Do you keep in mind these levitating lamps that have been all the fad some years in the past? Floating gentle bulbs, globes, you identify it. After the preliminary craze of pricey desk toys, a wave of low cost kits grew to become obtainable from the standard suspects. [RobSmithDev] wished to make a commemorative lamp for the Amiga’s fortieth anniversary, however… it was lacking one thing. Positive, the levitating red-and-white “boing” ball appeared good, however within the well-known demo, the ball is spinning at a jaunty angle. You’ll be able to’t do this with mag-lev… not with no hack, anyway.
The hack [RobSmith] selected is kind of easy: the levitator is working within the traditional method, however fairly than mount his “boing ball” on to the magnet, the magnet is glued to a Dalek-lookalike plinth. The plinth holds a small motor, which is mounted at an angle to the bottom. Because the base stays vertical, the motor’s shaft gives the jaunty angle for the 3D-printed boing ball’s rotation. The motor is powered by the identical coil that got here with the equipment to energy the LEDs– certainly, the unique LEDs are reused. An attention-grabbing twist is that the inductor alone was not in a position to present sufficient energy to run even the motor by itself: [Rob] had so as to add a capacitor to tune the LC circuit to the ~100 kHz frequency of the bottom coil. Whereas needing to tune an antenna shouldn’t be any type of shock, neither we nor [Rob] have been considering of this as an antenna, so it was a neat element to study.
With the exhausting drive-inspired base — which eschews insets for self-tapping screws — the ensuing lamp makes a beautiful homage to the Amiga Pc in its fortieth yr.
We’ve seen these mag-lev modules earlier than, however the impact is all the time mesmerizing. After all, if you wish to skip the magnets, you possibly can nonetheless faux to levitate a lamp with tensegrity.
