Kinetic Sculptures

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Just saw this video and was blown away. Very inspiring. Had to share:

A self-taught artist with a background in physics, David C. Roy has been creating mesmerizing wooden kinetic sculptures for nearly 40 years. Powered solely through mechanical wind-up mechanisms, pieces can run up to 48 hours on a single wind.

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Mind blowing! Thanks for sharing

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Yep, his stuff is fantastic, many years work to get to that level.

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I found out about his sculptures seven years ago, wanted to buy one, but no international shipping.
Guess that the sculptures might not endure the trip.

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And now I wonder if there are kinetic sculptures parts CNC plans for purchase somewhere. It would be fun to make a (simpler) one on the Shapeoko, but I guess the outcome would likely be “mmh, so that’s why it took this guy fourty years to master his craft…”.

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Or worse, “mmmh, wouldn’t this be even better with some motors and a controller board…” :cowboy_hat_face:

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I have been admiring those creations for quite a while and wish I could afford giant one.

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Just make a wind powered version. If the Florida summer storms were not so insane with 50+ mph wind I would kill to own one.

It’s rated for 90 mph but the amount of flying debris here would murder it.

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Challenge #25, perhaps?

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Or even worse, "Hell, they sell those on eBay for $25, and I’ll have one here tomorrow! :wink: "

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Willing to bet you that within a week you’d have found the cheap eBay $25 one didn’t work properly and had started making better replacement parts on your Shapeoko :cowboy_hat_face:

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And the first ten lines of David C. Roy’s website mention exactly that. Some people apparently received “wood scraps”, lol.

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This gentleman also does kinetic sculptures, and sells plans, with DXF format available.

https://www.derekhugger.com/

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The Angels said “how much creativity should me give him” and God answered yes!!

I would love to have a day with this chap and his design process and philosophy, amazing use of materials. Thanks for sharing

Jon

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I’m fascinated with these kinetic energy wall art pieces. If anyone comes across any cnc plans online, please post. I’ve been searching, but obviously in the wrong places.

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Did you have a look at that link Bill posted ?

There is (obviously) a limited choice but those plans are affordable and I’ve been wanting to try one.

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I don’t consider myself a very advanced CNC user, but I always wanted to build one of these, so I ordered a plan (Cephied) from Derek (I was never interested in the amount of effort to scroll saw one). I couldn’t figure out how to import it to full size, but Will described the process using other software I never heard of. Finally I realized what downloaded was in metric, so I upscaled the files by 25.4 and the parts were the perfect size.

There are many parts needed, but Derek provides a complete list including McMaster-Carr part numbers to make it easy. Some are quite specialized and the price added up to more than I expected, but everything went together really well and the finished project works really well. The price of Baltic birch plywood is pretty high now too. There is a bit of balancing, tweaking etc. but he has good troubleshooting guides.

It worked well enough that I purchased a more complicated plan (Merlot) and am building it now. I have run all the CNC parts and again, they came out great. Fun projects!

Art

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Please share some pictures, would love to see what you made!

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CNCInspirationMax BergRegular

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Please share some pictures, would love to see what you made!

I second this request. I would love to see how they came out.

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I’ll try. My experitise on the computer is even less than on the CNC.