Growing up, my next-door neighbors had a giant metal windchime that would make sweet music every time a breeze flew through the metal rods and struck the clapper in the middle of the windchime. What fascinated me about the windchime as a child was how the windchime would make music seemingly without any outside force or human intervention.
Recently at Fluxspace, I was able to make my own windchime! I started off by gathering my “metal rods”, which were thin metal squares made to be used as paint swatches but were given to Fluxspace to be used for awesome creations. I then measured the height/width and diagonal length of a metal square to figure out where the squares would have to collide to make the most noise. I decided to rotate the squares by 90 degrees and use them as diamonds. I found that the halfway point between the diagonals would be the perfect place for the diamonds to strike each other and lowering them by half of their height each diamond would make a super cool spiral pattern in the windchime. I measured out the lengths of the strings that would attach the diamonds to the base. My design was a double rainbow, so I repeated this process twice: starting with red at a 3-inch string length and adding half of the diagonal length to each colored diamond after the first until I reached purple.
Once I had the strings tied to their corresponding diamond, I tied the other end of the string to an eye hook and used pliers to close the gaps in the eye hooks. To make the base, I laser-cut two circles with diameters of 8 inches from sheets of wood. I then super glued these two wooden circles together over night. While waiting for the wood to dry, I made a prototype circle base out of cardboard. To figure out where the eye hooks would be attached to the base, I used a protractor to find and draw out 12 dots three inches away from the center of the base and all 30 degrees apart.
The next day, I traced my dots from the cardboard base on to the wooden base by poking through the cardboard base with a pencil. I then screwed the eye bolts into the wooden base (this part was very noisy). To make the clapper, I 3d printed a pot of gold (to go with the double rainbow theme) and attached it to a string that was half the length of the longest string. Then, I tied the other end to another eye bolt and screwed that into the center of the base. On the opposite side of the base, I attached a larger eyebolt through the center to be held up on the ceiling. Using the 3d printer, laser cutter, and a whole lot of math, I was able to create a super awesome windchime.
Project Examples
Have a solution to this challenge you want to share? Take a photo or video of your prototype, post it on social media, and don’t forget to tag us @fluxspace_io
