Wayward Calliope featured on Make: blog

My latest piece, “Wayward Calliope”, debued at Maker Faire last weekend, where it could be heard making funny and sometimes eery noises in Expo Hall.

Make: Magazine covered the piece on their blog, where you can see a picture of Mark Frauenfelder and a video of my friend Kevin Curry cranking away: http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2010/05/ben_cowdens_wayward_calliope.html

 

Slide whistle blower: Almost ready for Maker Faire!

Here is a brief video of my new machine, not quite finished. It blows six slide whistles, each at different rates, using a combination of distinctly-sized sprockets. I plan to paint it this weekend and have it at Bay Area Maker Faire in a couple weeks (!).

 

The Corpse Reviver appears at Barbot 2010, then at a Neverwas Haul party

My cocktail-mixing machine, The Corpse Reviver, made a couple appearances recently, first at Barbot 2010, then at a fundraiser party for the Neverwas Haul at the Shipyard.

For the record, the Corpse Reviver is a fully mechanical device that pours, mixes, and chills a cocktail. The cocktail it makes is also called a Corpse Reviver (#2, to be precise), whose ingredients are: equal parts Gin, Lillet, Lemon Juice, and Triple Sec, plus a dash of pastis if it is handy. It is seriously tasty, even when it is not made by a machine.

See what people had to say about the Corpse Reviver on Wired Blog’s coverage, or even at the Huffington Post (?!). Let me know if you would like to know where The Corpse Reviver will turn up next!

Photo Credit: Flickr/Unplug

 

Geared Candleholder article published in Make Magazine

What began as a simple how-to article about making gears has turned into a major project article for Make Magazine and at last is published in volume 21. The project is candleholder with three gears and parallel action arms which move the candles up and down at different rates. In many ways, it is similar to my first candleholder, but this one is made from aluminum plate and uses tea lights or small floating candles. The design and the variable gearing also make it a more playful device.

On the project page here, I have posted all the images from the construction process (many more than in the published article) as well as some additional charts and diagrams which can supplement the material in the article. Hopefully these materials can help out with some of the more tricky parts of the project. If you have any questions, want a CAD file, or would like to share photos of you project, send me an email!