Wooden Orrery

[gregwest98]

Greetings,

[UPDATE] I made a better photograph of it.
[UPDATE #2] I made a short music video of the build.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuNXrgcXTSY

I made this wooden orrery (mechanical model of the solar system) on the shopbot of member dana_swift. Except for a couple of minor things that I did by hand, the entire thing was cut on the 'bot. The gears were the most interesting; I designed those with the gear generating program that dana_swift wrote. When you turn the crank, the planets move around the sun in a realistic way. This project was great fun.

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5102/5557078827_84d0264a4c_m.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/gregwest98/5557078827/)
A better portrait (http://www.flickr.com/photos/gregwest98/5557078827/) by gregwest98 (http://www.flickr.com/people/gregwest98/), on Flickr

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5056/5532963571_3f5c8b0670_m.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/gregwest98/5532963571/)
IMG_0947 (http://www.flickr.com/photos/gregwest98/5532963571/) by gregwest98 (http://www.flickr.com/people/gregwest98/), on Flickr

[gc3]

Nicely done. Great project, thanks for posting!

[MichaelSchafer]

Wow, seeing projects like that make me want to get a Shopbot more and more!

Are the gears made of plywood? It looks like some sort of laminated material...

[jdervin]

Very slick!

[gregwest98]

Thanks for the compliments.

MichaelSchafer, yes the gears are made from baltic birch plywood. The base and top are the cheap yellow pine you get from the borg. I had originally intended to view this one as a prototype and then make another from some really nice wood and perhaps make the gears out of plastic but I think I'll just call it done.

Of course, with a CNC machine, once you have your CAD work all done, making the second one is a lot easier. It wouldn't take very long which is what makes it tempting.

Anyway, all metal parts are brass and there are actually several finishes on it: a sealer coat of diluted shellac, and polyurethane over that. The gears are unfinished.

Oh, and I bought the wooden balls - no shopbot work there although it would be interesting to try and machine a sphere.

[beacon14]

That is way cool.

[gregwest98]

I made a short video of it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuNXrgcXTSY