I'm nearly up to 300 followers on Twitter @robives. Follow me on twitter to hear when I've published a new blog post or when I've come across something interesting on the interwebs.
Make the twittering box below to remind you of the address!
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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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Imagine my surprise when a giant or-goat appeared in my twitter stream! Matt Tancock - @mtancock posted this fantastic specimen to match with his previous and-goat. Nice work Matt!
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I've finally got round to updating the background on my twitter page. Rather than the twitter cloud effect, it now features a cup of coffee, some paper doughnuts, my notebook and me with a model. Far more appropriate I'm sure you will agree!
You can follow me on twitter at www.twitter.com/robives where I send out notifications of new blog posts and (very) occasionally comment on other stuff.
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