Light Experimentation - Part 15: Spinning of 1 Resin Droplet

As part of my new directions, I've decided to take the risk and explore how to make 1 resin droplet spin. At first, we scrapped the spinning idea as we needed to look for spinning discs and the contraption will take a while to build for a large kinetic set-up. Whereas for now, I am only looking at 1 spinning resin droplet so the contraption might be possible to do. I am progressing at risk for this as,
1. The spin may not happen - the wires getting tangled is a problem we need to solve
2. Motor could still be noisy - even if its only 1 resin droplet
3. Just 1 resin droplet spinning may have limited water ripple effect or the effect may not be as significant

But I still chose to try because I didn't want our efforts (resin process) to go to waste and I consider the water ripple light effects important for the experience testing.

We considered either hanging or putting it on the table. We were testing out different motors, in hope that we don't have to program the speed.

Going to simlim tower to look for possible components: slip rings and motors.

This motor is too fast

Way toooo fast.

We looked for existing motors or spinning toys to modify but the speed for each of them is not suitable.

 In the end, we decided to use back the stepper motor and program the speed.

Preparing the construction of the spinning contraption.

 Building the holder

My dad came up with a brilliant idea to connect the electricity (positive, negative) of the LED lights so the wires would not get caught in the spinning.  We also did not have to use slip rings for this.

 Testing the light

The light lights up when the metal hoops on the resin droplet 'touch' the metal circular holders on the stand while the droplet is mounted on the stepper motor.

The mechanism works! And the water ripple effect is significant when we put a minimum of 3 LED strips in the resin droplet. However right now the spinning is too fast

 We modified it to be slower

And this is how it looks like, click on the video below to watch more
But we are now facing a problem we have already expected at the start: The motor produces a squeaky sound. Click to hear the sound below.

I will be troubleshooting the sound problem with Andreas tomorrow.