New Lampshade Outside

New Lampshade Outside. The dangly bit is a vestigial hangover from the previous technology. And what else would I do with it?

Not-broken light of the same type at the front.

Broken glass and replacement led bulbs

The lamp bracket fixed up a bit and a new globe installed

Broken glass to new recycling dumpster.

At night, no flash on camera.

At night with flash on camera

Daytime

Daytime

Pic and caption from "Adhocism"

A blurb from The Age about Elon Musk and electric cars. Are electric cars fully evolved?  Maybe not if they are still being driven by people!

Hi

A few weeks ago I looked up when I was tinkering around at the side of the house and noticed a lamp guard was broken.  We happen to have the same lamp out the front of the house, god knows when they were put there.

How or when or why the side lamp broke, I don't know. But it needed fixing, or at least replacing, so I broke out one of my "tribo spirals" which had been residing on a shelf doing nothing. (The part for the spiral can be downloaded as an stl file here) And there was a dangley bit on the original lamp and I decided to put that back on the new lampshade for these reasons:
* What else was I going to do with it? It was good for absolutely nothing else in the universe that I can think of.
* It is sort of a design in-joke. :  "(Inventions show) amusing visual and verbal hangovers from the initial inception" is a quote from the wonderful design book Adhocism by Charles Jencks and Nathan Silver." Of course this applies more to early bicycles and early petrol cars and current electric cars and current recumbent bikes and velomobiles which were and are in states of evolution and have quite complicated functional jobs.  Lampshades don't do complicated jobs and can be mucked around with a bit in an arty sort of way.

The broken glass bit went to the new glass recycling bin at the Roseneath St. depot, and I replaced the old incandescent globe with an (I think) more energy efficient light emitting diode model. And I think it looks ok. I will continue this ramble later with a bit more about recumbent bikes and what they could be.

(Continued October 10)

So what could a recumbent bike be and what visual and verbal hangovers are left on recumbents? How could the hangovers be removed to make them a better class of transport bike?  Some inspiration came from reading a recent review of a Dell Laptop Computer which complies with the  Intel Project Athena specification.

This spec was built around the capabilities of new Intel processors which enable a range of benefits if the rest of the laptop computer hardware is up to scratch. These specs include 9 hour battery run time and "waking from sleep in under a second and be ready to browse the web in under two seconds, download emails and grab social media updates in the background even while the lid is closed, and have the same sort of responsiveness on battery that they have when plugged into the wall. The laptop display must support both touch and pen input with narrow bezels. Under the hood, the laptop must have at least 8GB of RAM and 256GB of speedy NVMe solid state storage and the latest Wi-Fi 6 and Thunderbolt 3 connectivity with the option for mobile connectivity" etcetera.

So what we have is a central body (Intel) defining a spec which helps manufacturers (like Dell) make great machines. It is a mutual benefit society, the central body gaining reputation because spec-compliant products become better machines enhancing their reputation, and the manufacturers gain from having better, and presumably more profitable and popular machines.

What might "the spec" for recumbents be?

Well the first thing I would say might be that "certified" (or whatever) transport recumbents could have less than 20 litres of covered aerodynamic storage space. Safety bicycles tend to have no racking for luggage storage unless they are high end touring bikes. Even with the racking, users must then buy panniers. And even with panniers the aerodynamics are not that great!

A second spec might be to have less than 1m total of wind-exposed control cable inners and outers.  This can be achieved with a bit of attention to design, and on an aero bike, little things like this count.

A third spec could be wheel disks for all wheels, something that would again reduce wind resistance.

Regards  Steve Nurse

 

Fringe Furniture Opening

CLS\02

Light Sleeper

Topograpical Coffee Table

Ta-Da by Steve Nurse (me)

Didn't get the details  of this piece but it is a combined lampshade and coffee table complete with foldaway legs. It is raised and lowered by a slightly noisy gearbox / winch arrangement hanging from the roof.  Just right for your warehouse conversion pad.

Speeches, announcements, prizes etc. etc.

Hi

A few pics from the opening night of fringe furniture - woohoo. Brigit had done a great job of organising the event and I bumped into a few Monash Uni people I know and chatted to a few other artist / maker type people.  I'm not all that terrific with names so it was a bit embarrassing at times. Will be back at the fringe furniture venue in the next few days: its free, might see you there.

Regards  Steve Nurse

Walk home from Abbotsford

Hi

After my laden bike ride to the Abbotsford convent,  I walked back home via the Yarra River and the more-exciting-than-it-sounds Roseneath St Recycling Dropoff Point.  The walk was very pleasant, and despite living in the area for 30 years or so had never noticed the Peace Mile plaque near the south end of Gray Street. Lots of flowers out for the start of spring too.  At the recycling centre I spoke to Marcel for a while, amongst a few other changes they have a new bike tyre recycling bin which is a welcome addition. Good Job!

