Past Projects

Sponge Bob Musical Chain Reaction Style Machines

The Sponge Bob Musical

House Right Machine

HR.2

House Left Machine

HL.2

HL.3

Largest Accordion Arm

We worked with the David Zinn, Scenic Designer for ‘The Sponge Bob Musical’ , to design 2 chain reaction style machines to meet his vision of their appearance and what they should accomplish during the show. After panning out the details of the design we worked with Prop-N-Spoon at their New Jersey shop to fabricate and test the machines prior to the delivery and installation at the Oriental Theatre. We even got to go work in the theater to get the machines working, chain reaction machines are finicky and don’t go back together well, especially after being painted…. The show runs through July 10, 2016 at the Oriental Theatre in Chicago

The objective of the house right machine is to launch a large ball (think exercise ball) onto stage. Noteable features are the rotating basketball goal, musical teeter tooters, large accordion arm, and bike kicker. The bike kicker was an exciting module to build as the gears are made from wood and due to the counter balanced weights results in the bike oscillating about a point that looks off center.

The objective of the house left machine is to launch multiple smaller balls onto stage. The machine starts with a hard plastic ball that runs through sections of track. As the ball rolls through the track it activates a set of flags that pop up, hits a set of drums and cymbals that make the ba-dum-tss sound, drops into a helical spiral, and slams into the end of the track pushing out a flag. Once the hard ball has run through the track the launcher module is activated. A rotating wheel picks up what are basically dodge balls one at a time by a rotating wheel and dropped into a chute that rolls them into a ball shooter (think base ball pitching machine) which shoots them onto stage at the frightened citizens of Bikini Bottom.

Coffee Coals

Worked with Richie Bruins of Coffee Coals LLC to ramp up production. Instead of spending months designing production equipment he was able focus on other business needs by outlining production requirements and contacting the design and manufacturing aspects to us.

Major pieces of equipment that were built include a briquetting machine (seen in video below), rotary drier, electrical control box for furnace, and discharge valve.

Video of press running without material

Reloader Tray

The reloader tray uses UHMWPE panels on the top, bottom, and sides to provide a low friction sliding surface that we could seal against.

Reloader Tray

Here the reloader tray UHMWPE parts are being made from a single sheet. All the holes were drill and counter sunk prior to cutting each panel out.

Control box

Ohh wires and flashy lights

Press

Tada, a few hours of design and machining (cough cough, more than a few cough) and you've got yourself a press.

Rotary Drier

This shows the rotary drier being lifted into place for testing. Wet grounds enter on the right side and are feed to the left as the drums rotate. The grounds are dried using exhaust gas from another process.

Furnace control box

The furnace is controlled by a PID controller (off the shelf) which controls power to the heating elements.

Discharge Valve

Pictured are the upper and lower halves of a valve machined from the flakiness that is cast iron.

Z-Axis for Plasma Table

This was an in house project done while upgrading our plasma table. After looking around at off the shelf z-axis assemblies we decided to make one. The design includes a floating head to allow for touch and go cutting, a magnetic break away, and home and limit switches. Nothing revolutionary.

Gantry

Gantry all wired up and ready to cut

Assembly on Gantry

Full gantry assembly without all the wiring

Full Assembly Back.2

Side View

Full Assembly Back

Ohh gears

Full Assembly Front

Alot of aluminum so the tool can raise and lower.

Lateral Bearings

Lateral bearings were added to the gantry to constrain its position.

Ball Nut Housing

Housing for the ball nut, the plate the tools bolt to will mount to the side of this

Guides and Screw

Ground rod and ball screw. The ground rods constrain motion to one axis

Clamp Block

Center hole has a bushing so the ball screw can rotate. The ground rods are clamped into the 2 half circles.

Guides up close

Here you can see the clamp blocks holding the ground rods in place.

Side View

Why go through the trouble? When cutting with a plasma torch the arc voltage, related to the offset between the nozzle and work piece, needs to be held constant as it affects the cut width, angle of cut, and amount of dross (slag) build up. Older machines, such as the one we bought, simply set the cut height at the beginning and just started cutting regardless of warping in the plate (no not that type of warp you Trek nerd). To accommodate for warp in the plate and even allow for cutting corrugated sheets plasma tables use software to monitor the arc voltage which adjusts the cutting height to maintain within a desired range.

Turners Cubes

A project given to beginner machinist. Each cube we make is made of 6061 Aluminum and is handmade on manual machinery (no CNC’s for better or worse).

Drawer Slides

Designed and installed a set of side by side roll out drawers in the back of a Hummer. Customer wanted to be able to store and lock items in trunk while still retaining access to store larger items.

Solar Panel Angle Adjuster

Worked with New Holland of Rochester, IN to develop a product for adjusting the angle of the solar panels that they sell and install. The panels are designed to be adjusted 4 times a year, to track the Sun through the year due to the tilt of the Earth’s axis. The previous method took longer than was desirable and the client was interested in decreasing the time required to adjust the panels to increase the product value. Customer liked the concept presented and a variation was implemented