Our friends over at Ponoko who let you make real things that get cut out of wood and plastic from your designs that you put on their website, are running a design competition, details here. One of my real good buddies Pete Black makes and designs all sorts of stuff. I’ve worked on with Pete on software and web projects for a few years a while back, he’s also a 3D designer and animator, makes music, and can rip apart and put back together a car engine. Last week he modelled a rotary engine and threw at Ponoko.com and got back a little kit-set Rotary Engine model.
Feeling is understanding
I sort of knew how a rotary engine worked, but when I could actually hold a mini model of one and assemble it myself, turn the axle and watch the motion, the whole concept just locked in. We got chatting about making little things like this to help kids understand gears and how things work, If I had things like this when I was growing up my mind would have expanded into a whole new world of understanding and possibilities.
Below, a pic I like, Pete’s interpretation of a deep sea Angla fish, yes these guys live so deep they have their own light on board
2 people have commented on this post
That is very cool.
[...] buddy Tim Norton wrote about the model Pete created on the PlanHQ Blog, and how it helped him see exactly how a rotary engine works. Sounds like this would make a great [...]
Join the conversation