zorlack
01-07-2009, 11:35 AM
About a week before the New Years a friend of mine called to say: "Wouldn't it be fun to have our own ball drop on New Years Eve?"
I agreed that it would be fun and so the planning began.
2126
I decided that the best way to make a ball drop was to have it guided by the support pole. In this case we decided that the support pole should be 2" PVC pipe.
I drew the plans in Autocad and cut them out of some scrap 1/4" plywood that we had kicking around.
2127
The plans included special divided groves so that we could two latitudinal rings of lights and that each ring could be separated into two colors. Our plan was to have alternating red and blue lights in the middle and wrap the entire ball in white lights.
I also included a little notch on the top and bottom so that we could bind the ball with string to keep it from falling apart. This just seemed less messy than using glue.
2128
The ball slid perfectly smoothly on the PVC pipe. We were very happy. It didn't bind up at all. All that was left for us to do was wrap the lights around the ball, attach a pulley to the top of the PVC, and finally erect the pole.
Weather ended up being a bit challenging - the night before New Years Eve we got about 4 inches of drifting snow, along with a fierce wind storm. But we made a pile of cinder blocks and jammed the pole in the middle and lo and behold, it stayed up! Though it did sway quite a bit in the wind.
2129
The postscript to this story is that just before midnight I crashed the computer that was setup to run the light sequence, so after all of our planning the ball drop was a bit of a flop.
I can't wait for next year. The pole will be twice as tall, and the ball even more complicated!
As usual, feel free to make your own LightBall2009 (http://zorlack.com/design/cnc/#lightball2009)!
-Dave
I agreed that it would be fun and so the planning began.
2126
I decided that the best way to make a ball drop was to have it guided by the support pole. In this case we decided that the support pole should be 2" PVC pipe.
I drew the plans in Autocad and cut them out of some scrap 1/4" plywood that we had kicking around.
2127
The plans included special divided groves so that we could two latitudinal rings of lights and that each ring could be separated into two colors. Our plan was to have alternating red and blue lights in the middle and wrap the entire ball in white lights.
I also included a little notch on the top and bottom so that we could bind the ball with string to keep it from falling apart. This just seemed less messy than using glue.
2128
The ball slid perfectly smoothly on the PVC pipe. We were very happy. It didn't bind up at all. All that was left for us to do was wrap the lights around the ball, attach a pulley to the top of the PVC, and finally erect the pole.
Weather ended up being a bit challenging - the night before New Years Eve we got about 4 inches of drifting snow, along with a fierce wind storm. But we made a pile of cinder blocks and jammed the pole in the middle and lo and behold, it stayed up! Though it did sway quite a bit in the wind.
2129
The postscript to this story is that just before midnight I crashed the computer that was setup to run the light sequence, so after all of our planning the ball drop was a bit of a flop.
I can't wait for next year. The pole will be twice as tall, and the ball even more complicated!
As usual, feel free to make your own LightBall2009 (http://zorlack.com/design/cnc/#lightball2009)!
-Dave