Regaeds

Steve Nurse

Fringe Furniture Bump-In

Hi

Today was my Fringe Furniture Exhibition bump-in day and this meant the end of quite a bit of planning and building.  The "Ta-Da" piece which I started blogging about here had been varnished by Christine and I, and 2 days ago, I started setting it up again. This was to avoid embarrassment during set up on site at the Abbotsford Convent, I couldn't quite remember how it went back together again. Anyway, by yesterday morning (Thursday) it was back together, and today I started taking it apart again.

Wasn't sure if it would go into the trike (also on show) and was prepared to take 2 trips to the nearby Abbotsford Convent where the exhibition takes place. Anyway, sometimes if you step back a bit and take your time you think of an answer, and by hooking the trike stand over the tailbox it all fitted.

The trip to the Convent was thankfully uneventful and Brigit and CC and other volunteers and coordinators made the setup go well too.  Leaving the trike at the Convent, I walked home. Official launch Party is Wednesday, looking forward to it.

2 Years ago I had a wooden trike at Fringe Furniture 31, here is my bikes blog from back then.

Regards  Steve Nurse

Regards  Steve Nurse

Tensegrity Prisms etc. 5

Hi

This post is mainly to say that I have moved the files for my "Wheel Construction Kit" to Thingiverse from another site. At the other site I had 0 downloads despite the design being free, and I have abandoned the other site now.  The original posts about its development started here and ended here.

Basically the wheel can be used to make all the things shown above. When I was making and using the stick frame version about a year ago, I wrote

"So from my last posts here and here, I showed a 4 wheel steering model car and a rubber band driven model car, and from some studies I had been doing, knew about the concept of energy being stored in the frame of a vehicle.  So the designs all whooshed together, and I came up with the model shown on this page.  The sticks which are the frame and the power source are very flexible, green, late winter growth twigs just about to burst into flower.
Ok, not the most refined thing, but I think printing them in schools and seeing what kids would come up with would be a great practical way to introduce energy storage and conversion. In 2040, Norway plan to have all their planes electric, so in the next 20 years, the storage of energy in lightweight structural materials will become a major development goal.  The storage may start in batteries that come with solar panels, then evolve through batteries for bicycles and velomobiles and cars, until, finally, the entire frame of airplanes do double duty as a battery.
So what about the future for the Wind-Up-Frame-Car I've made?  I have some plans to go big and go slightly less rough with the design.  Will keep you posted."

Well the Wind-Up-Frame-Car did have a future but it was in the form of an article which talked about some of the vehicles I've speculated on. The article has now been peer reviewed and will be presented at a conference in Canberra in about a month. Here is a preview via Researchgate.



For some videos, of some of the models, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkpOLmo43hk&feature=youtu.be (wind up car) and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93CuX6bkKd4&feature=youtu.be (towers 1) and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naUxUCjhTx0&feature=youtu.be (towers2)

Regards

Steve Nurse

Body Builder Kit 2

Timber on the way to Sean and Horn.

Showing off the design to Billy at Sean and Horn

Board with cutouts is usually waste.

Original

Timber parts and 3d printer parts as torch with just enough space inside for a USB cable.

Torch

Uses bike Spokes.

to make this thing.

Bird

Giraffe

Home Studio

Before Shelf

After Shelf

Hi

A few weeks ago I posted about a body kit I'd made, stemming from a bike part I'd built and never used.  And I've come quite a bit further with the design, making several variations from the basic parts, these include a torch with usb cord holder, and NC routed timber versions courtesy of cutting by Sean and Horn.  

The NC routing was a bit speculative, so I didn't want to get a huge sheet cut, and got some fairly common timber from the closest hardware shop, and bought it home "landscape" or super wide on my electric bike. For the actual trip from Clifton Hill to Sean and Horn in Coburg I went portrait, or slightly less wide.  The bike carried the timber fine, and probably quicker than by car as there was some fairly major traffic poo with a set of train crossing boom gates stuck down.  Anyway, I'm quite pleased with the results and the general interchangability and fun of the parts.

Besides anything else, posting this was delayed by our need for a kitchen shelf.  All the animals I'd made had been hanging out uncomfortably on cd's, speakers and stereo systems and it wasn't till I'd made a shelf that I had room for more of them.

The pictures show some of the waste made in the process of building the items.  The board with holes is what the wooden pieces were cut from and the "poo" (modular bikes word of the week) is bits of offcut timber, offcut tent fibreglass tent poles, althread rod, sawdust and the "raft" or 3d printer part support material.

Will work on sharing the design at some stage.

Regards  Steve Nurse