Methodical Madness Builds a Guillotine

The idea behind our group's heliotropic surface is that it is exactly as described - a surface. There is no re-orientation mechanism, nothing of the sort, only a reaction to the presence or lack of presence of the sun (or light in general).

The inspiration behind our design is a Hoberman Sphere, a complex-looking mechanical sphere that utilizes very simple parts working together. We took the sphere, re-represented the mechanism in 2-D, and came up with this. So far, it has only been constructed in chipboard, but it looks pretty neat. The issue we have been having is a materials one - chipboard is not strong enough for our purposes, so we are replicating the circle in acrylic and hoping that it can hold itself in one piece without breaking. The idea is to take two of these circles, join them together (easier said than done), and have a mechanism that opens and closes them in an alternating fashion based on whether or not there is [sun]light shining on the surface. The idea is to create a binary system that can have two different uses in less space than would be required by always-open circles.

The difficulty behind this project hasn't been designing the mechanism - that was done on day one - but instead has been finding a purpose for the mechanism. There are so many options that we have thought of, but we cannot decide which to produce. The best part about the mechanism is that it is modular and scalable - we could have an essentially infinite chain, and it could be as large or small as we can produce and assemble it. The only limits are the capabilities of the chosen material. We are using 3/16" acrylic (at last check - we may have changed it, I am not in charge of buying the acrylic), and producing a circle that is about 18" in diameter when expanded, and maybe 6" in diameter when contracted. We are using spandex with 4-way flexibility as a covering for the acrylic. It will look sweet, I promise.

My brilliant idea, which was immediately dismissed by the group, was to make a guillotine that shoots fireworks out of the other circle. It's brilliant! Extremely efficient, lots of spectacle, chopping of heads... the French would be proud. I was going to make a paint drawing, but don't quite have the necessary paint skills (or Paint... I'm on a Mac). Needless to say it includes blades and fireworks. What more do you need, in all honesty? Real ideas include a skylight / spray system for a greenhouse, a skylight / ceiling light alternation, solar collection / solar powered usage, and several others that we are less likely to produce.

Our group has been working well together. We have kind of developed a production chain for which people are in class / not in class, so the acrylic is being cut by Marc, assembled by Josiah, geared by Taylor, and then we are re-assembling the group to work on it together after that point. I feel like, the way our project is designed, the Engineers have less to do this week than in previous weeks - our design really is lacking complexity. I work mostly with the coding, which is generally a few hours per project at most. I am going to try to put together some sort of graphic interface in Processing that shows different things based on what the physical position of the system is, making everything more shiny.