Liquid Colours In Motion by reparator

Last crawled date: 3 years, 1 month ago

Liquid Colours In Motion
Video: https://youtu.be/YxlTE78d1ug
A kinetic art project
designed by Stefan Kneip
This is part one of a Tripthychon of pictures dealing with motion and it is called "Liquid Colours In Motion".
It consists of a moving wheel of glass tubes filled with coloured liquids. It is in the style of the bhaskara wheel. The outer wheel is driven by a planetary gear.
Description
The main part is a big wheel with 12 arms. On each end a test tube with cap is mounted. Inside the test tubes are different coloured liquids. A planetary gear system is turning the main wheel and so the test tubes around the center. By this very slow rotation the liquids are flowing inside the tubes and produce a nice shiny effect. The picture is illuminated by LED strips inside the frame.
In Part one of this installation I used the main colours cyan, magenta and yellow and the corresponding mixing colours (purple, orange and green). Each colour is populating two test tubes to fulfill the circle (as you can see in the video).
Part two is much more impressive. Here I used only magenta and cyan as liquids (alternating). The illumination is changing every 30 sec from white LEDs to UV-LEDs. The UV light leeds to a fluorescence effect and the turning tubes glow in eldritch atmosphere like radioactiv uranium. Very awesome!
The Electronics:
An Arduino based controller electronic is the "brain" of the installation. It can operate in different modes which are adjusted by means of a push-button with integrated LED. By pressing the pushbutton you can circle through the modes. The arduino sketch is attached for operating the circuit as master or slave.
What you need:
Ribba picture frame 50x50cm in black or white from IKEA
LEDberg led strips (4x)
Liquid Ink for inkjet printers in cyan, magenta and yellow
24 glass test tubes of 16 mm diameter and 10 cm length (https://www.tuuters.de/index.php?option=com_virtuemart&view=productdetails&virtuemart_category_id=7&virtuemart_product_id=75&Itemid=121)
cable ties to fix the glass tubes
sheet of AlDibond 50 x 50cm of 3 mm thickness as main assembly board
small geared motor of 2-3 Rpm, 12 V
PIR motion detector (https://www.adafruit.com/product/189)
The circuit board attached (feel free to build one).
Instructions
The printer inc must be diluted with water to get a clear, sligthly coloured liquid. Do not use it too concentrated.
Illumination:
I used in my motion paints the IKEA Ledberg for illumination. My design is for 12 V Ledberg. Unfortunatly since 2015 IKEA sells only the 24 V Version of LEDberg, so a little bit of hacking is necessary to use it with my controller.
First you have to get access to the PCB-strip (where the LEDs are soldered to). Drill with a 1.5 mm drillbit into the small plastic nose which helds the LEDberg PCB in position and remove the plastic pin. Now you can take the PCB out of the plastic cover. With a small solder iron remove the 4300 resistor in the middle of the PCB strip. We don´t need that anymore. Remove carefully a 1 mm part of the paint at both sides of the strip (the continuos + and - rail) with a sharp knife so that the bare copper can be seen. Solder now two 390 Ohm resistors (1206 size fits perfect) from the pads of the former removed resistor to the outer strips (as can seen on the pictures). Take care of polarity: The end which is connected to + at first led must be soldered to - and vice versa.
The white connector at the end can be desoldered either. We will solder wires directly to the PCB strips.
Put the PCB back in the plastic cover and put a small portion of hot melt glue in the former "nose hole" to fix the strip in the plastic.
So modified the ledberg strips can operate at 12 V now. But take care: Connecting it to the provided power supply (within the ledberg package) will destroy the LEDs now! This power supply we will not need anymore for this project!
Use this description at your own risk!
Making Things Is Fun!!!