Awesome Mechanical

The Boston Typewriter Orchestra is hoping to score a spot on NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert. Their 2024 submission to the popular show is this mechanical tour de force titled Selectric Funeral, a rhythmic and enigmatic track performed on four vintage typewriters, bells, and effects pedals. It’s also their first song to incorporate an electric typewriter.

Yarro Studios’ mechanical dice spinner is a modern spin on a vintage gadget. Push its button, and its flywheels go spinning. Let go, and two random numbers appear in its windows. The Dice-o-Matic is made from aluminum and comes in D20/D20, D10/D10, D12/D8, D6/D4, and D6/D6 with pips. There’s also a Zoltar Dice-o-Matic decision-maker.

Mathematician Henry Segerman is back with another fascinating mechanism – a six-axis rack. It’s built with a dozen gears and sticks that look like long, green crinkle fries. The combination of parts locks the structure together, and moving any stick makes all of the others move. Like Henry’s other designs, you can download the 3D printer files Printables.

Research Fellow and Imagineer Lanny Smoot is only the second Disney cast member to be inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. The first was Walt Disney. In this video, Lanny shows off a few of his incredible creations, including an amazing interactive “Holotile” floor that moves beneath your feet.

Auto mechanics hear all kinds of weird stories about cars and the problems they’re having. Just Rolled In offers up another amusing video of strange sounds that cars are making, then follows them up with the description provided by each customer. Our favorite is the defective blend door actuator, which sounds exactly like the intro to Hot for Teacher.

While they’re not exactly state-of-the-art, mechanical displays can be quite fascinating to watch in action. In this video from Japan’s Karakuri channel, they show off a 3D-printed machine that displays digits on a pair of 7-segment units by pushing its keys. It has 213 parts in all, and no electrical components. Turn English captions on.

Normally, if you want a guitar and a bass, those are two instruments. Inspired by a weird prototype guitar shown in the Beatles Get Back documentary, Mattias Krantz engineered this unique guitar with a cylindrical neck that rotates beneath its player’s digits, allowing its player to switch instantly between guitar and bass strings. It’s also got a motor drive.

Those of us who feel the need to fidget are always looking for different ways to keep our hands and minds occupied. ZenMech’s TK01 is a unique fidget toy that moves like a tiny tank tread. Roll it along your desk or flip it around in your hand for a cool tactile sensation. Available with plastic or stainless steel tracks.

Inspired by fellow creators munimuni Bekkan and Brick Experiment Channel, LEGO builder Dr. Engine thought making his collection of movable LEGO bridges would be fun. Each of the eight motorized bridge designs works in a different way to provide passage for boats beneath and vehicles on the roadway overhead.

While we have gotten some enjoyment from robots playing music, they’ll never replace human artistry. Engineer Michael Kuzma created his self-playing guitar to see how far he could push electromechanical music-making. Samurai Guitarist sat down with Kuzma to hear about its development and to listen to what the robot is capable of.

W&M Levsha shows how they made a cool gizmo that takes the place of a 6-sided die. The brass gadget is about the size of a pocket watch and has a lever that spins a flywheel that’s engraved with six dice faces. When the lever pops up place, a mechanism stops the wheel to reveal a random number.

Joerg Sprave is known for his inventive slingshot designs. He’s also into unique weapons. In this video, he shows off a neat custom knife he built with a rack-and-pinion mechanism. It pops open and closes quickly with the flick of a lever. He’s sending the prototype to a professional knifemaker to see if it can be refined and put into production.

Mathematician and maker Henry Segerman shows off more of his fascinating interactive mechanisms. This series of interlocking straight gears uses a rack-and-pinion mechanism to transmit motion. Henry posted the models to 3D print your own recursive racks on Printables.

Most of us rely on our phones or watches to tell us the time. But there’s something just so magical about using letting a mechanical bird announce the time instead. Clock Shop posted this video of a roomful of cuckoo clocks sounding off in sequence. We like to imagine they’re all saying “Here!” like an avian roll call.

Artist Uri Tuchman is an expert at building unique devices with a Steampunk aesthetic. This time, he built a pair of mechanical wooden hands that appear to type on an imaginary keyboard. It’s part of a larger installation headed to the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. Ironically, Uri broke his hand after he completed the project.

Player pianos have been around since the 1890s. Modern models use electronics and servos, but vintage ones use a pedal-powered pneumatic system that forces air through holes in the music roll, actuating pushrods that move its hammers. Chris Plaola shows off an example of this Victorian-era engineering genius.

We swear by our Keychron mechanical keyboard’s build quality and clicky Gateron G Pro switches. The Q11 QMK offers an adjustable split keyboard design with hot-swappable keys, a hefty machined aluminum body, and a rotary encoder knob. There’s support for MacOS and Windows, and QMK/VIA programmability.

DanCreator has made some pretty amazing cardboard objects over the years. Now he’s gone and built not one, but three full-size vending machines out of the corrugated brown paper. Not only do they look like the real thing, but the soda fountain, can dispenser, and instant ramen machine are fully functional.

Artist Ross McSweeney created these fascinating mechanical coasters. There are four smooth-spinning patterns, including geometric shapes, gears, and a bicycle. Their outer gears touch when placed next to each other so that you can spin multiple designs simultaneously. You can purchase the SVG files for laser cutting on Etsy.

The Air75 is the slimmest mechanical keyboard we’ve seen to date. It features a 75% ANSI layout, low-profile PBT keycaps, hot-swappable switches, RGB lighting, and an aluminum frame. It supports 2.4Ghz, Bluetooth, and wired connections, and is compatible with the NuFolio V2, a carrying case, tablet, and phone stand.

In mythology, Sisyphus was a man punished for cheating death by having to roll a boulder uphill only to have it roll back down as he neared the top. Artist Ross McSweeney created this amazing laser-cut wooden automaton that animates the core of the story. You can purchase template files for the sculpture on his Etsy shop.

Wood Marble Machine builds exactly what their YouTube channel name says. This modular machine carries steel ball bearings up a double escalator and then rolls them back down through a series of ramps, bowls, and a spinning pachinko board before doing it all over again. The sounds it makes are wonderfully soothing.

Performance gaming accessory maker Finalmouse is teasing a visually stunning keyboard. The Centerpiece has a screen behind its see-through keys, and can display interactive skins which change with each keypress. It has custom Gateron mechanical switches and an on-board CPU/GPU. Drops in early 2023 for $349.