This magbot pendulum started as so many of my projects come to life:
trying different parts together and see if they look
like they belong together.In this case a large brass nut,a ceramic fuse
holder,a ceramic insulator,a brass fitting and a
brass end cap.
It didn't take long to come up with what was to be the central part
of another magbot pendulum.
The circle is made with four pieces of 1/8 " copper tubing(about 3 mm)
,these are connected together with some pieces of
brass tubing.It wasn't easy to create a perfect circle and a flat one
at that.I might replace the circle with one made
of bigger tubing in the future.
The base on which the central part stand is an aluminium housing.Even though it's a very different type of material than copper and brass,I still think it goes well together. Construction was very straight forward:I drilled two 1/8 " holes either side of the endcap,then drilled two holes in the aluminium housing,glued everything together,except for the brass nut,that part was glued onto the aluminium housing. Then the wires were threaded for the coil through the endcap and into the aluminium housing.After doing that, the central part was glued on the housing.I used E6000 epoxy for this.
Now it was time to make the circle.The easiest way to do this was to draw a circle on a piece of paper and use this as a template for the copper circle.You need to anneal the copper to make a nice bend,a small torch is perfect for this job.As the tubing is small in diameter it cools down relatively quick(but you can speed the process up by spraying it with water). I started with fixing two of the pieces of copper to the endcap,then used two pieces of larger brass tubing to attach the other two segments of the circle.At the top of the circle another piece of brass tubing was used to connect the two halves of the circle.It took some additional bending and annealing to make a better circle.
The electronic circuitry was already soldered together and ready to go into the housing.But after testing and finding out it didn't work,I had the replace it with a new one. The pendulum bob is a large piece of pretty heavy brass.When it swings,thecircle is actually moving. So I might have to exchange this for a lighter version.
