Heart Spin
#STEAMjunk project to make
Follow the fully illustrated instructions to make this spinning heart project for your True Love. Turn the crank handle to make your Heart Spin!
The project is made from paper-clip wire, a cork, some glass beads and a few other bits and pieces. The double cam on the cam shaft works to spin the heart back and forth. The project comes as a downloadable pdf file with templates for the wire parts printable card parts and fully illustrated step by step instructions.
If you are a paid member of the newsletter you can download the plans for the Heart Spin below, thanks for your support! Members of robives.com cam also download the pdf there.
The mechanism is compact version of the double cam twister that I’ve used in previous projects. The cam shaft is turned continuously and as it turns first one cam then the other lifts the horizontal disk at the end of the heart’s push rod twisting the disk back and forth as they go.
The various parts are aligned squarely and held into place using tight rolls of card strip glued into place. The card rolls are easy to make and work really well, definitely a solution I’ll be using on some future projects.
Using a single cam would make the twister plate rotate continuously in one direction. This would be a compact way of making a character turn around and around. Moving the cam further away from the centre of the twist plate will make the vertical wire turn slower, effectively gearing down the motion.
Likewise, changing the size of the cam would change the speed of rotation of the vertical wire. A larger cam would effectively gear up the motion making the twister plate turn faster.
Mixing cam size and cam position lets you choose from a wide variety of different rotation speeds for the finished project.
Using a card disk against another card disk seems to be a quite effective way of transmitting motion but it does in the end rely of the friction between the two paper parts. If you were aiming at a more positive drive then paper gears might be worth a try, look out for them in future projects!
I was really pleased with how the rolled paper tube and cam parts worked out in a practical project.
The rolled paper tube kept everything square and meant that the parts were easy to align. The next step after the double cam in the Heart Spin project would be to try double cams driving two separate com followers. Another future project for you to look out for or for you to try at home!
Paid members for this newsletter can download the Heart Spin pdf below…
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