![]() 08/09/2018 at 15:34 • Filed to: design, gears, orrery | ![]() | ![]() |
It’s almost done. The disc is a 400 lb, 1/4" thick, 4' diameter hunk of machined and inked brass. It came in on Tuesday morning. Final installation is tonight or tomorrow. The sun is glass, and the planets are printed.
Here’s how it looked with a printed plastic piece in place of the brass, during the first test fit.
What a crazy project.
![]() 08/09/2018 at 15:48 |
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But, it’s missing Neptune, Uranus and Pluto, as well as many moons. Plus, it’s not to scale. Total fail.
/s
![]() 08/09/2018 at 15:49 |
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![]() 08/09/2018 at 15:49 |
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Are you not installing the other 2 planets?
![]() 08/09/2018 at 15:51 |
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Beautiful!
![]() 08/09/2018 at 15:51 |
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Great, now I have “This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius” stuck in my head.
![]() 08/09/2018 at 15:52 |
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This does actually sort of resemble our Honda tranny, except ours has more glass parts.
![]() 08/09/2018 at 15:57 |
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This is #Fakenews because the Earth is Flat!
![]() 08/09/2018 at 16:13 |
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Dude, give up on Pluto. Or if you want it, there’s really no good reason not to have Eris, which has a diameter 98% as large as Pluto and is 28% more massive. There’s no good argument to have one but not the other.
![]() 08/09/2018 at 16:14 |
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Thats gorgeous. What a ballpark cost for something like that?
![]() 08/09/2018 at 16:14 |
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Orrery is a good word (despite Chrome putting a little red squiggle under it) .
![]() 08/09/2018 at 16:22 |
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So is Eris the reason they dropped Pluto as a “real” planet? Because it’d make all the middle school scale models completely impractical?
![]() 08/09/2018 at 16:31 |
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More or less. Much like Ceres was initially considered a planet, and then was dropped when they started find lots of other small stuff, a big part of the impetus to drop Pluto was because as they started find other large t rans-Neptunian objects, there was no way to have nine planets. You were going to have eight , or you were going to have something like 20+.
![]() 08/09/2018 at 16:39 |
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Wow, that thing is epic!
![]() 08/09/2018 at 16:45 |
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Oh, I don’t know, at this point. It’s a fully-custom thing, designed and engineered from scratch. Even the (few) off-the-shelf parts have been modified or custom finished.
Been 10 months in the making, so far. I’d be real surprised if it were under 250K.
![]() 08/09/2018 at 16:47 |
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Well, it doesn’t have as many as this one
![]() 08/09/2018 at 16:57 |
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It is super impressive. Can’t wait to take some video of it in action. I’m just happy that I had a small hand in it.
![]() 08/09/2018 at 17:03 |
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This is friggin’ gorgeous!!
![]() 08/09/2018 at 17:05 |
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Who get’s to set the clock to the proper time?
Where is this being installed?
![]() 08/09/2018 at 17:06 |
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That is impressive. Can’t wait for the finished product.
![]() 08/09/2018 at 17:16 |
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That’s F-you money.
![]() 08/09/2018 at 21:22 |
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one heck of a planetary gear...
![]() 08/09/2018 at 23:16 |
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You’re lookin at it.
![]() 08/09/2018 at 23:20 |
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It’s all running on custom code, on a custom Linux build. You can set any time from 11000BCE to 16000CE and it’ll spin the clock arms and planets to that position. Normal operation is clocked the same way your computer is.
![]() 08/09/2018 at 23:22 |
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That is awesome... amazing work!
I live in the Austin area , is it located somewhere in town?
![]() 08/10/2018 at 06:17 |
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where is this?
![]() 08/10/2018 at 06:23 |
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In moition that is.
![]() 08/10/2018 at 09:36 |
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In a rich dude’s office, sadly.