Light Experimentation - Part 12: Assembly

The main contraption is completed and it's time to attach all the resin droplets.

Grant did a testing in the morning before I reached the workshop and he shared that the spinners are not working as well; the fishing lines will jump/skip out of the spinners. 

 The fishing line is supposed to be situated at the green but it ends up getting stuck at the pink. Grant used metal rods to create holders that will be hold the fishing lines in place.

 I did for the other 4, it was a struggle to bend them into place with my poor skills

 We screwed the holder into place but unfortunately the holder didn't work as the fishing lines still got stuck somehow.

When the fishing line gets stuck or skips out of the spinner, the whole set-up would quiver and the resin droplets are wobbly

Close-up of fishing line skipping out of the spinner. It was 9pm at the workshop when I tested this and found out it did not work. So I brought the whole set-up home to discuss with my dad and Jason.

My dad suggested to remove the holder and let the fishing line be free, means it doesn't go through the spinner. And the motion actually worked quite well, but the concern is the fishing line might break sooner or later due to the friction. 

The next day, I shared the idea with Grant and he created another holder with a hole in the middle, so essentially the fishing line will be 'trapped' in this hole. He told me to spam vaseline on this holder to minimise the friction.

The resin droplets are not as wobbly after the new holder is installed. 

I took over the set-up from Grant from here, we measured and re-installed the resin droplets based on the length we wanted. 

 After all the droplets are installed, there is a new problem, the gears are super noisy. We made sure to get a not-so-noisy motor but unfortunately the 3D printed gears produced significant sounds.

 We decided to build an enclosed 'house' for the motor and gears in a bid to reduce the sounds.

 Using metal and wood for the outer frame

 I went to db Acoustics to get acoustic panels as they could help with sound-proofing. They were very nice to provide me with 5 A4 acoustic panel samples.

The next step is to install the LED lights and test the motion together.