The slinky machine: a slinky escalator | Hacker News Reader

The slinky machine: a slinky escalator

woodgears.ca

77 pointsbpolania30 comments

I love that Matthias is getting some love on Hacker News.

His home page is one of those amazing corners of the internet I really enjoy revisiting.

And as a fun way to pass time I also like his project http://chartgame.com/

I had never heard of this guy before, and I'm completely blown away by his work! Especially the fact that he uses more wood to create tools to be more efficient. I might have to get a bigger basement...

There was a kickstarter for a Never Ending Slinky Machine, if you want a more portable thing that you could put on your desktop.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mISz-_ahvh4

But their website (creatables.co) seems down at the moment.

This looks like it could be a good project for Science Olympiad. The discussions and elucidation of failure are useful and touch on the theme of supporting failure and curiosity that is being discussed in this recent top HN submission [1.].

This project is fun yet cynical - from the author: "But, one thing I’ve learned is useless crap on YouTube gets a lot of views."

[1.] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10044438

I wonder how far it could go with a camera regulating the speed according to how far behind or ahead the slinky was. Probably 140 steps, still.

See his follow-up for discussion of that and other issues: http://woodgears.ca/toys/slinky2.html

It had initially been my intention to have a camera and regulate it, but once I realized how hard it was to keep it going reliably, I decided not to bother with that. If a slinky slinks, and nobody is watching, does it matter? And if someone is watching, it's fun to be doing the cranking to keep it going :)

Well you could launch a website istheslinkyslinking.com with a live cam that shows your contraption at work with the regulation and everything ;)

You could even ask for donations with a "keep the slinky slinking" button, so you could pay for electricity and server.

It's not like nobody will ever watch it again. Coming back the next day and enjoying the surprise of "wow - it's still going!", or even telling others "it's been doing this for the last 3 months", would be nice.

> If a slinky slinks, and nobody is watching, does it matter?

Man, asking all the hard questions. It reminds me of the "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" question. Maybe you could live stream it though.

Also note that there are juggling machines that are stable without any active control [1]. Designing a self stabilizing slinky escalator could be really hard though (if not impossible).

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kj36Z5ZIC6Q

There is another video on his YouTube channel where he talks about design considerations to make the Slinky slink more reliably.

Also, Hi Matthias! I'm a big fan of your YouTube videos, it's really great to see one make it to HN (even if it wasn't linked directly to you).

If you do another video of the slinky steps in action, have someone stick their face in that window at some random moment for comic effect. ;)

A conical projection from the middle of each step would help recenter the slinky after each drop. Sort of like a docking probe. It could also be made asymmetric to help the high end lift off cleanly for the next drop.

I see the link has been changed to point to the original source, instead of as it was originally to a site that just ripped off the content.

Thank you mods.

This is a delightful example of engineering! Now we need some physics genius to provide the analysis of how/which fundamental slinky characteristics determine its natural step rate:

    dstep/dt = f(length, width, mass, spring constant, ...)

Matthais Wendel has some really cool projects, like the copy carver, a 'manual cnc' if you will.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyNu8lpQI1g

My favorite project of his is the pantorouter.

http://woodgears.ca/pantorouter/

I plan on buying his Sketchup plans and building it this fall/winter.

Like him, I also do not sympathize with wasps, and thus take unhealthy amounts of pleasure from watching videos of his wasp-sucking machines.

What would you call those square axles? Gears, cogwheels and sprockets all have teeth. The cube doesn't exactly have teeth... Come on logophiles, help me out!

I imagine the word for it has pejorated so much you can't really use it in polite conversation.

Argh. No RSS feed for his site. Want to follow.

Why not link to the original source[1] instead?

[1] http://woodgears.ca/toys/slinky.html

Yes, that would be the right thing to do. The article itself does link to my work (it's my creation) but it's hardly highlighted, and near the top, where nobody would look. I'm very disappointed in makezine. Just stealing stuff. Could the link itself be changed to actually point at MY article?

Hey Matthias, taking the opportunity you say thank you. I look forward to your videos each week and really enjoy your no non-sense approach to wood working.

Thanks for all the videos, especially the dresser ones.

Thanks from me too.

My wife and I (both uwaterloo! EE and CS respectively) watch your videos together. She has done quite a bit of wood working, and really enjoys your pantorouter.

In a few weeks, after a decade of waiting, we will finally have a shop to work in. Can't wait to do some projects with her.

I love how open and transparent you were about your process and the mistakes you went through to get it working. It's much more exciting than just a slick video of the final result.

Absolutely, we updated the link from http://makezine.com/2015/08/05/infinite-slinky-escalator/?ut....

I really do enjoy this, thank you very much! I may try and do a writeup of the possible physics at some pint with your permission, would that be okay? (Also Uwaterloo represent!)

Hey Matthias, I came to the video through MAKE Magazine that so far has been a legitimate source of information to the maker community, I tried to edit the post but I couldn't next time I'll double-check that.

This guy officially has no life whatsoever.

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