later. For now, I'll just build a simple interface.

I know it has been forever since an update. The organ was mainly finished and shown at the convention, but unfortunately the drive system broke down at the end of the con. I was planning to make repairs, but never got around to doing so. I also decided to add a little more decoration to the front of the organ by adding some nice gears. The scroll saw work on the gears took forever, but they turned out really nice. I also have plans to eventually install some LED lights inside. Maybe design them as a color organ.

The video shows the new drive system. This version is updated to timing belts with 3D printed gears. Each belt has it's own tension adjustment mechanism on the bottom. I know it seems really loud in the video, but it really isn't that bad once the organ is sealed up and running. I'll post more photos as things come along.

Second test, for Game of Thrones fans.

I works! I used an iphone to MIDI adapter to provide the music. I think it sounds better than I was expecting.

#street organ

This is a test fit of all 48 pipes on the wind chest. You can see the the normal wood pipes along with the bigger mitered pipes in the back. There are 11 metal pipes salvaged from the same organ which supplied the solenoid valves. I should be able to have some videos of the system playing in a few days. Luckily, I wanted the organ to be very modular so the organ has its own microcontroller (arduino) which reads a MIDI input and activates corresponding pipes. A second control computer will store and output the MIDI files to the wind chest controller.

#street organ #wind chest #organ pipes

Also, a quick video of the magnet valves in action.

#street organ #arduino #solenoid #pipe organ

I finally finished wiring the organ wind chest. The wind chest contains a solenoid valve to control each pipe. When electricity is applied to the solenoid, it magnetizes and raises the pallet. A large kick back diode is placed on each solenoid to prevent electromagnetic kickback when power is removed from the magnet. This wind chest uses 48 valves recovered from an old church pipe organ. They are controlled by an arduino attached to 3 logos electromechanical 4x4 driver boards. The arduino just activates each magnet in sequence and increases the rate with each run. Soon, the arduino will take a MIDI input signal and activate the corresponding pipe.

#street organ #arduino #pip organ #solenoid

The organ's wind system is finally ready. An organ seems pretty simple when you think of it, air blows through a valve into a pipe. However, it is never that easy. The wind supply not only has to generate air pressure for the pipes, but it also has to provide very stable air pressure. Otherwise, the pipes' tone will vary, moving sharper or flatter depending on the air pressure. This is maintained by the reservoir bellows. It provides an extra tank of air for when many pipes are playing simultaneously. The bellows is also compressed by a very strong torsion spring. This provides the pressure for the system. Without the spring, the measured air pressure would only be an inch or two of water (you can lightly exhale at higher pressure). With the spring, the system produces a stable 5 inches of water pressure. A similar concept is used on full size church organs. Blowers feed a bellows system to maintain pressure and provide an air reservoir. Pressure in larger, stationary bellows is maintained by simply piling lead weights on top of the bellows. Unfortunately, this doesn't work if you want a reasonably portable organ that weighs under 100lbs. The above video shows three pumping bellows on the bottom. Each bellows feeds into the reservoir bellows. The pumping bellows are powered by the motor drive system in the top of the organ. The drive motor runs at about 1500 RPM. This is reduced by the 18:1 pulley train to turn the crank shaft at about 80 RPM. In reality, it runs about 70 RPM due to friction and other inefficiencies. I will still have to tinker with the speed since I may be able to run it at a lower RPM due to the triple bellows design. Anyway, the wind is carried from the reservoir bellows to the wind chest via a pipe in the front of the organ. I made a small hole in the back of the wind chest so that I can easily monitor the wind pressure and test pipes without having to activate the chest magnets. You can hear two pipes in the video. I know the drives and bellows are a bit loud, but most of that is due air leaks I still have to repair. Also, when the organ is running, it should be much louder than the drive system.

#organ

At the moment I am working on the interior structure of the organ as well as the drive system. Unfortunately, it turned out a little bigger than I expected, but that shouldn't be a problem. The lower half of the organ houses the bellows and reservoir. The system uses a triple bellows design. This provides a smoother wind supply. Each pump bellows feeds into the reservoir, which is just a larger bellows. Its job is to provide extra wind for the pipes in order to maintain the system pressure during heavy use. The wood box in the middle is the wind chest. This houses the electromagnetic valves which turn on/off each pipe. I wanted this organ to be operated by either motor or hand cranking. The crank shaft is in the upper left corner. This is connected to the bellows via rods. As the shaft turns, each bellows is pumped out of sync with each other to provide continuous wind. A small motor and pulley system will be mounted in the back. I'll post more on the individual components later on.

These pipes are the heart of my current project. I am in the process of building a small MIDI street organ. The organ is partially based on the John Smith busker organ, but i wanted a fully chromatic organ rather than having to stick with a few select scales. When complete, it should play 48 notes and be completely MIDI controlled. The wind supply is provided by either a motor or via hand crank. Each pipe has two chambers and follows the general design of wood organ pipes. The walls are made of basswood and the inside of each pipe is sealed with a light coat of PVA glue. The mouth pieces of each pipe are made of cherry. Each pipe is stopped with a simple peg and chamois stopper. Stopping a pipe effectively lowers a pipe by one octave. Some of these pipes will be shortened as I had to guess a bit on the pipe lengths. The longer pipes will also have to be mitered to make them fit into the small organ. Thus, a stopped two foot pipe sounds like an open four foot pipe. There will be more to follow as I complete the other components.

#organ #organ pipes #busker

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