More mechanical wooden silliness

Just a prototype of a iris mechanism cut out of 1/4" birch on the bot.

The outer ring rotates to open and close the aperture.

Thinking I am going to make a peephole for my shop door.


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I would love to have the cut file for that . I am putting an addition on the house and would love to put one on each of the doors in the kids room.Great job Chris

Cool!
(green with jealousy) ;-)

Are all the components the same thickness?

You could sell that to women looking for something unique for their husbands.

It needs a catchy name!

SpeakEasy Port?

Chris! Love it! I made something along these lines (I had seen it in an old Popular Science) on my laser out of colored plexi for a window shade but I did the iris like a real camera lens with overlapping pieces. I had all kinds of problems with rubbing and scratching of the plastic so you could hardly see out after while. I like this design with the pieces butting up so much better! Very ingenious - as always!
I have been bragging up your Bot in a Box to people when they come to look at mine.
Thanks!
Mike

Wow Chris,, I like the engineering too,,,

my first thought when I saw your pictures was, how cool that would be for a doggie door,, and how the dog would trigger it to open so he could come in the house,,, kinda like our rabbit hound going "Star Trek".

Great idea Charles! Let's go crazy mechanical and have the weight of the dog on a ramp open it up too!

Mike

That is SO COOL!!
I've wanted to build something like that for years but never followed through.
I think I'll use something like that to put a window in my shop door.

Haha.
Just re-read your post and see that you are planning on using it in your shop door.

Michael,,, I was thinking of an electric eye into which our rabbit hound would do that crazy V-shaped hand jesture that Spock did,,,,, the dog already has Spock's ears.

Make a big one for the door to your shop. It looks like an apeture ring in a 35mm camera.

It looks like the sphincter in the machines from the War of The Worlds with Tom Cruise.

I don't mean that in a disrespectful way....If aliens used an aperture to seal out space.....
I digress.

o Be a killer top for a trash can?
o It could be advertised as an accoutrement to a women's restroom door. Might be a good seller to the yoots of our nation?
o It could hide a mirror?
o Frame a corian carved lithopane?
o A photography store would have to own one!

;-)

Only you, Chuck, would see a sphincter...

mike

Chris, I guess I have to ask to be put in line for a dxf file for that gadget. I'm of the vintage that I actually used large format cameras with iris shutters. That is so cool.

Donn

I would like to be on the list too! I'd like to maybe use it as a box top for one of my boxes.

Donn,

I still have some of those cameras! I'm going to have a photography museum one of these days. I think I have about 1500 cameras right now...

No problem gents, I am posting the DXF.

WARNING---let me say this though.

on a completeness scale of 1-10 this is at most a 2-3. Definitely a prototype, It works but not well yet. This is the very first physical try of the concept.

So, just be warned the drawing at this point is really just to illustrate the idea. It needs tweaking to work.

I had to gang up the leaves and sand them slightly on my disc sander till they fit right. I still need to figure out allowances for friction and a few other finicky bits. I also need to add a chase in the substrate so the bolts have somewhere to turn, as you can see now the bolts are sticking up because there is nowhere to put a nut on. I also need to come up with some sort of retaining ring for the outer bearings, because right now it only works laying flat on the table.

Note: the tiny circles are not accurately dimensioned, they are just to indicate drilling points (drill holes for whatever bolts you use.
The drill points on the 5 outside tabs are based on some .75 bearings I happened to have. modify as you need.

I have a number of ideas on how to improve this now that I have proof of concept. And I will post as I work it through, as there seems to be some interest. I figure about 3-4 more tests and I might actually have something.

of course if any of you do something cool with this... please post and give details. together we can come up with something really tight.

Chris

www.schaie.com/shopbot/IRIS_12in_prototype_01.zip

PS due credit has to go to Michael Cosgriff aka "Robo Von Bismark" over on the brassgoggles.uk forum for the original idea

That looks like the apature on a Haasablaad camera, or one of those big box type cameras that Ansel Adams used to use. Chris do you use your bot for business or hobby? I imagine the design took more time then the cutting. How many revisions till you got it right? Very cool!

Hey Jack,

At this point about half and half. I had a couple of well paying jobs that I knew the bot would make possible when I bought it. (justified the expense) But of course now I am having wayyy too much fun with it to just do corbels and rosettes. I mostly do one-off jobs making interesting things. Some for people who can pay - sigh.

and as to revisions... probably about 4 more ;-)

Chris

Motorize it so it slowly opens and closes over a minute or two, repeatedly. Paint it black and then sell it to camera stores as novelty decoration.

Excellent work!

Wow! Keep us up to date as you refine it. I can see one on the door of every shopbotters shop eventually. We'll be able to identify cnc shops just by seeing the front door.

I don't think the Postal Service has the same sense of humor I do.

Most of my art ideas revolve around mail boxes.
Chris's work could be something out of Jules Verne 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. The "mouth" or "beak" of the great sea monster that threatened the crew. Or the postal worker? ;-)

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first its sphincters.... now its monsters... did we not get our medication this morning...

on a serious note.. I drew up your dxf in solidworks.. and I am really impressed with what you have there.. but I can see how you would have problems as the tolerances are so close.. it is a great job to get it to the point you are..

m

Sweet!

