Vibraphone Funnels Completed

Okay, I've just run into a little problem.

Do you see this gap here, between these two parts?

That should not be there, these parts should be flush.

And, from an aesthetic point of view it's not a big issue.

But, I don't want the top wires to hit each other on the backstroke

Because listen to this sound

When they don't hit

I need to adjust the springsteel somehow

To remove this gap down here

So now with the larger holes, we have some possibility to adjust the position of the springsteel

The gap looks great now

The springsteel is sliding under the screws here

After a while it slides loose

So, after a while, this gap is returning

We need another solution

But wait, what is this!

Tim Keller & The Broken Endmills have just come out with an extra bonus track

The hole punch jig!

Wow

And a lot of spring steel blanks

Okay, let's listen to Tim Keller and The Broken Endmills performing 'The Hole Punch Jig'

[upbeat music]

I mean, you can really hear like the sadness in the music

Coming from all that hard work with stainless steel

Already did two out of three today

[upbeat ragtime music]

[serene piano music]

This is another hit machined by Tim Keller & The Broken Endmills

And it's a PMMA pipe cover

So the PMMA pipe
goes in here and it's locked down with two set screws there

and as you can see, the fit is pretty tight, which makes it important that when I weld these on here

I don't want to make this inner diameter smaller in the fittings

I'm gonna do my
absolute best to avoid welding distortion

so I machine this pocket in
the plywood since these are protruding

above the surface, so the plywood goes
down around the pipes like that

that fit is spot on

so to avoid distortion I'm going to

limit the amount of heat I allow getting
into this part so I'm gonna weld very

hot and as short as I can and only at
the few spots.

So here you can see that the heat has not spread at all outside the weld,

which is great.

Here you can see I messed up somehow,

but overall this is much cleaner than I normally do.

Let's check the banana wobble.

Considering we're only
welding on one side, that could have been much worse than this,

and I can easily bend that
out.

Just a little bit like that.

Let's check the id: the inner diameter.

Ah, that looks pretty good still.

I do not have a 22 millimeter drill,

so I taped some sanding
paper to a smaller drill.

Let's see if this works...

There we go.

I've been spending quite a lot of time off-camera

to make the decision, where this part is gonna go on the machine.

And initially it was supposed to be supported on the sides here,

but now I know where it goes and now I know

I can make a bracket that comes from the
top like this.

So I'm actually going to

decrease the length of this part just to
save some visual space.

So I'm scribing a 10 millimeter line here,

I'm gonna do a
savage cut.

Thank you my friends!

Cheer up, will ya!

Haha!

Yeah!

Yes!

So I'm gonna test a couple of
notes and see how they're hitting.

yeah, we're on the low side;

we're hitting all the way up here, on the lip

and no note is close to this.

I got the lip up higher by bending the pipe.

So center-to-center of these vibraphone
plates is 55 millimeters,

which means that the funnels only have 55 millimeter of space

and we designed them to be smaller than 55

so this one is right now 53 at the top and 53

but that's a little bit too wide

I figured out a way to make
them smaller

48 millimeter on this funnel,

and 49, which creates a little more air between the funnels.

This is a mistake I make in CAD all the time.

two millimeters feels like plenty of space in CAD

in real life two millimeters is that much space.

So, 53...

52... 54...

So, if we can get this down to 50, I'm pretty happy.

And I figured out the savage way;

I'm just taking my clamp

I'm just pushing the wire together,

and
then I'm just bending these tops out,

flaring them out a little bit to make
the top rail straight.

Already that looks great.

Check where we are.
Oh, 46

47. I went ambitious in front of the camera

So you can see that the right side lines up perfectly,
but it doesn't line up here.

But I like how the back
looks. I'm going to bend this rail out a lttle bit

47

48

47

47

And the design of the funnel looks intact.

So I'm lining it up with a set screw, clamping a funnel to the PMMA pipe

and look at that

five millimeter clearance that's all we need

[upbeat music]

I have the feeling that I've wasted my
time on this one.

I had several designs that I wanted to do

and I chose this one.

And I think I want to do another design.

So the other design was 11 individual small
tracks hanging in the air more... more

visually... interesting I think,

but anyway I'm gonna make this thing a little more pliable

by just take a face cut on the backside.

I'm just gonna remove as much material as I can

so I can turn this corner into a spiraling angle.

so now I can create this twist

that I need to have a slope down here

I still don't like this solution.

let's put it on the machine

I hate how this looks

I wanted it to be like a little bit
childish in the front of the machine

But this is not going to stay long I can
tell you

No resonators now

hahaha

Brilliant

I wanted to show the melody here with
the marbles coming out

and on the back of the machine
I'm doing the same with the drums

but I'm happy that this is not working because

then I know I have to make something more beautiful.

it's hard to catch them on camera,

but the vibraphone is at a 7 degree angle,

and this line down here, where the funnel base is

are picking up this 7 degree tilt that is picked up here, here, here and here

I love that design aspect.

Let's see if the funnels are flaring out the way I want them to

You can see the melody played in the funnels

[VIBRAPHONE BEATING]

[VIBRAPHONE BEATING]

there are some occasions when the
marbles get some kind of super hit

and goes like twice as high as normal

there

there

Okay my friends, time for some closing thoughts.

this was meant to be a victorious moment where I felt that we crossed the finish line on this huge monster project,

but there are two reasons that make me feel a little bit
deflated at this moment.

it was kind of ominous that my main inspiration for the
marble machines came from a video called

"pipe dreams" by Animusic

and if we look for the definition of 'pipe dream' it says

"an unattainable or fanciful hope or
scheme".

Similar is: fantasy, illusion,

delusion, daydream, reverie, mirage - that's my favorite, chimera and pie in the sky.

There are two aspects about these
funnels that makes me feel deflated

number one is that they make a lot of sound.

A lot of people in the team asked me about this and I said

Ah, it's not gonna be a problem because I love the design so much

I think we can fix it but I'm tired of fixing things in the aftermath

I learned enough about designing that you should fix things in the design.

The second thing that makes me deflated

is that there are some marbles that make some kind of super jump of the vibraphone

and bounces like ten centimeter higher

and if I would have only the sound issue with these funnels I would have felt better,

but the fact that some marbles are escaping the funnels altogether,

it doesn't feel like two step forward and one step back.

It feels like the opposite

I want to thank you for the beautiful reactions on last week's video about focus

I have been working really efficiently this week,

but I have been falling down into old
patterns sometimes.

I've been watching Sandy Munro tearing the model Y apart.

It is very very educating and interesting

to see him comment
on the design and manufacturing of a whole car.

I can't even start to think
about what Sandy Munro would have said

about the design of the marble funnels.

He would have... He would have not liked them

from several fundamental
engineering principles, I can tell you that.

I guess it's inevitable when you
work so long on a project that you learn

so much, that you become critical to your
earlier ideas.

I will make these funnels work.

But the main feeling I have today
is that I'm tired of cleaning up after my own mess.

But now something that makes
me pumped:

We have started a Spanish Wintergatan YouTube channel

It's called
Wintergatan ESP and it's Carlos Montoro,

the guitar luthier from Madrid,

who makes my voice - but in Spanish - he's an amazing Spanish Martin.

So tell all your spanish-speaking friends to check out Wintergatan ESP..

So far we have one subscriber and six views and it's kind of fun to start from scratch

and we reached 8,000 supporters through YouTube

memberships and patreon that is just
insane

I want to thank every single one of you personally for your continuous support

and thank you everyone who is watching this series.

Thanks for sticking with me come rain come shine

see you next week on Wintergatan Wednesdays