Phoenix Mk2
First the central upper wheel is manually is spun then the outer driver wheel is manually spun to drive the central column thus causing precession of the central upper rotating wheel. The small wheel mounted on the boom arm is to counteract the Gyroscopic Torque produced by the precessing rotating central upper wheel mass. No I have not done the calculation! It might not need to counteracted but I just felt that the stabiliser was a wise precaution.
Best
Bill
BillWardPhotography
Thanks for posting, your light trail device. Very interesting to see how the images were created.
And thanks me as well
Malc
Aha, so that's how it was done - bit of an anti-climax really!
Yes Paul but many, many, hours of work went into making this contraption, in my little garden shed.
Regards
Colin
All five minute jobs take a minimum of eight hours!
During the summer of 2013 when my local photography club were planning their 'Autumn Light Painting Night', they rescued a bicycle wheel from a house fire and asked me to secure a set of LED lights around the wheel rim and to conjure a short axle extension such that the plane of the wheel would be at 45° to the ground. The wheel was to be spun around the point where the axle extension made contact with the ground. The object of this was to take long exposure photographs of the dome light trace effect. To prevent this arrangement from wandering, I secured the axle extension to an old microwave bearing assembly, mounted on to a disk of MDF, with three feet. They could then play with this thing indoors on a flat floor. Initial tests were successful, so in addition, I made a longer axle assembly of approximately of approx 85 cm long, to give them a large toroid of light effect, Phoenix Mk1: the wheel had risen from the ashes!
During late summer of 2014 I was asked could this set up be mounted vertically to plot a globe of light points. I pointed out that without expensive engineering, it would collapse in a heap on the floor but a few days later I thought of a way of achieving what they wanted - a globe of light. Use the existing wheel on the long axle to drive and precess a central column that supports another wheel which spins about a horizontal axis. A stabilising arm was added to counteract the Gyroscopic Torque caused by the rotating wheel mass being precessed about the central column. The central, upper wheel has two sets of LEDsne red set and one blue set, each set is independently switch-able. I added the horizontal rack of green LEDs; to give a Saturn's Ring type light trace. The conical red light trace was from the string of red LED's that another member laid down on of the tie rod tubes later in the evening. The final set up, Phoenix Mk2, is shown by the image uploaded at 02:09 on 07 November 2014.
I never posted images of the the Mk1 contraption, or the images from Mk1, that was ayear ago now and I never got around to processing any of the images.
Regards
Colin
All five minute jobs take a minimum of eight hours!
lennythelion
9 yearsMember