Hey Gang. I missed you too.
During our hiatus, I began a new hobby. Sort of. You see, as a kid I LOVED playing with Spirograph kits and making tons of loopy drawings.
As and adult, I’ve grown interested in mechanical, aided, and automated drawing.
And while I don’t have the space to build my own drawing machine, I do have the enough space to house the Super Spirograph 50th Anniversary Set.
And let me tell you- It is… good.
It’s so good that I started making goofy videos of me using the thing.
Like this one:
It’s super-fun to make these. But what I’m really hoping to do is to make and/or buy one of these puppies.
The Duograph is like some kind of mega Spirograph… of the gods. And I wants one.
If you, dear reader, have a fav automated, aided or mechanical drawing apparatus that you fancy, tip me off in the comments.
I had a Spirograph in my youth (I got it for christmas after weeks of hinting / begging). I loved it, although it drove me crazy that my designs were never as perfectly regular as the ones in the guidebook. I wondered constantly, how did they make their ball-point pens leave such perfect lines?
I also loved the harmonographs that you see so often in science museums. OMSI (in Portland, OR) has a particularly well-built one that could probably keep a steady line during an earth tremor. I always wanted to figure out how to make some of the particularly florid examples that they displayed next to the machine, but my visits to Portland were too infrequent to investigate this properly.
The Duograph looks like a lovely desktop-friendly alternative to a harmonograph.
I love this.
Here’s an online simulator, if you’re interested in falling down that rabbit hole. 😀
https://www.geogebra.org/m/ukXWe56e
Thanks Steve! This is wonderful.
Fun stuff! I recently started building a large drawing machine– now I am learning how to tune it for specific effects. you can message me for video..