Cool Kinetic Sculpture Has Tooling Secrets To Share

January 29, 2025 by Dan Maloney 8 Comments

Occasionally, we get a tip for a project that is so compelling that we just have to write it up despite lacking details on how and why it was built. Alternatively, there are other projects where the finished product is cool, but the tooling or methods used to get there are the real treat. “Homeokinesis,” a kinetic art installation by [Ricardo Weissenberg], ticks off both those boxes in a big way.

First, the project itself. Judging by the brief video clip in the reddit post below, Homeokinesis is a wall-mounted array of electromagnetically actuated cards. The cards are hinged so that solenoids behind them flip the card out a bit, making interesting patterns of shadow and light, along with a subtle and pleasing clicking sound. The mechanism appears to be largely custom-made, with ample use of 3D printed parts to make the frame and the armatures for each unit of the panel.

Now for the fun part. Rather than relying on commercial solenoids, [Ricardo] decided to roll his own, and built a really cool CNC machine to do it. The machine has a spindle that can hold at least eleven coil forms, which appear to be 3D printed. Blank coil forms have a pair of DuPont-style terminal pins pressed into them before mounting on the spindle, a job facilitated by another custom tool that we’d love more details on. Once the spindle is loaded up with forms, magnet wire feeds through a small mandrel mounted on a motorized carriage and wraps around one terminal pin by a combination of carriage and spindle movements. The spindle then neatly wraps the wire on the form before making the connection to the other terminal and moving on to the next form.

The coil winder is brilliant to watch in action — however briefly — in the video below. We’ve reached out to [Ricardo] for more information, which we’ll be sure to pass along. For now, there are a lot of great ideas here, both on the fabrication side and with the art piece itself, and we tip our hats to [Ricardo] for sharing this.

Continue reading “Cool Kinetic Sculpture Has Tooling Secrets To Share” →

Circuit Sculpture Hack Chat

November 4, 2019 by Dan Maloney 7 Comments

Join us on Wednesday, November 6 at noon Pacific for the Circuit Sculpture Hack Chat with Mohit Bhoite!

For all the effort engineers put into electronic design, very few people ever get to appreciate it. All the hard work that goes into laying out a good PCB and carefully selecting just the right components is hidden the moment the board is slipped into an enclosure, only to be interacted with again through a user interface that gets all the credit for the look and feel of the product.

And yet there are some who design circuits purely as works of art. They may do something interesting or useful, but function is generally secondary to form for these circuit sculptors. Often consisting of skeletons of brass wire bent at precise angles to form intricate structures, circuit sculptures are the zen garden of electronic design: they’re where the designer turns to quiet the madness of making deadlines and meeting specs by focusing on the beauty of components themselves and putting them on display for all to enjoy.

By day, our host Mohit designs and builds hardware at Particle. By night, however, the wires and pliers come out, and he makes circuit sculptures that come alive. Check out his portfolio; you won’t be disappointed. This Hack Chat will be your chance to find out everything that goes into making these sculptures. Find out where Mohit gets his inspiration, learn his secrets for such precise, satisfyingly crisp wire-bending, and see what it takes to turn silicon into art.

Our Hack Chats are live community events in the Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging. This week we’ll be sitting down on Wednesday, November 6 at 12:00 PM Pacific time. If time zones have got you down, we have a handy time zone converter.

Click that speech bubble to the right, and you’ll be taken directly to the Hack Chat group on Hackaday.io. You don’t have to wait until Wednesday; join whenever you want and you can see what the community is talking about. Continue reading “Circuit Sculpture Hack Chat” →

Flying Human Head Lands Just In Time For Halloween

October 9, 2018 by Tom Nardi 15 Comments

We love the fall here at Hackaday. The nights are cooler, the leaves are changing, and our tip line starts lighting up with some of the craziest things we’ve ever seen. Something about terrifying children of all ages just really speaks to the hacker mindset. That sounds bad, but we’re sure there’s a positive message in there someplace if you care to look hard enough.