My granddaughters carousel

[Dwayne]

I hope I am putting this in the right section.
Way back in 2013 I started on this project without any real plan for anything which bit me on the behind early on when I made a carriage that was far too big. I will go through most of the process in the replies.

 

[Tim Marlow]

That looks a fun build Dwayne. Thanks for sharing.

 

[Dwayne]

So head first I plunged by cutting plywood circles of various sizes pictured is the top, base and platform.

And used coffee stirrers to simulate the wooden slats on the platform.

 

[Dwayne]

I made the hollow central column and origionally dismantled a cordless screwdriver which I used to drive it around but this turned out to be far too fast and difficult to control the speed, it was later replaced with a geared motor running at 12rpm further reduced with the pwm signal from the arduino which I also programmed to start and stop it slowly.

I think it was a decent attempt considering I only had a rather beat up Drummond round bed lathe at the time (now modified into my milling machine)

 

[Dwayne]

I am still sorting through the pictures for this so will post more later.

 

[JR]

Yes please do, something like this is always interesting Dwayne.

 

[Dwayne]

So the next installment:
I made hangers for the platform and horses from fencing wire twisted and painted gold

and made a tool out of a scrap parting tool to make the brass to secure them on the platform

since they would be hidden under the canopy I didn't fuss too much over the top ones

 

[Dwayne]

Next was making the carriages and getting really lucky with a job lot of horses meant to be made into dolls house rocking horses

The carriages where painted up and attached to the platform

and then I turned my attention to making the horses gallop

These gears took me an age to figure out, mostly the crown gear that you can just about make out under this mock up. In the end I found a meccano crown gear that suited my needs and made the smaller gears myself (By this time I had brought my uncle's Harrison 19" lathe which made everything so much easier).
Finally for today a picture of it all placed

The outer ring for this top was my first ever foray into wood steaming, I probably should have had it thinned a bit more but it worked so..

 

[Tim Marlow]

Very cool, not often we see lathe work on here.....this is fascinating.

 

[Dwayne]

Really busy day today with mostly boring stuff but heres the next installment:
Once I had the mechanics sorted out I turned my hand to painting, I stared off by finding a suitable font for the lettering around the top and printed them out.

I then traced this onto the models top

my brush work isn't the best but at least no one can accuse me of cheating here


I then thought this looked a little bland and needed a bit of bling

Which I created by mixing various colours of glitter with pva glue and painting it on.

 

[Dwayne]

So once I was happy (or content that I had it looking acceptable at least) with that painting I turned my attention to the lighting


It soon turned into a right birds nest of wires and if I had planned better I could of made it much neater but that was par for the course with this build I had little idea what I was doing and plowing on regardless


I would have loved to have access to some of the equipment I have now then as I could have made a pcb instead of all those wires stripped out of a long LAN extension.

 

[boatman]

THIS IS fanstastic very well done Sir i'll show my wife jen in the morning as she thought it was a bought one an loves this
all best to you chris an jen

 

[Dwayne]

THIS IS fanstastic very well done Sir i'll show my wife jen in the morning as she thought it was a bought one an loves this
all best to you chris an jen

Thank you I am still sorting the decent photo's out and will hopefully get to the end soon.

 

[Neil Merryweather]

This is a stunning achievement, Dwayne, and clearly you do know a lot about a lot of things !

 

[boatman]

HI Dwayne you are a true engineer an a eletristion an does pwm signal stand for pusle width modulation signal ? an from the ( arduino ) what does that mean ? AN DO ?
an i bet your grandaughter thought all her chritmas's had come at once eh ? as all the workin in the merry go round is way out an beyond my know how brilliant work Sir an i'll show my wife jen when she gets up as no work due to lockdown as she loved it when she first see it
all best to you an yours PS an i bet you had fun soldering all those led's up to their resistors as i do a fair amount of this type of modderling on my warship models as i light them up for shows all working from R/C
chris an jen

 

[Dwayne]

HI Dwayne you are a true engineer an a eletristion an does pwm signal stand for pusle width modulation signal ? an from the ( arduino ) what does that mean ? AN DO ?
an i bet your grandaughter thought all her chritmas's had come at once eh ? as all the workin in the merry go round is way out an beyond my know how brilliant work Sir an i'll show my wife jen when she gets up as no work due to lockdown as she loved it when she first see it
all best to you an yours PS an i bet you had fun soldering all those led's up to their resistors as i do a fair amount of this type of modderling on my warship models as i light them up for shows all working from R/C
chris an jen

Yes PWM is indeed pulse width modulation And the "Arduino" is a range of programmable boards which I will get to tonight It has various outputs (how many depends on the board you get) some are capable of PWM some are simple on/off and input/output.

 

[boatman]

Yes PWM is indeed pulse width modulation And the "Arduino" is a range of programmable boards which I will get to tonight It has various outputs (how many depends on the board you get) some are capable of PWM some are simple on/off and input/output.

HI Dwayne lookin forword to seeing this "Arduino" as if i can get one it may come in handy on my tiger build unless its a unit you have built specialy or can one be bought if so where please ?
chris

 

[Dwayne]

HI Dwayne lookin forword to seeing this "Arduino" as if i can get one it may come in handy on my tiger build unless its a unit you have built specialy or can one be bought if so where please ?
chris

I am quite shocked that I am introducing them to be honest, I haven't had chance to look through this site completely but would have put money on coming across them.
This pic shows the various ones I have floating around my workshop at the moment

with a ruler to show you the scale they are from largest to smallest Mega, uno and nano as you can see the nano in particular is really small (but not the smallest) and would fit into most projects with relative ease. They have analog input/outputs digital input/outputs and some PWM inputs/outputs.
programming them is not overly difficult if you have ever dabbled with programming but can look a little daunting if not.
These where all brought a while ago and they have improved the features available now built in wifi and bluetooth for example which would have been handy when my daughter wanted a Wrench cosplay mask
As for purchasing them there are a number of places to get them From https://www.arduino.cc/ the people who developed them but as they are open source there are many clones available for much cheaper from the usual online vendors. The only thing to be careful of is some are supplied without the bootloader which can be a bit of hassle if your new to them.

 

[Mickc1440]

What a fabulous build and gift

 

[boatman]

WELL Dwayne ive got to admit this is too heavy for me an way out of my comfort zone so i'll leave it at that but brilliant work on the carousel
chris an jen