I often watch videos on science projects that I think my kids might get a kick out of doing. This morning I came across one that might be genius to show off the maker space and the wonderful people of our community. Building this includes 3d printing, Arduino, soldering, oscilloscope, and more. I imagine this would be wonderful to have at maker fairs, booths at events, around MakeICT for maker Mondays, and open house events.
Acoustic levitation. Apparently, you 3d print a bracket to hold a bunch of small transducers (speakers), assemble, build the electronics, and play a certain sound wave that allows you to place things in the zones of confinement (nodes).
Imagine this levitation thing holding a visible liquid or small object mid-air with no sound that can be heard by humans. This would grab eyes, grab the imagination of kids and adults, a great project to show off what can be done at MakeICT…
Everything looks very light weight thats being levetated… wonder what the max weight it can do. I’d like to see it levitate something in the 4-5g range.
Hutchinson makerspace brought one to one of our makerfair. Its really cool! It’s been on my to do list for awhile, I want to use it professionally for some stuff.
With some experimentation and possibly more info from the University in the UK who put out this info, I bet a larger version could be built. I can imagine that with larger transducers (speakers) or a lot more you could push a harder sound wave with a stronger confining node. The geometry of the mount would require to be maintained while expanded to hold larger or more… I think someone could design a more appealing housing for this as well, make it look factory made. When I saw this I immediately dreamed about my friends at MakeICT and what their skills could do with this idea. David Springs can make an ugly pig pretty, James, Christian, Rusty, and others have skills in all of the areas required to make something like this a professional product. Skills I do not have as well as time I don’t have…
