Moving water from one place to place to another is going to be an important feature of flow. Here is a video our first attempt to make a semi wooden pump. It worked !
A semi wooden water pump
simon
A steam bent horn
A month or so ago David Gilbert asked us if we would like to do something for Derbyshire food and drink festival.
http://www.davidgilbert.org.uk/ http://www.derbyshirefoodfestival.co.uk/
As most of our instruments were on show in Sheffield we discussed doing something new. Recently we have been trying to make some different shaped horn speakers and really wanted to work with steam bending so we proposed to work with Mike Turnock, who is apparently the last riddle maker in the UK and an expert in bending wood.
http://www.riddles-sieves.co.uk/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/audioslideshow/2009/nov/27/making-a-ridd...
Mike lives near by so we drove down to his workshop in Whaley Bridge and checked out his steam bending equipment, essentially a hacked boiler. We got a load of tips such as; leave the wood in there for 4 hours, taper the ends to make it easier to bend. After a great tour through the whole riddle making process we bought a couple of riddles and some 1/4 inch thickness beech.
Back in the studio we modeled the shape we wanted in Blender and then unwrapped it and cut out the 12 segments on a cnc machine. After some fiddling around I discovered that we could give the model a thickness and work out the angle the wood needed to be cut.
This is a bit of a jump forward to post cut, steamed and bent wood. ( I must add the images that Steve took of our steam box shoved out of the studio window. Unfortunately we didn't document the swearing that went into getting the bits of wood into gigs. )
I was left with the the job of assembling the horn and I ended up using a threaded bar with appropriate sized dodecahedron shapes fixed on it.
Amazingly it came together.... but only after a lot of swearing, gorilla glue and sanding. I think sanding should be really only be used as a finishing touch and will endeavor to make sure the next one needs less. We will definitely be using thinner wood for the end curve !
Finally we made it to the food festival with our horns. The new one was still looking a bit rough so it was lucky we had a two others.
It was great to hear so many peoples memories of horn speakers, they have an interesting history, apparently they were really popular during among hifi enthusiasts in 50's and some people went to the lengths of extending them into their gardens to get the bass frequencies ( I have yet to see a photo of this). At the festival we happened to be next to the guy who was doing the announcements. He had this fantastic set of Grampian speakers that were quite a bit louder than ours and apparently made by lathing a solid piece of aluminum.
All these horn shapes do dramatically change the sound, and allow you to create a big sound from a small speaker. We are still trying to decide what style works best and will try and post some of our audio experiment with them soon.
If you know a lot about horn speaker and have building tips etc please get in touch we would love to hear from you.
simon
A Waterwheel hub with pully
This will form the hub for a 5ft diamiter overshot water wheel to provide auxillary power inside the mill when the main wheel is not turning, this is the most basic design using a square center prototype is built arround an 10mm steel axle and pillow bearing, the spokes and rim are to be attached to this.
tonazoid
Engeneering flow
A three day development meeting with the whole team led to some interesting new developmnets in design. Our consultant engeneer is an expert in maritime engenering; one of his inventions, a floating trashmill is installed in the docks of Baltimore is also powered by a water wheel.
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tonazoid
Environment agencey tests
We met up with the environment agencey to do some test on flow rate in the river, here a floating sensor measures flow volume across a section of the river near where FLOW will be installed.
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tonazoid
Flow Wheel in SketchUp
A visualisation of the low wheel made in Sketch-Up. The Millhouse element of the model is only to give a sense of the whole thing, though the entries and viewing areas are quite indicative of our thoughts.
stevesymons
History of ship-mills
When we were developing the Flow project our first problem was how to make a floating water wheel that worked with the changing levels of the river Tyne. We decided we had to make a floating structure that moved with the tide. We soon found that the floating mill concept was not new. Floating ‘Ship-mills’ were used in proliferation in medieval times.
http://www.histinst.rwth-aachen.de/ext/tma/tema/muehle/sm.htm
A ship-mill uses a water wheel attached between two interconnected floating platforms, one of which often supported the mill-house. The whole floating structure is tethered to the river bank, while the wheel is moved by the passing current. The advantages of this floating arrangement are that it can be moved into the fast flowing areas of rivers and it can work with the changing levels of tidal rivers. It could also be moved to allow larger boats to pass. It is one of the earliest examples of mobile manufacturing technologies.
http://www.waterhistory.org/histories/waterwheels/
Evidence suggests that the Ship-mill concept was first developed by the Romans. In medieval times the Ship-mill had become a common sight throughout Europe. Notably spreading as far as Bagdad, where large ship-mills of iron and wood, were built on the Tigris. Today a hand full of ship-mills exist, Some painstakingly restored. Four of these ‘schiffmuehle’ are in Germany, with other good examples in Austria and Slovakia.
Recently the Ship-mill concept has been put to good use in Baltiore where a working Ship-mill that uses a special conveyor belt to scoop floating debris from the river.
tonazoid
Hydrophonic Periscope
An Owl Project concept model for a hydrophonic periscope for the project flow.
The salmon sees a rock, we see the salmon
simon
Speaker Cones
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A first try at making a cone for a speaker for something like the Bubble Synth. Next up a microphone housing - same style but goes down to about 2 cm at the narrow end. |
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stevesymons
The new salinity sampler sequencer
The idea behind this was to try and construct a machine that would dip electrodes in water samples of varying salinity. The notes vary depending on how much electricity passes through the electrodes. So the notes vary according to the saltiness of the water and we can listen to the variations.
Kind of works but needs lots of refining.
simon
