Allistar’s Projects & Portfolio

I have seen his work before but never got the scope of the detail and imagination that embodied it, till last night when he spoke at ITP. Clearly he is someone who is in touch with himself but does not take himself too serious. He is not afraid of making mistakes and he dreams big. But also very comfortable with falling short of those dreams, and moving on to the next project.

I am particularly fond of his earlier works with wire gears and the simple soldering process. It wasn’t perfect but it worked and exhibited life.

Meditation #1:

Meditation #2:

Meditation #3:

I also like his later works with redundant gears and contoured cams, one he used for ‘Faster’.

His early childhood animations surely shows he creativity and different thinking, which provided the mindset foundation for who is is now.

I am inspired to indulge in my imagination and ambition going forth. I hope to make something compelling in the future with Mechanisms and more.

If you haven’t seen his work before please check out his site and read his bio.

Arthur Ganson Website

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One topic of interest for me gears and bearings. For instance the gears on my bicycles which allow me to propel up hill on those very challenging days. I also realized that the gear teeth ratio makes a huge difference with respect to crank. Think of racing bikes

Check out Gear Ratio Calculation site I found:
http://www.machinehead-software.co.uk/gearcalc.html

It is also fascinating how bearings work, particular in wheels. For example take my inline skates. Each skate contains four wheels embedding 2 bearings each. This allows for even load (radial and thrust) and smooth a ride.

Anyway, Since I am into heavy machinery I also look at cranes and their pulley systems. And how it grows and its stability at such heights. Things engineers need to factor besides the weight and the ground opposing force is wind and temperature.

How stuff works rocks:
http://science.howstuffworks.com/tower-crane.htm

There’s also the balancing system which also needs to compensate for load shifts with swing and shifting center of gravity.

For class I think I would like to build a whipper system since it includes levers and gears. A more complicated one which walks cold be in the works pending the success of this project.

Here are some tests I did with respect to gears. I call it the Gear Walker
In this experiment i wanted the Gear walker to count in degrees of inches marked across the paper. It was not so successful…

The gear ratio

Here is also an explanation of the gears ins typical CD player:

Because of the compact size worm gears were used effectively to control other types of gears.