Orrery Mark II

[JennyWren]

truly awesome work, Love it

[tophatdan]

one must ask... if a person wanted an orrery with 16 planets.... could it be done?

including in addition to the 8 major planets, the 8 minor planets:

ceres,
pluto/charon,
haumea,
makemake,
eris,
sedna,
varuna,

if this could be done, what might one price such an abomination at?

[Mechanism Man]

Good evening Mr. Tophatdan,
Hmm, all the minor planets you say......? Yes, that is extremely possible! The one I'm building at the moment will have Ceres and Pluto included, but the other planets could be easily added - there would be one heck of a lot of gears whizzing about, but it most certainly could be done.
Price wise (big gulp...), if you just wanted the planets alone, and nothing fancy going on with the Earth and Moon, the price would be £1600. If you wanted to add an inclined Earth to show the seasons, and an orbiting Moon, the price would be £1800. This would obviously involve me doing all the maths to sort out the extra gear ratios, as well as designing the extra frame layers to accommodate the extra gearing, so it would take three or four months to build, but boy, would it be impressive. The current version (including Pluto and Ceres) has 55 gears and 8 frame layers, so God only knows how many this beast would have!     
You've got me thinking now, it would certainly be pretty unique, that's for sure!
Thanks for asking, take care, Dave.

[tophatdan]

well 16 planets, double that to 16 frame layers and prolly 110 gears....

hm, let me think on this, i mean i def. want it, but i dont want to tell you to begin work untill i have a chance to check finances out...

you might just think to do a little short hand math on this because i am quite interested... and just think, you would be the only one making one!

[Mechanism Man]

Hello again Mr. Dan,
Well I've been doing a bit research into an your orrery idea which would include the 8 minor planets, and have discovered a few interesting niblets of information and one big problem....
If this was to be to built to proper orbit speeds, then 7 of the proposed new additions are not a huge problem. Of the slowest ones, Makemake has an orbit time of 310 years, and Eris 557. These are both achievable - they'd have gear trains of about 11 to 13 gears each to slow them down enough, but it can be done. However, it's dear old Sedna that gets things a bit tricky. It has an orbit speed of - wait for it - 12059 years! Now, even with my rather nifty gear building skills that's going to be a slightly tricky thing to achieve. Worm screws driving big gears - lots of them - would be one way of doing it, but we may have to satisfy ourselves with compromising a bit (quite a bit) and give it a much faster orbit speed to keep things realistic - it would still be the slowest object on the machine by far and would move at an almost imperceptible speed, just not that slow!
I'll have a tinker with a pencil and paper to see what gear ratios we would need and report back. Like I said - lots of gears...
 

[tophatdan]

if i were to have this made i would wish to have them all moving in the proper orbits of course, and i knew sedna's orbit was quite slow, but i didnt know it was that slow...

please keep looking into this as i am becoming more interester... is there any way that sedna could be inddependantly geared on a single giant gear so as to make it's movement so slow? just a thought...

[Mechanism Man]

if i were to have this made i would wish to have them all moving in the proper orbits of course, and i knew sedna's orbit was quite slow, but i didn't know it was that slow...

please keep looking into this as i am becoming more interester... is there any way that sedna could be independently geared on a single giant gear so as to make it's movement so slow? just a thought...

Hello again Mr. Dan,
Having given this a good deal of thought, I'm afraid that I'm going to have admit defeat on Sedna's ultra slow orbit speed. With wooden gears, and keeping within the confines of my basic design, it just isn't possible I'm afraid - sorry.
As for your thought of independently gearing Sedna, all the planets on my machines have there own set of gearing anyhow, so a nice thought, but no good I'm afraid. Any mechanical system that I can come up with would be so big and cumbersome it would dwarf the rest of the machine. So I think that if was to be built, Sedna would still be the slowest planet, but like I said, just not to the tune of one orbit in 12,059 years... Just out of interest, take a look at Sedna's orbit track if you get the chance (here's a link - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Oort_cloud_Sedna_orbit.svg ),  it explains why it's sooo slow. It's very much like a comets orbit in that it sling shots around the sun before belting back out into deep space, and at it's farthest point it's a good 15-20 times farther away from the Sun than Pluto... that's a looong way....
Like I said, sorry I can't help. Let me know your thoughts on a speeded up version.
Cheers, Dave  

[Cubinoid]

That would be one MASSIVE gear!

I'd suggest leaving it static...or have a switch that rotates it halfway through the orbit.

You could turn it every 6029.5 years! 

[Mechanism Man]

Hmm, not sure about the switch on/switch off idea - think that it might be a bit at odds with the slow and smooth motion of the rest of the machine...   but...  you've got me thinking about electronics and stepper motors. I think that I could get away with a little hidden electronic cleverness for just one planet.
Just wish I had the first clue as to how to do it. I understand electronics like the average 5 year old understands the laws of nuclear fusion.
Time for a bit of research me thinks.
      

[Mechanism Man]

Hi all,
Just wanted to blow my own brassy trumpet, doff my hat, and beam proudly at you all for a minute as I've just put the final gearing for Pluto onto my latest orrery, the one planet that I still hadn't done up till now.
It's a bit of a monster now and is fairly bristling with gears, yet incredibly is still really smooth and easy to operate - maybe all that scribbling on the back of napkins paid off after all... or perhaps it's just pure blind luck helping me along...
Anyhow, here are some pics of the gubbins in the box before the lid goes on.
Oh, and Happy New Year!!






 
  

[Cubinoid]

Hmm, not sure about the switch on/switch off idea - think that it might be a bit at odds with the slow and smooth motion of the rest of the machine...   but...  you've got me thinking about electronics and stepper motors. I think that I could get away with a little hidden electronic cleverness for just one planet.
Just wish I had the first clue as to how to do it. I understand electronics like the average 5 year old understands the laws of nuclear fusion.
Time for a bit of research me thinks.
     

Here's a thought - the amount of movement required would probably not be so great, so why not make it solar powered...you could fit a few solar cells to the "sun" for an interesting twist...even better, the solar energy could also be used to power up during the day and turn into a light at night?

You could adapt a sunjar, or a garden light...no real electronics expertise needed...

Find out how to make a sunjar here:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

http://www.instructables.com/id/Home-made-Sun-Jar/

[Mechanism Man]

I've now put the lid on, this will have the date and star sign graphic on it eventually, hence the wide edge. Top mechanism next!








 
 

[Rowan of Rin]

Now THAT is a prime example of how you use gears in Steampunk art! Fantastic as always MM. Can't wait until I have such skills; have you ever considered creating your orrerys out of other materials? Though I do realise that wood is your 'thing' 

[Mechanism Man]

Thanks Rowan - still not sure if it's exactly steampunk, but there's certainly lots of gears... lots and lots of gears...
Yes, I have thought about different materials, but I'm simply not tooled up for anything other than wood, and I wouldn't know where to start if I were to build one from metal. I reckon it would look good in chunky stainless steel myself - brass has been done to death with orreries (it's the material of choice after all), but stainless, hmm, that would be quite something I think. But again, not really steampunk I'm afraid.
I've now got 5 commissions on the go, so I'm now sleeping and breathing wooden components and gear wheels, but the great thing is that the design has pretty much stopped evolving so I'm more or less there for producing proper plans. The delay has been in not really knowing how to go about drawing plans, and it also took a long time to pin down the design, but I've now hopefully solved both these issues... Hopefully...     
Right, to the workshop!

[Mechanism Man]

Finished!
Well here it is, my first 9 planet orrery with angled Earth and spinny orbiting Moon. Hmm, only 6 more to go.... This is beginning to take over my life...









TTFN my finely feathered friends.