This was a 2 person team project for our Physical Computing class. We created a kinetic drawing machine that consisted of a sun gear and 4 planetary gears suspended from an overhead gantry. Each sun gear held a colored pencil that was mounted off center so when they rotated around they would draw different colored spirals.
Our original concept as seen below had a third layer where the entire assembly we wound up building rotated around a central point creating 2 points of rotation for each colored pencil. This would have given us the rotating spirals we were aiming for. We had to abandon this third layer because our motor was not powerful enough to turn all three layers. If I could go back and do something over on this project it would be to calculate out the torque we needed during the design phase.
For this project I created created the gears and carrier in solid works and laser cut them. I also assembled the planetary gears and mounted and wired the motor and switch.
Joshdanzig.com 