Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Wave Machine: CNC Machined and 3D Printed Kinetic Art”.
I’Ve had this idea rolling around in my head for a while. Now it’s a piece of kinetic art that i call a wave machine – and here it is. This – is a simple mechanical system that can show a wave form. I designed it in a way that it has removable cams that allow you to experiment with different types of waves and stuff, like that. It really serves no purpose other than to be cool looking, but i thought it would be a good way to learn more about machining. I have a tormach 770 and i thought this would look incredible out of brass and aluminum. I started in autodesk’s fusion 360 and the concept was kind of just visually laid out in my mind.
I started knowing what the shape of the arms would be and what the shape of the base pieces would be. But i didn’t have an overall size that i was attached to. I bought some scrap and started machining. I machined the arms first and i was pretty happy with how those turned out, even though i know that i could have gotten a much better finish.
If i made some better fixturing, i was just making one of these and didn’t want to create a whole system just for a one-off object. After i made the arms i machined the bases out of brass. There was a little bit of trial and error here to keep from destroying end mills, but i did manage to get it done once the arms and the base were designed. I lined them up and took a measurement and just cut some simple brass rods to mount. It all some 3d printed spacers helped keep everything moving smoothly after that was done. It was time to design the cams. I found some creative ways of using the coil feature within autodesk fusion to get the perfect curve for this [ Applause, ], [ Applause, ], [, Applause, ], [, Applause, ]. So the cool thing is, you can swap out different ones to see what different waveforms look like: [, Applause, ], [ Applause, ], [ Applause, ], [, Applause, ], one of the beautiful things about digital fabrication is that once i had the design in autodesk’s fusion 360.
I was able to also make a version for 3d printing. You can see that my 3d printed version has many more arms than my cnc machined one, and that’s because i could much more easily just change the size of the arm and print a whole plate. Full of them and walk away and come back and print some more [ Applause ]. I had my lulzbot tes6 pumping these out for a couple days straight. Actually, the 3d printed version is very easy to assemble, even though there is a piece of the base with 3d printed dowels. I opted to use wooden dowels because i thought it would look cool so now the 3d printed one is also available for download so that you can print it yourself.
You can find all the links for these files, both the machined one and the 3d printed one in the article below thanks for joining me. If you happen to make one of these send me a picture. I’D love to see. It also be sure to subscribe to this website for more cool projects.
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