Close up Copper

Here's a close up of the major mechanics of the device.

That's Italian!

Here's a spaghetti tube that I found at the flea market. I've soldered the top to the bottom and added a lamp part for the new top. Handmade clamps hold the top on.

First time mounted

I finally got all the large pieces together. Looks like a machine gun. Hopefully it will go like one! The wood is temporary.  The copper frame underneath now supports the mechanics.

I heard the news today, Oh-boy!

Sex machine news.

From the article:
On March 9, the St. Mary’s County Sheriff’s Office was notified of a Lexington Park, Maryland woman, reportedly aged 27, who was flown to Prince George’s Hospital for an injury which occurred on March 8, as a result of a sexual act involving the use of a reciprocating saw. The original 911 call was dispatched as a medical emergency.
St. Mary’s County Bureau of Criminal Investigation Detectives conducted an investigation which determined the injury was a result of a consensual act between two parties and no crime was committed.

---

At approximately 1:30 a.m. on Sunday, March 8, units from Bay District Fire Department and Lexington Park Rescue Squad responded to a call for a woman bleeding in Lexington Park.
A man told authorities that he had placed a sex toy on a saber saw blade and that the blade had sawed through the plastic and severely wounded the woman. Trooper 7 transported the woman to PG Hospital. The case remains under investigation at this time. No word on the condition of the woman at this time.

I built a wooden 'tank' with brass ends to hide the electric motor that drives the device. And looking to mount the motor on a nice base I hand made these pedestals. I didn't anticipate the forces the motor would be generating.

So then I made a stronger mount.  Not enough. And here I sorta got into hiding hearts in the  design. I made two of each of these. All made by hand with a scroll saw. In the end I dumped them all. I just didn't like how they looked. I ended up using copper!

Hiding the modern

New wooden barrel to hide the electric motor.

Special delivery

Got this in the mail today.

It's a vac-u-loc adapter to use Doc Johnson sexual aids with power tools. This particular piece is designed to be attached to a drill.

In all my travels I've never come across a woman that wished for a penis spinning at 300 rpm's.

No matter. It's going to work nicely for this application. And save me a lot of time.

A new machine

I've had to do some adjusting to my machine. I wanted to lengthen the stroke so I remounted the crank arm farther out on the wheel. This exaggerated a small flaw in my engineering into a large one . The bottom of the see-saw actually moves in a circular path. Like a child on a swing. This flaw was pointed out to me by friends. So I had to add a universal joint at the bottom of the see-saw. This allows the system to move smoother. And it allowed the overall stroke to reach 4 3/4 inches. Which will suffice. It's still only powered by a drill.

Getting down to business

Everything is coming along nicely. Pictured here is the mock up of the business end of my machine. The left side is the rod that will connect to the machine and the right side, at the two screws, will have the adapter for insertion.

Finally up and fucking, er running

Here it is finally in motion.

Stand back. Lest you get hurt.

It's only powered by my drill for now. It's not very pretty but I'm just trying to figure out the mechanics of it all. Once it works like I want it to I'll get on with the details and beautification.

See saw solution (by the sea shore)

Many different ideas and many failures have lead me to this pivot construction. For the pivot I used my last two donor roller skate bearings. They're housed in the plumbing piece at either end of the pivot shaft. I'm pleased with the smoothness of it's motion. Now I need to make it more stable and look better. Among other things, the wooden blocks are only temporary and the old lamp parts haven't been soldered to the pivot shaft.

Progress

All the big pieces are coming together now for the first time. I think this will clear up some questions about it's design. I still need to create a pivot point on the lamp part (at the red arrows). But I want it to be adjustable and I haven't conjured a way to do that just yet. I'm also afraid to drill into the brass rods because it will weaken them. And there's going to be a lot of force put on them. Failure is not an option.

The wood it's mounted on is only temporary. I hope to replace it with a nicer hardwood version once I've gotten all of the mechanics figured out.

Ride my see saw

I picked this little beauty up at the flea market. It was the swing arm for a banker's style lamp. I hope to use this as my see-saw multiplier.

Let me explain.

I connect the crank wheel to one end of this see-saw and connect the reciprocating shaft to the other. If I set the pivot point in the middle then when the crank moves an inch the rod, in turn, will be moved an inch. If I move the pivot point closer to the crank end then I start to get a multiplier effect. Like leverage but in reverse. As I move the pivot point in this direction the rod will go a greater distance for every inch the crank moves. The negative effect of all of this is that being on the short end of a lever means you have to work harder. So I hope my motor, which I haven't even gotten yet, will be up to the challenge.

All this will be more clear when I put it into practice. Could it be less clear?

Coming together

Just completed a mock-up of the bearing with a stand-in shaft. All of this coming together is really getting me excited...in a crafty way.

Giving it the shaft

After many weeks rummaging at the local flea market I've come up with the shaft for the reciprocating action. It's a collection of lamp parts combined on a 1/4-20 threaded rod. The rod is four feet long but the brass part is only two feet long. I figured I'm going to need a stroke of about 5 inches. (No need to put myself out of work. If you know what I mean.) That means I need at least 5 inches on one side of the first bushing and at least 5 inches on the business end of the rod. Plus I'll need some space between the two bushings. What this means is I'm not sure if this rod is going to be long enough. Will it reach the bed?


