Windy Day

So, it was a bit windy in the Northeast today and a good opportunity to spend Sunday in the studio (that’s the view out my window). This week marked the start of a new body of work and I’m continuing to explore interesting mechanisms and forms.

For this first piece I came across a reversing rotary motion using an input driving two gears. Here’s the basic structure:

The input (red circle) moves clockwise, pushing a lever attached to a gear (in blue) along. Because the fulcrum of the lever and center of gear is offset from the center of the input, the lever stops moving at 180 degrees. A second gear meshing with the first is attached to an output shaft. A lever extends from this and makes contact, causing direction to reverse and everything moves back to the original position.

Here’s the frame underway and Frida, my faithful studio hound waiting for the storm to abate.