Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: I spent a year making an electro-mechanical prototype of a liquid clock

hellorhei.com

11–20 of 109 posts

Re: Show HN: I spent a year making an electro-mechanical prototype of a liquid clock

#13

author here, i will be glad to answer any questions you guys have

Does your clock require frequent refilling?

Hi Henk,

At the moment its working but its not perfect. The biggest challenge i had was to make this really look like fluid and kill the ferrofluid spikes. I simply wanted to animate the fluid not make it obvious that its a ferrofluid. So i had to thin the ferrofluid with all kinds of different things, some work better some work worse, still testing.

Re: Show HN: I spent a year making an electro-mechanical prototype of a liquid clock

#16
post #6

Beautiful 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 stil…

> I had no training basically i had to learn all along the way.

This is amazing. Very inspirational.

Re: Show HN: I spent a year making an electro-mechanical prototype of a liquid clock

#17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does your clock require frequent refilling?

Hi Henk, At the moment its working but its not perfect. The biggest challenge i had was to make this really look like fluid and kill the ferrofluid spikes. I simply wanted to animate the fluid not make it obvious that its a ferrofluid. So i had to thin the ferrofluid with all kinds of different things, some work better some work worse, still testing.

That's true! It's not viscous at all, which makes it all the more mesmerizing.
Post reply on HN