I don't know if it would improve your design, but you could include half-lap joints on the ends of your linkages. That would cutout one layer of thickness in your final assembly.

I think gears are the way to go


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If you are going to use gears then I think an obvious accessory would be a submarine hatch type handle!

Mike


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You can eliminate the linkage and half the pivots, as well as increase mechanical advantage, by using slots in the outer ring. You can also eliminate the bearings by using the inner ring as a pivot.

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ohh now there's an idea. If I am thinking correctly, the slots would need to be curved as the pivots on the end of the leaves travel in a arc, but that shouldn't be too hard to calculate.

definately going to play around with that.

Does the old saying "too many chiefs and not enough indians" seem fitting here? lol

I like that someone can put out an idea and others jump in to improve it.

Referring to Mitch's idea of the gears let me ask, would you want some type of acuator motor that only turns the gear a bit then when you hit the power source again it goes in the opposite direction? opening, closing?

Chris, the slots do not have to be curved. They do not even have to be angled. The angle just provides a "wedge" to increase mechanical advantage in both directions.

ahh ok, I think I get it. I guess I was still thinking in terms of a fixed pivot with the substrate being stationary, but you are talking about the whole slotted disc rotating?

interesting. I'll have to rethink the structure that holds the inner ring stationary.

...or, mabye even more interesting let the inner ring move and have the iris rotate as it open and closes.

If you were just concerned about manufacturing costs and material usage a slotted outer ring design would probably win. I have to say that I'm drawn to the linkages from an aesthetic/moving sculpture point of view point. Either way, I especially like all of the interacting curves in your design.

If you go with the slotted outer ring idea, you could use arced slots instead of straight slots. I've seen this technique used in other applications, but I can't remember why it was used. Maybe the arcs are intended to maintain a constant mechanical advantage throughout the movement?

Mitch and Steve M, Sorry to bug you guys, but what software have you done your drawings in... solidworks?

mine is in solidworks..

m

I'm with Russ on both counts. I think I will work with the linkages and put a sheet of clear plexi on top. I want people to see it!
I dug through my camera parts drawer and found the lens I used for my window shade design. The advantage to having the parts slide over each other is that the out ring does not have to be so much bigger than the smaller ring. The bottom piece has 12 equally spaced holes:

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and the upper piece has 12 slots:

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The iris parts are stamped out of very thin metal with a dimple on each end - one up to ride in the slot and the other down to fit into the hole. Turn the top ring (when you adjust your f-stop) and the iris closes.

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A pretty simple mechanism actually!

Mike

@ Mr. Schnorr,
You wrote: "A pretty simple mechanism actually!"

Where you find simplicity, you find brilliance.
Why helicopters fly, I'll never know. A true contradiction.
The little clickers on the top of pens are fascinating to me.
This little doodad below is an air valving part of a hydraulic intensifier .
If you put 100 PSI air in, you get 1200 PSI hydraulics out.
The Doodad makes the machine automatically reciprocate with a brilliantly simple theme of pressure and area.

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The marketing appeal of SB's ability to produce quality Rube Goldberg products shouldn't be underestimated.
Here is a classic Rube Goldberg Honda Commercial. It's worth watching just to get invigorated. It reduces stress, loweres blood pressure, removes lines and wrinkles from the face, increases scalp hair growth and improves ones performance!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWk9N92-wvg

An aperture in a door or other prop, no matter how refined or how Rube Goldburg....if it works, How Cool!
I think these would be a heck of a Father's Day gift for women looking to get something for a man who has everything.
The cut file should be part of everybody's portfolio.

(So......Michael, have you figgered out how the protruding dimple is going to work?;-)

I'm with Russ too.
I like the look of the linkages. You could leave them curved or make them cigar shaped and put some holes in them to make them look kind of Steam Punk. Paint them with some Sculpt Nouveau and you've got a pretty cool looking sculpture.
Instead of bearings on the outer ring you could go with Mitch's idea and use gears.
We're ShopBotters. It's almost a requirement to jazz this up.
Simplicity has it's place but in my opinion this isn't it.

There is that word again!
"Steampunk"

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I'm liking that a lot.

I'll throw in my $.02 for overly complex geegaws and whatsits. As long as the mechanism works.

When I get the final version of this thing working I intend to put all sorts of engraving and detailing on it. maybe sculpt nouveau faux finish and patina. Probably a few gears that function but don't necessarily "do" anything.

This is definitely Steampunk in origin, In fact I got the idea from brassgoggles.uk which is one of the best SP resources out there.

SP has gone through a lot of iterations, in fact it hit mainstream a couple of years ago with articles in Vanity Fair and the like. The pop version of it has come and gone. With unfortunately a lot of people just gluing clock parts on toys spray-painting it brass and calling it steampunk. The ethos of the aesthetic though is functional items using low tech. The Victorian ideal of hand built craftsmanship, rather than mass produced. Mechanical rather than digital. Ironic that I am making it on a bot and talking about it on the web, I know.

anyway My favorite quote is "I love SteamPunk, I hate SteamEmo".

OK Chuck so i'm setting here LOL and my grandkids ask why? So I show them the clip, and then again, and then . . . . .


Thanks for the post. It is really fun to watch. Russ

Russ,

Don't encourage him! Ha ha ha!

Mike

It'd also make a cool ceiling aperature for one of those Solar Tube skylights.