A LEGO Orrery
We aren’t sure how accurate you can get with LEGO, but a building block orrery looks cool, if nothing else. [Marian42] saw one done a few years ago and decided …read more Continue reading A LEGO Orrery
Category Archives: orrery
Tiny Orrery Is a Watchmaker’s Tour de Force
Six tiny gears, a few fancy pins, and some clever casting are what it takes to build this tiny orrery. And patience — a lot of patience, too. As model …read more Continue reading Tiny Orrery Is a Watchmaker’s Tour de Force
Ceiling-Mounted Orrery is an Excercise in Simplicity
Ever since humans figured out that planets move along predetermined paths in the heavens, they have tried to make models that can accurately predict their motion. Watchmakers and astronomers worked …read more Continue reading Ceiling-Mounted Orrery is an Excercise in Simplicity
Tiny Orrery Keeps the Planets in Their Places
[Frans] claims to have made the world’s smallest orrery. We won’t take a position on that — such things are best left up to the good folks at Guinness. But …read more Continue reading Tiny Orrery Keeps the Planets in Their Places
LEGOpunk Orrery Knows Just the Right Technics
Is the unmistakable sound of the shuffling of LEGO pieces being dug through burned into your psyche? Did the catalog of ever more complex Technic pieces send your imagination soaring …read more Continue reading LEGOpunk Orrery Knows Just the Right Technics
An Astronomical Mechanical Clock, in More Ways Than One
If the workings of a mechanical timepiece give you a thrill, prepare to be blown away by this over-the-top astronomical clock. The horological masterpiece, which was designed by [Mark Frank] …read more Continue reading An Astronomical Mechanical Clock, in More Ways Than One
CNC Tellurion Lets You See the Earth and Moon Dance
Kids – they’re such a treasure. One minute you’re having a nice chat, the next minutes they’re testing your knowledge of the natural world with a question like, “Why can we see the Moon during the day?” And before you know it, you’re building a CNC Earth-Moon orbital model.
We’ve got to applaud [sniderj]’s commitment to answering his grandson’s innocent question. What could perhaps have been demonstrated adequately with a couple of balls and a flashlight instead became an intricate tellurion that can be easily driven to show the relative position of the Earth and Moon at any date; kudos …read more
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Behold the Giant Eye’s Orrery-Like Iris and Pupil Mechanism
This is an older project, but the electromechanical solution used to create this giant, staring eyeball is worth a peek. [Richard] and [Anton] needed a big, unblinking eyeball that could look in any direction and their solution even provides an adjustable pupil and iris size. Making the pupil dilate or contract on demand is a really nice feature, as well.
The huge fabric sphere is lit from the inside with a light bulb at the center, and the iris and pupil mechanism orbit the bulb like parts of an orrery. By keeping the bulb in the center and orbiting the …read more
Continue reading Behold the Giant Eye’s Orrery-Like Iris and Pupil Mechanism
Laser Cutting Orreries
An orrery is a clockwork model of the solar system, demonstrating the machinations of the planets traveling around the sun in a sublime pattern of epicycles. A tellurion is a subset of the orrery, showing the rotation of the Earth around the sun, and the orbit of the moon around the Earth. [HuidongT] created his own tellurion out of laser-cut parts and just a few bits of copper tubes and bearings.
This project was originally inspired by the holzmechanik, a tellurion constructed from plywood gears and brass tube. [HuidongT] saw a few shortcomings in this project: the Earth didn’t spin …read more
