spinners

AAH

AAH

I love blinky lights :)
Community project designer
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Dec 27, 2010
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I'm not sure what category spinners go into so I picked the arch section of the site.
For 2012 I'm thinking of adding some spinners. They will probably be about 500mm radius and will be made using 10mm rope light. What I'm wondering is how to make the frames for them. The spinners are most likely to be mounted on a wire (ringlock) fence and will be real up close and personal to anyone looking at the display from the footpath so they'll need to look reasonably respectable as well as be able to handle the possibility of some hands on. 6mm steel welded up to the shape with either a full circle or a hexagonal frame is what I'm thinking but I'm open to suggestions.
 
how about mounted to a piece of painted plywood? I'm not doing a full spinner but using a few offcuts of dumb strip 500mm in length I am doing a 3/4 spinner which will be under the apex of where my roofline meets (gable) am thinking of just mounting direct onto a piece of painted plywood, 12mm thickness
 
Hi
For 2011 I made 4 spinners (controlled & wired as 2 mirrored pairs). While I used 500mm RGB rigid modules as lights, I actually attached these to 20mm PVC conduit to make them easy to handle, install and dismantle. As a centre hub I cut a 10 sided regular polygon from a piece of 240*45mm treated pine and drilled 20mm radial holes in each face for the 10 arms. (see photos) The PVC tube is a neat fit in these holes, but I also added a lock screw for each arm so visitors could not turn or pull out the arms.

For assembly, I screw the central hub to a 70*45mm post attached to the fence. Insert the arms and then attach the plugs. Worked a treat. The results can be seen in my 2011 Sinnamon Lights videos.
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Regarding use of rope light - you would have to use low voltage rope as the minimum cut length for the more available 240V lights will be longer than the arm length you propose.

Regards Geoff
 

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Nice photos Geoff.

AHH I think the welded steel arms sound like a good idea. I made mine using 20mm conduit and a 20mm 4way deep junction box and drilled out the extra 20mm holes but I would no recommend this style anywhere it could be touched by the public.
 
Thanks for the suggestions guys. I can't really use a ply frame as I want the spinners to not obscure what is behind them. As they are mounted on the fence and the front yard is 30m deep the ply would blank out other elements deeper in the yard. I have a bunch of 12v 10mm rope which is what I'm planning on using. I think the cuttable sections are about 500mm but whatever they are that is what I'm going to use. After re-watching you vid Geoff I'm thinking of going up to 10 arms per spinner.
 
Very nice construction aussiexmas, I was planning on doing "half-spinners" on the ridge of my roof, and those look sturdy enough to work.

/Stefan
 
noticed you mentioned 500mm light strips, but is that the length of the arm they are mounted to?

500mm comes to about 20 inchs if I done my math correctly.

and I know there is a little extra length on both ends of the arms.

they just look bigger than that in the picture.

was thinking of making a spinner with 24 inch arms and was afraid that would be to short.

bert-nc
 
On my spinners, the lighted length of each arm is 500mm (just under 20"), the light bars are 550mm (22"). With the centre hub, the overall diameter of each spinner is approx 1500mm (5'). I thought this would be a good diameter in the event that I might ever add a CCR (or 5m digital strip) around the ourside. A CCR would require an outer circle diameter of about 1591mm.

While the bars I used were from an Aussie E-Bay seller clearing his stock, Ray has similar bars eg http://www.aliexpress.com/fm-store/701799/210237670-496553025/RGB-led-rigid-bar-5050-SMD-0-5m-long-30leds-waterproof-by-silicon-coating-U-type.html

Regards Geoff
 
Geoff, I'm sure you been asked this a lot... but when do you start setting up your display? February? :)

It's simply amazing!

/Stefan
 
Geoff doesn't ever start setting up his display as in order to start you need to stop and he never seems to stop. LOL
 
I am ordering the rigid 32 2811/ic/leds per meter for this project and what is good is that Ray Wu will make them to whatever length that you want with waterproof cables either end.

For the spinner project I will have a 2ft 5 point star using modules for the star and with 10 x 50cm (16 nodes) spokes. I will be building 6 of these which will mount on 10ft poles. hope to get it finished in the next month and will put up some video.
 
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