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Thinking of making my own electric pendulum

sergioq

Oct 29, 2013
15
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Oct 29, 2013
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So ball bearing tilt switches aren't cutting it because I am working on a full access sphere range. And I've given up on looking

So my thoughts were to make a cube of acrylic tiles where I paint spots with melted solder (each spot I'll use a tiny hand held drill to make a small hole, where there's a copper wire attached to the solder.. Then hanging a ball of metal solder from the top suspended by twine, where the twine is wrapped by a very thin copper wire.

Am so new at this ... would love any thoughts, experience, etc, that I can gather. Am new to this. Ball bearing switches are cheap. If I can make this on the cheap...great.

If there's one out there for $25, forget about it.

Sorry for the vague post....

Thanks ahead all,

Sergio
 

flippineck

Sep 8, 2013
358
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Sep 8, 2013
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358
Instead of a cube of tiles why not use a toilet roll inner, and glue very thin strips of tinfoil inside to make almost like, an inverse commutator. I think painting with molten solder would be difficult

also a cylinder would mean the pendulum would be equidistant from all sensor patches
 

flippineck

Sep 8, 2013
358
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Sep 8, 2013
Messages
358
Or better still use straight lengths of stiff copper wire as the sensor contacts - you could still tape or glue them to the inside of the toilet roll but they would be easier to attach flying leads to by soldering..

Or what about, use four small sheets of veroboard / stripboard, the type with predrilled straight copper tracks - back to the 'cube' idea there. or even just one sheet of pcb with a circular 'cage' of vertical metal rods or wires soldered to it (like the upturned base of a thermionic valve but with more 'pins' maybe)

As for the pendulum bit.. could you use that cable type they use sometimes for earphones etc.. it's got like, a fibrous nonconductive inner which is wrapped around with a very fine copper foil, wound in a spiral pattern. you find it inside old telephone cords etc too. I think that stuff's specifically designed to flex a lot without breaking

Or maybe you could use that type of wire they use to connect speaker cones to the main speaker terminals - if you google 'tinsel wire' you should find some for sale on ebay etc

If you could get a small copper nut you could put the end of the flexi cable inside the threaded hole & solder inside the hole. It'd be hexagonal instead of spherical but should still work?



Not sure what the price/availability is but this sort of thing might be along the lines of your requirement http://www.bosch-sensortec.com/en/homepage/products_3/9_axis_sensors_5/ecompass_2/bmx055_1/bmx055

Instructions for it at http://ae-bst.resource.bosch.com/media/products/dokumente/bmx055/BST-BMX055-DS000-01.pdf
 
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