Beautiful Bokeh

"Greetings from the Orrery #2!"

It turns out the "swiss guy" I mentioned in the last post who helped Eugene with some calculations is the person who commissioned the second orrery (which has just been completed and is en route to Switzerland). His name is Sergio Pinease and after reading my post he wrote me and I thought his note was so incredibly charming that I thought I'd share it (with his permission):

I have seen on your web site that you mentioned the new version of orreries Eugene made.

By the way: I am the Swiss guy who tried to support Eugene with some calculations on my own. Just that you know: I am not a mathematician and I also did for the first time such calculations but it was fun to find a way to understand the mechanism Eugene wanted to implement and calculate the best possible combinations of teeth for the gears.

I am really amazed what Eugene was able to do without having orrery experience. Don’t be jealous about the year ring. Instead you really should be proud that you had the idea to commission one and that you entrusted Eugene with this job. Also the many ideas about the quantity of planets and that one turn of the handle should be 2 weeks are yours!

I wanted to say thank you to have started with this and that you also made some pictures of your orrery available on the web.

I am really looking forward to the arrival of the orrery and to play with it and perhaps meet Eugene once. Perhaps in some years there are so manyEugene orreries that there will be an orrery meeting of all people who bought one from him.

Best regards,

Sergio Pinese

 

We've been corresponding since and it turns out he's a really interesting guy who (understandably) is fascinated by automata and "cool things that do cool things when you turn a crank." I hope he enjoys his new orrery but I'm still jealous of the "date ring" :)

Eugene's Orrery Factory

After building our orrery, Eugene Sargent became something of an internet celebrity for a little bit (being posted on boing-boing may have helped a little). One thing I think surprised both of us was the number of people out there who would love to own a hand-built orrery (it's quite a bit more than none!). It turns out some of them were so intrigued that they also commissioned Eugene to make more. He's been at it for a while now and the new models are absolutely beautiful, I must say. I'm especially jealous of the 'date ring.' Ours only has a single mark which indicates the orrery's birthday so to go back or forward in time from that point requires some math. Speaking of math, evidently one of Eugene's new customers is from Switzerland and has helped him improve the accuracy of his calculations. Now he can honestly say his orrerys come with "swiss precision." But while I'm jealous of some of the improvements he's made, we can take some pride in the fact that ours is engraved #1. :)

Here are some other things Eugene's been up to if you're interested: Eugene's Recent Art

The Orrery Has Landed!

It’s here!

It was several months in the making, but the waiting was worth it. The Orrery has arrived and it is absolutely stunning.

Eugene did an amazing job, and I think he had fun making it because he’s hinting he may make another one, perhaps to sell, so if this sort of thing interests you he can be contacted here.

The bronze gears in the main gear stack looks awesome when it’s in motion. It’s really fun to crank! The motion is incredibly smooth, but a chart for oiling points was included (being a cyclist, oil is always handy so no problem. Besides, it’s not like this thing is going to be cranked non-stop).

I really love the fins on the feet. I hadn’t seen those until it came out of the box. I also like how the muscular aluminum frame contrasts with the hyper-precision of the CNC-machined bronze gears. There is a small shaft to the right of the main shaft which turns at one revolution per moon orbit around the earth. The moon orbits smoothly on extremely tiny 2.5mm diameter ball bearings.

We definitely made the right decision on the cranking ratio...one fortnight instead of one moon orbit. It’s extremely easy to turn and still gives plenty of planetary motion satisfaction.

Sarah Moore, a student in Arkansas, found out about what Eugene’s been doing the past few months and documented it and made a nice little “making of the orrery” video:

So now we have an orrery. Sweet.

Visiting the Orrery

Here it is, our baby, almost-toothless orrery.

That’s Eugene’s hand pointing to the toothless gear which will ultimately drive Mars. The shape of the main structure is very clear now. That’s the crank on the left.

While we were in Arkansas visiting my little brother and his wife & new baby, we also stopped in to check out the orrery progress in person. The thing is really coming along!

There are a few planetary gears left to be made, and a lot of teeth cutting still to do (earth’s gear has 294 teeth for example). Also the planets are just white blobs right now, but it’s definitely taking shape and it’s easy now to visualize what it will be like when it’s done.

It was great seeing Eugene again after all these years, and after we ogled at and drooled on the little orrery-to-be, we walked around his farm with his mother Sid and petted the goats. Their farm is beautiful.

Eugene thinks he’s found his rhythm now and expects to wrap sometime in December. Getting the orrery for christmas would be awesome so I hope he can do it.

He also says he plans for the feet to have fins. Fins.

The first-ever photograph of someone holding both an orrery and a rooster at the same time?

Eugene at the helm of the CNC machine.

Breaking Ground on an Orrery

Remember that room in the Dark Crystal with the huge machine that made the planets all fly around? Did your grade school teacher use an electric model of the solar system to show you how Copernicus kicked Ptolemy’s ass in the who-revolves-around-whom fight?

Those things are orreries and we want one.

Brenda and I have commissioned our first work of art, and it’s an orrery. We’ve hired a very old friend of mine Eugene Sargent to design and build it. He’s an artist now working out of Northwest Arkansas. He’s never built an orrery but it happens he’s just taken delivery of a brand new CNC machine and he is itching for a project to try it out and this is perfect.

The reference images we gave him included some actual orrery replicas but also good portions of sci-fi, steam/clock punk stuff as well obviously.

Working only from a verbal brief and a collection of reference images (above), he’s passed the designing phase and bits and pieces of it are starting to come together. We gave him a ton of freedom to make it his own, as we wanted it to be original and not simply a quasi-replica of an ancient one. However we did impose one restriction in that we wanted it to be hand-cranked, not motorized in any way. He did some calculations and we agreed that the goal would be to have one crank be equivalent to one fortnight. That would keep the speed of the “planets’ under control, but would still be fast enough to make it fun to crank.

Well he’s been at it for a while and we just received an update along with some photos he took of the gear designs. It’s looking awesome. We definitely went to the right guy for this...there is a shitton of math involved in making this work, and Eugene’s brain is as adept technically as it is creatively. Get this: He’s not even using CAD software (!) but instead has written his own C++ programs to generate the “G-Code.” Presumably “G” is the kind of “code” CAD machines need in order to make badass orreries.

Incredibly, he’s even forging the bronze himself. The disks you see on the left were liquid metal until he cast them into shape. Unbelievable the amount of trouble he’s going to to make this thing.

The rough plan, evidently, is for each planet to have its revolution speed set by a unique, large cog, and all the primary planetary cogs will be arranged in a kind of stack. With their unique cut-outs, that should make for interesting patterns when the planets are in motion.

Speaking of planets, how far out should we go? We’re not sure yet. Poor controversial Pluto is almost certainly off the list. Most of the original orreries didn’t go out that far obviously since those outer planets were discovered later, and they revolve so slowly it would be pretty boring to include them anyway. It’s looking like Jupiter or Saturn might be as far as we go. Saturn is a pretty slow revolver itself but you know....it has rings. So maybe out to Saturn. We’ll see. Part of it depends on what Eugene thinks makes sense based on the design he’s selected.

Another topic we’ve settled is whether there should be a moon orbiting the earth, as it orbits the sun. We have decided there should most definitely be a moon. It just doesn’t seem like an orrery without at least one orbit-within-orbit goin’ on.