A visit to the Jean Tinguely exposition

A few artists inspire me,you can call them kindred spirits in a way.One of them is the Swiss artist Jean Tinguely,so I was delighted when there was an exposition of his works in Rotterdam.
He is best known for his sculptures made out of junk and scrap parts,which move at certain times and sometimes make sounds.
I was also pleased to see it drew many people of all ages.Of course children are always fascinated by colourful machines that move and make sounds.
It left the exposition inspired and with many new ideas,luckily I have lots of parts I kept and can be used to make something Tinguelyesque.

3 in 1 ......

This Toshiba dates back from the 70's or 80's and gives a whole new meaning to the term 3-in-1 stereosystem.It's as if the designer(s) thought:"how can we make a 3-in-1 music system that looks like one?".Well,simply:make a frame,dump a record-player in it,slap a cassette recorder next to it,then add a frontpanel that shows a start of what could have been something nice.
They didn't take the effort to make the record-player lid cover the whole machine,like the people in Eindhoven,The Netherlands would do.No,why try to make it look like a unit?
Anyway,this device has now been put out of it's misery,the parts undoubtedly to be reincarnated in something I'll build in the future.

And now for something completely different...

Or:a new addition to my museum of miscellaneous devices.In this case a mid 1920's typewriter.The Remington Smith Premier 10A,with it's separate keys for the capitals!
It's still working pretty good after more than 80 years,only needs a new ribbon.
For some reason I'm very interested in vintage typewriters lately.So more of them are likely to follow.And as a matter of fact,with this one came another typewriter:a 1950's Olympia.That one needs some work,as the keys only reach halfway when you hit them.

Pick-up truck

To understand this play on words I have to give you a lesson in the Dutch language.
One of three words we use for record player,besides ...yes record player(transl. in Dutch:platenspeler)is pick-up.The other one is turntable(transl. in Dutch:draaitafel).
So therefore a car fully loaded with turntables is a pick-up truck....
Anyway,last weekend I collected a lot of turntables from a secondhand record dealer.
There were 23 to be precise,with a few CD players and cassette recorders thrown in.Among them were four Duals and two Lenco's,the rest were the regular Sony's and Philips'.
One of the CD players was a 1983 Marantz,which I will post a picture of later.

New magbot

I made this magbot out of Polycarbonate sheets from a simple design:One big square in which a smaller square spins.Or at least it should because I haven't tested it yet.
Originally I had it worked out so that it would spin along a horizontal axis but then found out that left me with too little room for the coil and magnets.
So a vertical one it now is.If this turns out to work good,the next one will be a few sizes up.
Update 28th:Well......after testing it in the sun,I found out this design doesn't work with magbots.Apparently when the coil wants to push the magnet away it does so upwards and not sideways as I was hoping.

Phone car

I had this phone laying around for awhile and noticed that because of it shape it would make a nice race car.So,out with the electronics it was(I will use the battery+circuit and charger for a later project).Then with the trusty Dremel I removed all the unnecessary plastic parts,drilled some holes for the shafts for the wheels and cut an opening for the gear to go near the front axle.
One of the motors I took from an old camera powers the front wheels.
The solar-panel doubles as a spoiler,I choose some different coloured cables for show.I'm using the Miller solar-engine with a 5,5 V supercap,but haven't tested this yet to see how it performs.

Fantasy vehicle

A project I've been working on the past few days is this fantasy vehicle which started out as a motorized roller base used in photography.It was basically already a car upside down,so all I needed to do was remove some inner parts and replace the motor.It now moves but only in one direction.After that I added some extra's:solar-panels to charge the batteries,a few LED lights which have their own switch.To give it some BEAM qualification the "turret" is a solar-spinner,the "radar" moves when sunlight hits the solar-panel on the back.Unfortunately it hasn't been sunny lately so I don't know if it works.
Edit(January 8th):well,it does and moves like a radar should;slowly,so that worked out good.