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Aleph Clock

Work on the Aleph Clock has stalled. In spite of my promise to myself that I would move on, and make the gear train one long line, I tried again. I got the right side to fold up, but then realized that I could not use the same spacing for the other side without gears running into each other. That was about a month ago, and I haven’t touched it since.

Maybe I’m being a perfectionist, but I’m concerned that I’m going to put all this work into this thing, and then not like the results. Also, the reason I started building a clock in the first place is is practice for a secret project. And, the way I’m envisioning that project is actually much simpler than this is turning out to be. So, yeah, I should just stop, and move on. There are other things that are going to be an issue, and I haven’t even gotten to the physical construction, where there’s sure to be a lot of problems.

I learned a lot, though. And, the Arduino programming part was a big success.

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Möbius Rollers, Blender 3D and Fusion 360

A bunch of Möbius Rollers

I think I was first introduced to the concept of a Möbius strip in high school. This simple yet weird thing that can be made from a single strip of paper, one end given a 180º twist, and then the ends taped together. If you trace the surface of the resulting object, it has only one continuous face, and there’s only one edge. There are also weird results when you cut it different ways.

A Möbius strip is actually an ideal mathematical construct, like a point, plane, or cube. One you make out of paper is a physical representation of that ideal construct, but paper actually has thickness. But, that’s interesting, because what you’ve actually done is made a long, thin rectangular solid into a Möbius cube, which has one surface, and one edge. I made the Möbius Roller to answer a question in my head: What would it look like to inflate the side (edge) of a Möbius strip? (Then I had to add the channel that follows the side with balls that roll in the channel – because it was cool 😀.)

What has that to do with Blender and Fusion? Well, I originally learned Blender in order to make this object. I don’t know if you can make it in Fusion. (I genuinely don’t know, I’d like to see how, if it’s possible.) Anyhow, it wasn’t too hard to find a tutorial for Blender that showed how to make something like this shape, and I adapted it.

Does that make Blender better than Fusion? No. There are advantages to each. For example, making an object from a dimensioned drawing (like an engineering or architectural drawing) is much easier in Fusion than in Blender.

If you’re interested buying one, contact me.