Swim and Raft test at Deep Rock

 

Hi

Although we live about 2k from the Yarra river and I can swim, and the Yarra is quite swimmable, I haven't swum in the Yarra for a long time. But I had a raft to test in the wild, and had seen a couple of discussions about Deep Rock Swimming on the internet. What was there to lose?

I took an old clunker bike I had fixed up, and headed off. Most of the trip was totally familiar, but the path along the Yarra from Merri Creek on was new.

Anyway, there wasn't enough wind to make the raft spin, but I had a nice swim. There were lots of dogs there! One professional walker had 8 dogs there, and another had 5, and a few of the dogs were spontaneous swimmers, heading out for a paddle just because they could.

I will head back for more pics and video when its a bit windier and the raft will rotate. Here is the video I made in the back yard.

More turbine rafts and mobiles

 

Turbine raft with visible steel bolts as weights

 

New black parts needed to make it.

Hi, I've been making more of my rafts and mobiles. Recently I've used old plastic containers to float them, and float them in. I've posted about this before here. By using the clear container at the base of the tetrahedron its more obvious how it all works. I made a special joiner between plywood and edges and its shown in black in the photo above. It keeps the edges close to the plywood, which lowers the cans in the top photo. That means its not so tippy.

New top parts are glued to a plywood disc. I ordered in grub screws just for this sort of task on a mobile, and made cd turbines on that occasion.

Lower triangle. The prop for the turbine needs to go through it.

 Here is a triangular prism variation on the rotating mobile, instead of floating it in water, I have made a high pivot point that it hangs from, and a prop runs right through the lower triangle.  I made it then gave it to my Mum and Dad. Not sure they are ready for this sort of thing. I made a couple of extra 3d printed parts in order to make this. Sizes were calculated as per the table below.

The second hanging mobile uses four cans and has a cube shape. It didn't need any new 3d printed parts as I had made all the bits before for the tetrahedron sampler shown at the bottom here. I put it to "use" jazzing up the display bike at Wecycle yesterday. Some pics are below. Nice day at Wecycle!

Red and white parts are the lower square face.

Upper square face with pivot point

Support being fitted to crate.

Beer can turbine on the Wecycle mascot bike which was blogged about previously. Here is another story about a turbine sculpture at Wecycle. You know it makes sense!