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MIDI Music Box: why plastic fingers?
smartperson Posted: 12 Nov 2019, 07:50 PM
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Reading through https://mitxela.com/projects/musicbox, and it's an amazing project.

Why did you use brass and acrylic together for each note? Why not have the thinner brass wire get fed through a laser-cut guide, just like the acrylic fingers are in the current design?

Maybe one could even put a little rubber "bumper" on the tip of each brass wire to have it engage the protruding tabs. I'm trying to avoid using superglue there, since that makes the mechanism feel extremely delicate to me.

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DAVID Posted: 12 Nov 2019, 10:26 PM
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I love mcus

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i think that Alex (aka Mitxela) used that method because of reliability. If he instead opted for removing the acrylic fingers and just leave the brass pieces alone, he needed to use a contraption that could align this wire to trigger the notes, i will think that over time those wire will bend or they will just not trigger the notes because they are to thin

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mit Posted: 14 Nov 2019, 02:03 PM
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yeah whatever

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QUOTE (smartperson)
Reading through https://mitxela.com/projects/musicbox, and it's an amazing project.

Why did you use brass and acrylic together for each note? Why not have the thinner brass wire get fed through a laser-cut guide, just like the acrylic fingers are in the current design?

Maybe one could even put a little rubber "bumper" on the tip of each brass wire to have it engage the protruding tabs. I'm trying to avoid using superglue there, since that makes the mechanism feel extremely delicate to me.

I wanted the fingers to be as wide as possible so that meant no guide (apart from the fingers on either side). The wafers have some side-to-side play so if the fingers were any thinner there'd be a chance of going around them, instead of pushing. It takes a fair bit of force to pluck the note.

I've not had any problem with the superglue holding up, the musicbox is still going strong and probably played at least 1000 midi files by now.

I'm sure there are plenty of other ways of building it though, give it a shot and see what happens.

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