***Update: It turns out the biggest problem with this rod is actually that it's too flexible. All the unions between the parts allow too much deflection. So I've moved on to a copper shaft (1/2 plumbing copper). It's far more rigid and can be up to 8 ft long(!).

Getting my bearings

Here are the two completed bearings mounted on their posts. They need a good cleaning and polishing but they'll do for now.

More parts gathered

This is a quick little mock-up using some new parts. I had them laying around in my workshop already, I just hadn't 'located' them.

The long brass item was part of a desktop telescope that came from Crate and Barrel of all places. I'd already used the telescope part to make a Captain's spyglass for my Burning Man costume.

The brass stands with holes in them are of unknown origin. Some type of towel bar type brackets. I hope to put plastic bushings in these to allow the reciprocating shaft to ride back and forth.

Wheel

Here's the piston set up from the old small air compressor. It's only got a stroke of 1 1/4 inches, which, I don't have to tell you, is not enough.( The 1 1/4 inches is the distance the reciprocating rod and sexual apparatus will travel.)

I'll have to look into moving the piston arm mount out farther on the wheel or make some kind of see-saw type multiplier. More on that later.

I'd also like to change the belt to leather but the wheel is toothed so I don't think that's going to happen.

Rolling along

I woke up the other morning unsettled. I came to the realization the night before that the plastic bushings I was hoping to use for the reciprocating shaft were not slippery enough. Too much friction.

I fell asleep trying to think of a pre-made product that had solved this problem for me and could be reconfigured to work on my project. Nothing came to mind. I was stumped.

This same day, purely by chance I was helping my son with his skateboard when the solution struck me. Skateboard bearings! But what to mount them in? And how many? Where have I seen something like this?

After a little mock-up I decided that I needed three bearings in a triangular orientation. In theory this sounded great, but in practice it might be too much precision engineering for a guy with a dremel. But, I managed to find a helper in the form of a copper fitting.


The piece on the left is what I started with. A 3/4 female sweat to 3/4 threaded fitting. Commonly used, which must be why I had two of them in my spare copper box. Using the Dremel, I cut a notch in every other side large enough to slide a skateboard bearing bolted together with a 't' nut and washer for smooth rolling action. The piece on the right is what I ended up with. Notched and ready for the bearings.

Below right is the first one after soldering on the bearing cartridges. I'm quite pleased with myself–it rolls nice and smooth, allowing the 1/2 copper shaft to slide back and forth.

Now I just need to make another one.

Tripod so far

Here's the tripod nearly complete. All brassy, black and cherry. I suspect I'll add a lot of steamy details in the coming weeks. But that will have to wait until after I've solved all of the engineering issues.

Tripod bits

These three items are the metal joining parts for the tripod. The left piece attaches to the main center stack and fits up inside the main head. The right piece holds the legs with a hole in the middle for the center stack. The center piece is the main head.

All three pieces were originally painted with a worn gray camera wrinkle finish. I managed to eventually sand blast that off. (It took me a very long time because the air compressor I have is for finish nailing and only holds one gallon–I'd get two seconds of sandblasting before the compressor kicked on. Wait 5 minutes. Repeat. Luckily the pieces are small.)

I plan to add a little bit of red pin striping to them before it's done.

Builder's note

Kind reader, you may be curious as to what the final product is going to look like. You may want to know what to expect.

I have to admit I'd like to know that too.

I'm not following a sketch or a well thought-out plan. I'm making this up as I go along.

Certain parts of the construction might be left to gather dust while I solve other problems. And some things might move to the top of the list depending on what treasures I find or junk I buy at the local flea market.

I'm an artist with hand tools. If I can't solve my problem with a Dremel, drill or hammer it might be out of my reach.

So, please be patient with me.

Stained

Here are the deconstructed pieces stained. I'm really liking the color combo of the brass, steel and cherry stained wood.

I haven't decided whether to keep the bakelite knobs or replace them. Maybe I'll cover them with leather.

Stained with the first of the cleaned-up hardware

Stripped

Once I disassembled and stripped the tripod I discovered it was cherry wood. Beautiful. They don't make them like that anymore. It was so satisfying to take apart something that was a consumable at some point in time and rebuild it. You can't do that with most products made today.

It's going to look great stained.

Tripod disassembled and stripped.

A leg to stand on

The base for this project is an old camera tripod that I salvaged from a high school dumpster. It has some really great details but was in need of some repair.

I really like this tripod a lot. There's no plastic parts and it has a really nifty saw-toothed gear to raise and lower the head. And, it was free.

The paint was shot so I decided to strip it down and apply a nice stain.

Disassembly

I found this tripod in a trash pile at the local high school. They were apparently cleaning out the photography department. I guess nobody needs that technology now that we have Photoshop. I've already used it once for a fan I built for last year's Burning Man. After stripping it down I noticed it was very nice wood. Probably cherry. They don't build them like that anymore.

First things first

The inspiration for the direction of this project is a small dead air compressor I've been holding on to. It has what I am looking for - turning rotational movement into reciprocating movement.

I tried to get it to work as an air compressor to pressurize a remote piston for this project. But it just didn't generate enough 'oomph'.

Sawing though the dead electric motor to retrieve my prize.