Show HN: I spent a year making an electro-mechanical prototype of a liquid clock
1–10 of 109 posts
Re: Show HN: I spent a year making an electro-mechanical prototype of a liquid clock
#2author here, i will be glad to answer any questions you guys have
Re: Show HN: I spent a year making an electro-mechanical prototype of a liquid clock
#3Simply amazing.
Re: Show HN: I spent a year making an electro-mechanical prototype of a liquid clock
#4This definitely the clock that would sit on Rorschach's desk.
Re: Show HN: I spent a year making an electro-mechanical prototype of a liquid clock
#5author here, i will be glad to answer any questions you guys have
How long did the process of making the video take? Since this is mostly an art project, was filming done gradually over the year along with R&D, or only after the clock was finished?
Was this funded by a grant, or is it a personal investment in hopes of selling completed versions of the clock?
Re: Show HN: I spent a year making an electro-mechanical prototype of a liquid clock
#6Beautiful object!
What was an unexpected problem you had? And how do you solve it?
There's a bunch of mechanical stuff going on. How much training did you have in that before you started?
What one thing will you remember for your next project?
Re: Show HN: I spent a year making an electro-mechanical prototype of a liquid clock
#7If you liked this, you'll probably also like Ferrolic: http://www.ferrolic.com/
Super mesmerizing to watch the ferro fluid making its way through the display.
Edit: I remember reading that the ferro fluid used in Ferrolic would begin to lose its magnetic properties a few months in -
Ferrofluids are fundamentally unstable. They're colloidal suspensions that rely on surfactants to keep the particles apart, and as the surfactants degrade, the particles start clumping together and falling out of suspension. - jpatokal [1]
Is the Rhei somehow designed to last longer? If so I would be really interested in purchasing one if you ever decide to get them into production.
Re: Show HN: I spent a year making an electro-mechanical prototype of a liquid clock
#8author here, i will be glad to answer any questions you guys have
How long did the process of making the video take? Since this is mostly an art project, was filming done gradually over the year along with R&D, or only after the clock was finished? Was this funded by a grant, or is it a personal investment in hopes of selling completed versions of the clock?
Hi Vortico,
Shooting took around 7 days because we were on a very tight schedule, trying to make it for the public announcement of the red dot results http://www.red-dot.sg/en/online-exhibition/rhei/
The good news is that i do have all the process over the year documented, if you want i can upload some photos but i am writing a making of presentation that i will place on behance and medium. I think it will be a really useful story for an industrial design student or someone who has good ideas but still not sure if he should start prototyping or not.
This was funded solely by me, which made it so much harder. I had to do freelance by day and work on this by night. Its difficult especially because prototyping means you have to make the same thing many times over and over again and its really time and money consuming.
Re: Show HN: I spent a year making an electro-mechanical prototype of a liquid clock
#9Not to dismiss the website, but I could not reach it the first couple times so here is a direct link to the video: https://vimeo.com/140469553
Re: Show HN: I spent a year making an electro-mechanical prototype of a liquid clock
#10Beautiful object! What was an unexpected problem you had? And how do you solve it? There's a bunch of mechanical stuff going on. How much training did you have in that before you started? What one thing will you remember for your next project?
Hi DanBc,
Thanks a lot!
Wow... were to start.. Perhaps the biggest problem i had was preventing the ferrofluid to stain glass and aluminum frame i used for the screen. I tried to get some help on the faculty of chemistry here in Belgrade, but no real success. Finally after months and months of experimenting with different liquids, you start to feel and "undertand" the way ferrofluid behaves.. very strange :) Its still not perfect but im working on perfecting it.
The first time i sketched the project seemed very easy, i will make a matrix of electromagnets and simply attract the ferrofluid. It actually gave some results but i realized that having a system that requires a huge amount of electricity to be spent all the time to simply show a number thats fixed - is not elegant. Here is one of the videos i recorded: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kvp7bWe-M94
So finally i decided to go with neodymium magnets and mechanics. Building this from scratch was a crazy adventure of lots of lathe machining and cnc machining and so on.
I had no training basically i had to learn all along the way. I used illustrator for the most of the construction, since i am UI/UX designer, and finally gave it up and learned solidworks so i can make a whole 3d model of the clock and assemble all parts in 3D.
For the next project i think i will have to curb the need to make it "perfect", i lost A LOT of time beacuse of this. For example each time i wanted to make a screen for this i had to buy a glass, cut it on waterjet, then drill a hole, then glue to the frame that needed to be cut on waterjet also and polished before adding adhesive and so on. And once it does not work, i have to do it all again...