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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