Jake has posted pics and info on Steampunk Workshop of another maker’s build of his Wimshurst machine, a project featured in MAKE, Volume 17. Jake writes:
…This is a very elegant machine and some of Bruce’s innovations make it superior to my own!
Here’s what the builder, Bruce, says about his version:
These are some differences in my machine from the construction article. The drive bands are 1/8″ black braided cord with white strands inside from an army surplus store with the ends melted together. The current Leyden jars are plastic toothpick containers on top of pieces of florescent light tube protector material salvaged from one of several protector tubing jars that shorted between the foil edges. The collector supports are pieces of small size PVC tubing with brass couplings hammered into the ends and glued with thin CA glue. The set screw collars are made from nylon spacers and 6-32 brass screws.
From MAKE magazine:
Check out MAKE, Volume 17: The Lost Knowledge issue! Buy your copy in the Maker Shed, Subscribe to MAKE, or Access the Digital Edition (if you’re already a subscriber).
In Volume 17, MAKE goes really old school with the Lost Knowledge issue, featuring projects and articles covering the steampunk scene — makers creating their own alternative Victorian world through modified computers, phones, cars, costumes, and other fantastic creations. Projects include an elegant Wimshurst Influence Machine (an electrostatic generator built entirely from Home Depot parts), a Florence Siphon coffee brewer, and a teacup-powered Stirling engine. This special section also covers watchmaking, letterpress printing, the early multimedia art of William Blake, and other wondrous and lost (or fading) pre-20th-century technologies.
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