[MOC] Legophone

[Hugolin]

Hello.

Here is my latest creation: a Legophone.
A what ???…
The name is inspired by Gaston Lagaffe's Gaffophone, and like him he makes music (but does not destroy anything).

More clearly, it is a mechanical xylophone (metalophone for purists).
It is quite simple: pins arranged on caterpillars come to turn knob pairs.
These release a ball falling on the xylophone.
Voila for the operating principle.
To be able to play a melody you have to go up the balls as you go, which makes the whole thing look like a gbc.

Here are some photos :

A general view:

The inertia motor on the right of the photo has been removed for the video: too noisy.
On the upper plate, there is a small black separator on the right: it is for condemned the last note:
On this same plateau there are several small arms that serve to distribute the balls to ensure the feeding of each note.
Unfortunately it works well only if there are enough balls, and of course I do not have enough.
So I palliate this problem by playing a music that has only 5 notes (it's still limit: it would be necessary that the plate is full at the beginning)

The lift system of balls:

The lift is in two stages: the wheel makes it possible to recover the balls at the lowest level.
Otherwise I would have had to raise all the moc.
The screw is made through a pneumatic hose.
Note that I did not want to motorize this system, and connect it to the crank Legophone.
But between the length of the transmission and the multiplication for the screw, everything became too unstable.

A more precise view of the Legophone:

The xylophone blades are suspended and rest on the rope (made with my braider).
The small yellow flip-flops are used to stop the knobs to prevent several balls being released.

The video should be more telling than my explanations:

Did you recognize the music?

Edited January 28, 2018 by Hugolin

[Jeroen Ottens]

Wow, great idea and executed beautifully. It does look a lot like a GBC and I am sure it will be used for that, it is just too good an idea not to use it I would say.

Let the saints march on

[ColletArrow]

Good work! I like the ball distribution system on the top. Incorporating this into a true GBC module would be very interesting, although it might drive the exhibitors crazy listening to the same tune over and over! Perhaps you could design an easy and quick method of swapping the treads out, so when one set is playing the other could be re-'programmed', to provide variety.

It reminded me of this machine, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvUU8joBb1Q, except yours is an (almost) all-LEGO version, and more impressive for that. Are you going to play any other music on it?

 

[Hugolin]

Thank you.

To make it a real GBC, it's not so simple.
You have to keep enough balls for all the notes to be played. The flow is above 1 balls per second, so we must add a mechanism that starts the music only when the board is full.

Yes I know this fabulous machine: the idea comes from there.
I can play other music, I chose this one because with 5 notes it is recognizable.
And I do not have enough balls to play continuously more than that.
But without this limitation, I could lengthen my MOC is playing something else.

[JonathanM]

This is fantastic. Great work!