How the Muting System Works - Marble Machine X #112
Welcome everyone to Wintergatan Wednesdays problem-solving episode 400 million.
If you listen to this mechanical noise...
[sharp noises]
You hear it's quite agressive.
[cranking and slamming noises]
Today I'm gonna try to get rid of that mechanical noise. It will arrive far after the instruments are playing so—
DZSH— [registrator slams], it will be a little bit annoying mechanical noise.
You see this one has a bolt here:
[bolt clicks]
This is the guiding bolt that runs in this slot,
to keep this lined up and it's also these bolts that makes this big sound.
[bolt clicks louder]
Because the 3D-print is stopped by this bolt.
So these bolts are super important for the lining up of the grey sliding parts.
I have to find a solution to keep the gray parts
straight, lined up over the hole underneath them.
And I need to find a stop that stops them without making this huge bang.
[bolt bangs]
I actually have room underneath here to put this massive flat bar...
and have that as acting as a stop for all the gray parts at once.
[♪ Wintergatan - Work Music In F Major (Unreleased) ♪ ]
[angle grinder buzz]
[high-pitched buzz]
Oh, I also see some boston screws not being loctited here.
See, this one is coming off. That's... not good.
[registrator clicks]
So, good, these are aligned perfectly over the openings, so no marble will get stuck underneath them.
I need to open each and one of these boston screws and I need to dab some
permanent Loctite in here. And I'm gonna make it world tour safe and safe to record albums on.
Putting Loctite in 38 bolts...
sounds so much faster than what it actually is. [laughs]
Okay, so now when we've started on this Loctite mission
I thought I should just walk the line all the way and also take care of these screws.
Per channel I have... 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, six places to add a dab of Loctite.
First I put a tiny dab of Loctite in here...
And then I have this boston screw.
And then I'm putting a dab on top here.
And then we have an M3 set screw. It's clamping down on the boston screw.
A little dab inside the boston screw. This link goes on...
This set screw is clamping the boston screw.
Just make sure the links are loose so they're not loctited in place.
So a short M4 hex bolt,
a tiny click of Loctite on the threads.
Now I can tighten this really tight.
Repeat, thirty-eight.
[♪ Wintergatan - Work Music In F Major (Unreleased) ♪ ]
[angle grinder whirrs]
Okay, I did a quick sound check with this felt. [muted knocking on metal]
And it's just too hard.
Then I put this felt on, and I started to run out of space and I was like: "Argh..."
I constantly had the idea that I should be able to make a simpler solution, and I think I might have found it.
Okay!
Here's our savior.
[Martin sings a single note]
So instead of this... This.
[bolt clicks] [screw rattles]
Then I'm gonna take this small little piece of foam right in there.
And listen now... [screw rattles]
"Et voilá!"
This is just a simplest solution ever,
because this part doesn't even need to be glued in — its held in place automatically.
[muted bolt clicks]
So compare that to:
[sharp bolt clicks]
Now I just have to cut 38 of these.
So this solution has, like, zero impact on any part. There's no glue,
completely reversible if this would turn out to not work somehow.
All channels are padded,
and before testing, I thought that I take the opportunity to explain to you exactly
how this muting system works, because once the marble divider is on here,
you won't be able to see this like this ever again.
Here we have six levers: vibraphone, kick drum, snare drum...
hihat, cymbal, bass guitar.
The movement is transmitted from my lever here, both to this row here and onto this row up here.
So when the vibraphone is activated when it's playing, we have a physical connection...
going on over here. So when this is lifted...
Now you can see the channel is moving.
As soon as I let go of the lever, that connection is broken. So now I can move this...
But nothing is happening.
Same here for the kick drum channel.
Now it's not activated, as soon as I let go of this...
The channel starts moving.
I'm really proud of the fact that I've managed to have one lever control both this and this row.
And I put so much effort into the muting system,
just because it was the muting system that failed on the first machine.
This system has actually worked since the very beginning. I never had to change...
any of the designs for this.
So, all the channels are now in a muted position,
which means we will only see the registrators move, but none of the channels are activated.
Look in the back:
So, only the registrations were moving — nothing else.
Let's activate the big vibraphone, and this channel.
Uh... this channel.
Let's do the opposite!
Here you can see the hooks that is the breaking and activation of the mechanical connection.
[metallic slam]
So that's what happens when we mute an instrument group, and that's what happens when we activate it.
You can see if a programming pin activated this, it will pull the channel.
And when it goes down, it will not pull the channel.
This system is also designed to handle the following edge case:
Let's say the instrument loop is muted [metallic slam] like that.
But this is still moving due to the registrators being hit by the programming pins.
So imagine a pin is just hitting this, and at the same time I'm unmuting this instrument group.
Then we have this situation, but when the pin let's go
Everything sort out itself.
That's why we have these diagonals on these hooks. It's basically only for that specific edge case.
Let's try to cut some registrators, shall we?
I'm super nervous to mess up this expensive PUM Delrin material.
[♪ Wintergatan - Helping Out In Eb Major (Unreleased) ♪ ]
[CNC machine whirrs]
[muffled speaking]
[Delrin blocks fall onto wood]
[CNC machine whirrs]
So Toby came in and saw me cutting and asked: "Do you have a fence?" and I was like: "Yeah!"
And then he said: "I think you're gonna get some safety comments if you don't use a fence."
And I'm gonna be totally honest, I never thought about using the [blows away dust]
fence for safety like this.
Yeah, being the stupidest person in the room is the best situation you can find yourself in,
'cause that's where you're learning.
[♪ Wintergatan - Helping Out In Eb Major (Unreleased) ♪]
[Martin humming a melody] [♪ PewDiePie - B*tch Lasagna ♪]
I have all my registrators, and I have all my fingers. Thanks Toby.
I am attaching the registrators here and they have the same
color code as the droplet knobs on the front of the machine.
[cranking noise]
[registrators clicking]
So all this work started with some few channels being stuck, and me wanting to fix this mechanical sound.
We have loctited every single screw in this whole assembly, also back there. And...
we have fixed the sound, and it's time to put the marble divider back in place.
So everything you have seen me done so far is, like, work that is un... invisible from the outside. So,
there's so much... problem solving going on...
in this project, that is really not visible on the finished product.
[ ♪ Wintergatan - Proof Of Concept ♪ ]
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Thank you so much everyone who are supporting, and thank you for believing in this crazy dream,
that is the Marble Machine X, and thank you so much for watching. See you on the next one!