Designed and constructed an interactive exhibit for the PLAY! exhibition at the Autry Museum of the American West in 2017. The wall init is constructed of wood and Lexan, and aged to look like reclaimed wood. A crank made from a tricycle wheel can be turned by guests which both drives a belt that spins various vintage toys and appears to be spinning a vintage fan on top of the wall unit. The fan then appears to be blowing various sized kites suspended from an overhead rig comprised of 12 bicycle wheels acting as pulleys in a belt system. In reality the crank has an encoder on it being fed into a PLC-based control system. The fan and overhead kite system are driven by stepper motors which we can set specific ramp up and down times with a max speed limit for the over achieving child.
We also designed and constructed some themed switches and inputs for other areas of the exhibit. An erector set themed crank which enabled nearby motorized vintage erector sets to move when rotated. We also made an over-sized back-lit vintage tv channel knob which changed the channels on a nearby wall of TV’s. It was machined from aluminum and hard anodized.
