The Technical Stuff

For this, my final, blog, I will be discussing materials I would use to make the sculpture I showed you in my last blog should I construct it, as well as how the entire mechanism of the sculpture will work for the spiral to turn and the shell to open and close on its own simultaneously.

The mechanism will be housed in the base of the sculpture which will be constructed out of wood. It will mainly be a plain wooden box, except for a 20cm diameter turntable in the centre. The turntable will have three small wheels attached to the bottom to help it turn. Attached to the underside of the turntable will be a simple model train set’s motor. This motor will turn the overhead turntable slowly as well as the coil on top of that.

The coil will be made out of copper as it is an easily pliable material and is still very sturdy, even after being bent in such a way. The plates at the top and bottom will also be made out of copper and they will be soldered onto the coil.

The seashell will be made out of clay and the top and bottom will be held together by a using a small hinge. To have the mermaid bend and fit inside the shell when it’s closed, I will draw it on paper in two pieces. The tail and the body will be drawn onto two separate pieces of paper and then attached onto two small pieces of plywood cut out in the same shape as the mermaid. They will be held together again using a small hinge and will be placed at an angle so that both the top and bottom can be seen. At the back of the vertical piece of wood will be another piece of wood attached to it which will hold it to the inside of the shell, this will help to push the mermaid down as the shell closes and pull it as the shell opens.

 

 

 

 

 

Now on to, perhaps, the most important part of the sculpture and the main part of the mechanism. How the shell will open and close. The rod will be glued to the inside of the shell and go through the bottom of the shell, the top plate, the bottom plate and the turntable through a small drilled hole in each of them. Inside the base the rod will go down straight to the bottom, where a wheel will be attached to help the rod move smoothly in a circle inside the base. Along the moving perimeter of the rod will be a small slope made out of wood. The rod will move along the bottom climbing up the slope and pushing the shell upwards as it moves.

So that is my final concept and how it works, I hope you like it. J