B.Light Design

Mocked up a quick proof of concept for a kinetic piece. Mostly milled delrin, steel, and a stepper motor.

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Finally got my 4 bar linkage “Block Pusher” proof of concept working.

Linkages are hard.  I think they are powerful mechanisms, I just find them difficult to visualize and time consuming to iterate. I’ve been thinking about a device that could turn and push a small wooden block over and over again, and I fear a four bar linkage may be the answer.

I saw a great video from Disney Research on creating animated mechanical characters. Their software appears to be proprietary, but it was a great starting point. Then I found an incredibly useful 4 bar linkage simulator from Mechanical Expressions. Thanks to this simulator, I quickly dialed in the desired motion and got my linkage dimensions.

Drew up some designs.

And milled some parts.

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A post shared by Ben Light (@blight_design) on Jul 23, 2020 at 7:54am PDT

The first prototype is a hand cranked 4 bar linkage built from aluminum and delrin parts. Linkages need to be built well in order to operate correctly. There can’t be too much slop in the mechanism and precision counts. Hopefully, the second prototype will actually move a block around.

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A post shared by Ben Light (@blight_design) on Jul 24, 2020 at 11:47am PDT

So honored to be part of the 5 borough, first ever Core77 Open.

Kinetic 5 was part of the amazing pallet filled show.

Check out some of the other pieces. Today is the last day to see the show.

Tornado Alley is a kinetic sculpture, small wooden houses spin like mad when you blow on a small fan. The harder you blow, the faster they spin. The piece is fun to interact with.

The houses may look a little familiar.

One of my latest project wind-O-farm is a 3D printed sculpture based on the data from Pennsylvania wind farms.

Taking data from all of the wind farms in the state of Pennsylvania, we have 3D printed a kinetic window screen sculpture.
The ‘wind-O-farm’ is comprised of a series of turbines, each representing its respective wind-farm. Turbine size, number of blades, location, and even efficiency is be determined by the data. The look of each turbine is reminiscent of farmhouse windmills, which can still be found across the state of Pennsylvania.

It was my first experience with 3D printing, I really enjoyed it.

I worked on this project with Filipa Tomaz, I think it turned out great.

Here is a quick video of my Physical Computing final. The kinetic sculpture is a series of 5 pendulums that are controlled by the viewer. When one waves there hand over a sensor, a pendulum is fired. It is kind of addictive.

Some shots of the build process: