Twitter Box! Shake the box back and forth and the internal weighted piston powers the two pipes on top of the box making a twittering sound! Download and make this project for free in either colour or in mono for your own twitter address. Feel free to convert it for your own use as long as you leave the url www.robives.com/blog/twit visible in the file.
Print out the parts onto thin card (230 micron/230 gsm) Score along the dotted lines and cut out the holes.
You will need a couple of coins as weight for the piston. UK two pence pieces are perfect. They are 25mm in diameter and weight roughly seven grams each.
Begin by constructing the piston. Glue the two parts of the piston inner back to back with the flaps at ninety degrees to each other as shown above.
Glue three sides of the piston as close to the centre line of the piston as you can.
Fold the remaining flap of the piston body over and glue it down. Glue the four tabs down to make a chamfered edge. These chamfered edges are there so that the piston doesn't bind on the internal tabs in the box.
Fold two coins into the coin holder and glue it down.
Glue the coin holder into the inside of the piston. Set the piston to one side so that the glue can dry completely.
Glue the two box ends into place. Make sure that they are the right way up.
Close the box leaving one end open.
Drop the piston into place inside the box, it should be able to move freely up and down inside the box.
Glue the end shut. Keep checking that the piston is still free to move as the glue dries by shaking the box back and forth.
Assemble the two pipe ends as shown. Be as accurate as possible in the construction of the pipe parts. Carefully line up the edges and make sure that there are no holes where air can escape.
Fold round and glue together the pipe body.
The left hand end of the pipe in the picture above is open. On the right hand end of the pipe, fold the flap down and glue it into place.
Glue the pipe end into place. Use the grey areas and the black arrows for alignment. While the glue is still movable, blow through the whistle to check that it works making adjustments if necessary.
Repeat this process with the second pipe
Complete the model by gluing the pipes into place so that the holes in the back of the pipes line up with the holes in the box top.
Once the glue is dry shake the box back and forth and hear it twitter! Once done, convert the box to display your own twitter address then hurry across to twitter and follow twitter.com/robives !
If you like this you might also be interested in these sound based models:
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I knew that today was going to be a busy family day, lots of traipsing about delivering #1 Son here and #1 Daughter there, with that is mind I thought I'd finish off the Twitter Box from yesterday rather than tackling the few remaining issues in the grasshopper escapement project.
I've got to this point and its looking, and sounding, good.
There are a couple of changes that I need to make to the way the tabs on the box ends are lined up so I'll need to put it together one more time. I think I'll probably change the art work a little as well. Once done I'll do a YouTube clip - it's a sound based model so it needs that extra dimension. That'll all have to be tomorrow though because after one more trip to collect #1 Daughter, True Love and I are going out for Tapas with friends. Ah - the joys of family life :-)
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I've been putting together a twitter box. Shake the box and it twitters. I'm planning to put my twitter address on the side and release it as a freebie.
The box has two small, and therefore high pitched, pipes opposing each other. Inside the box is a piston with a coin weight in the middle. Shake the box back and forth and the piston moves forcing air out of each pipe in turn. They are tuned slightly differently, the result is a satisfying warbling tweet. Twitter box!
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S/stan reminded me about the Curious Cuckoo Whistle which I had originally posted on Flying Pig website some time ago. Flying Pig is now entirely dedicated to printed material so I thought that I'd dust off the file and add it to robives.com.
The curious cuckoo whistle is a real novelty in paper engineering. A simple box shaped whistle that produces two distinct notes. The pitch is changed simply by touching the sides of the box.
The file is available for everyone to download for free. Just click on the link. Print the single page out onto thin card (230 micron, 230 gsm) score along the dotted lines then carefully cut out the parts. Accuracy is important on this project, if the parts are mis-aligned or there are holes in the box it probably won't work.
Fold up and glue together the box...
...and glue the tab down
Glue the sides of the box over the top of the box making sure that the parts are aligned.
Glue the saddle into place lining it up with the edge and the base of the box
Let the glue dry completely.
To use the whistle hold it top and bottom between thumb and forefinger of one hand. Touch the burst pattern on the side with finger and thumb from the other hand to change the pitch.
I'm not sure how it works. Anyone got any ideas?
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Octopus parts are cut out and ready for the morning. Meanwhile, I've been experimenting with an on going project, full details of which later.
At the core of the exciting secret project are paper pipes made, in this case, from recycled Amazon packaging. I've tried various length of pipe and it seems that with open ended pipes they need to be at least 10:1 length to width ratio.
The advantage of open ended pipes is that they can be tuned easily. I fit a piece of card into the end as per the picture, it is wedged into place rather than glued so it can be easily moved around. By adjusting the position of the card I can tune up and down just over a semi-tone each way.
The pipe construction is fairly straightforward. A tube folded round and joined with a strip of glued paper. (I didn't use a tab in the card because the thickness of the card makes it difficult to make a proper square section tube. ) The is a 10mm slot 40mm from the end of the tube and an end cap glued into place. A fold of card completes the pipe by making a tapering tube.
The taper works to guide the air flow. Sighting through the end of the air inlet you can see that the lip on the far side of the slot is roughly in line with the middle of the airflow.
Having seen some organ pipes with cut aways at their side I tried that out as well but found that it just makes the sound weaker. I reckon I must have imagined the cut outs.
Extending the fold-over piece so that it covered the sides of the slot restored the sound to its former glory.
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Here's a quick download for you to try. This is a experimental mechanism (if that is the right word) which will be used in a more complete kit at a later date. It does work though and is rather fun!
The swanee whistle is a whistle with variable pitch. Pull the slider in and out and the pitch goes up and down. Download and print out the file from the end of this blog post, it is free for anyone to try.
It is a simple model but must be put together carefully and accurately. I printed out the parts sheet onto slightly heavier card than I usually use. 280 micron.
Score the dotted lines, cut out the air hole then cut out the parts carefully.
Fold the outer tube round and glue it together accurately. Fit the cover over the end of the tube so that the bottom edges of the cover line up with the bottom of the outer tube.
Assemble the inner tube. Set both parts to one side until the glue is completely dry.
Fit the inner tube into the outer tube. It should be a close fit but be free to move in and out.
Blow through the hole between the cover and the outer tube and the whistle should sound. Pull the inner tube in and out and the pitch will change!
You might also be interested in:
 Cuckoo |
 Train Whistle |
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And so at last its back to the raspberry project. Playing with the original prototype it occurred to me that it sounded like a raucous crow. I've redone the original rasp module so that it is 80% of the original size and fitted it into the body seen here.
By blowing through the hole of on the top of the head you make the crow call.
Looks like a likely model as a subscriber exclusive.
I've got some web pages that I need to work on this evening, I'll be doing more work on the crow tomorrow.
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An amazing project for you to download, print out and make.
The train whistle model uses a pair of tuned pipes to make the sound of a train whistling. Print the parts onto card and the bellows onto paper. Follow the illustrated instructions to make your own working paper whistle!
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Download the Cuckoo, print it out onto thin card. Cut out and assemble the pieces following the fully illustrated, clear instructions and you make you own working Cuckoo! Pump the two bellows and the working pipes make a realistic Cuckoo sound whilst the two cuckoos pop out of their paper homes.
See the model in action here.
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