Hypnotic Plotter

Published on 26 Jun 2021. Written by Bheru Singh

About the project

Harmonographs are mechanical devices that draw pictures by swinging pendulums, believed to be invented in 1844 by Scottish mathematician Hugh Blackburn. Hypnotic plotter is a 3-pendulum rotary harmonograph

Read more..

Out of Three pendulums, lateral pendulums swing back and forth at right angles to each other i.e one side to side and another front to back with arms connecting to a pen.

A third pendulum which is a rotary pendulum moves the paper by swinging on any axis or in circular motions or irregular motions which gives a wide variety of designs and is easy to build

Plywood,Lumber,Wood boards,Wooden dowels,Hardboard or plywood,Metal pipe nipples,Metal pipe bushings,Steel clamps,Metal plates,Large metal washer,Screw eye for pen lifter,Screws,thin nails,Weights,Balsa sticks,plotter basically pen, String,Rubber bands,Paper,Miscellaneous

To raise and lower the pen gently without disturbing the motion of the pendulums, insert a 30? dowel into a hole near the center of the table, just far enough from the paper platform that it won’t be hit by it.

Set up your paper, add a pen, and swing away! Start with the weights attached near the bottom of each pendulum so their frequencies are nearly in unison. Swing each pendulum so the pen is moving above the paper, and then gently lower the pen

To experiment differengt designs, adjust the height of the weights on the pendulums, or add more or less weight.Adjust a pendulum’s weight height to change its swinging frequency.

The frequency of a pendulum varies with the inverse of the square root of its length, so to swing twice as fast, the length between the fulcrum and its center-of-mass would need to be 1/4 of the original length.

Each time you swing the pendulums to make a new drawing, the relative phases and amplitudes of each pendulum will vary.Swing the rotary pendulum and the lateral pendulums in a circular shape Then swing the lateral pendulums in phase to make a diagonal line.

So with different weights, angles, arm lengths, frequency, amplitude and motions, good number of hypnotic profiles can be plotted and experimented

Kit required to develop Hypnotic Plotter:

• Shaft
• Universal Joint
• Dead Weight
• Strings
• Table
• Miscellaneous

Technologies you will learn by working on Hypnotic Plotter:

• Linkage and Mechanism
• Plotting
• Swing Angles

Any Questions?