Tom's POVRay Pendulum Man
The picture above was made with this
demo POV file and
this toy object POV file
About this Object
This is a model of the Pendulum Man toy, made by a company called
"Hog Wild", which is supposed to demonstrate
chaos. There's a magnet on the back and you can spin it. The POV
object is grouped such that you can make each of the parts spin with
an appropriate rotate command.
Specs
The magnet is oriented to stick to a wall in the X-Y plane at Z=0,
protruding out in the -Z direction, and is centered around the Z axis.
This is shown in the picture above. Each of the arms in the cross
is 3 units long to the center of the secondary axles, except the top
which is 5 units to the center of the "head".
The seconary arms are all 1 and 7/8 units to the center of their terminating
discs. The "head" and other discs have a diameter of 0.4 units, and
the main magnet in the center has a diameter of 0.68 units.
Problems and Future Work
It'd be nice to turn this into a macro, that lets you specify the rotations
to use.
The real pendulum man has different parts that can be added or removed
from the central axis of rotation. I should do the same.
The beams are simple squares here, but T shaped on the real toy.
The round parts all have hex nut weights visible in the back, which isn't
shown here. The back also has a magnet in it, not shown. Basically,
the back is unfinished.
Copyright
This web page, the associated image(s), and POV files are all copyright
2004 by Thomas A. Fine (that's me!). I hereby grant free distribution
rights, including for-profit uses, in full or in part, provided only
that copyright notices are preserved and due credit is given.
WARNING: This POV object is based on a real object. I'm not aware of
any legal issues related to the design of that real object. It is the
user's responsibility to cover your ass.
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