I've built the keyboard keys and the struts that support them. Oddly - to my eyes - there's no '1' key! This seems to have been a flagrant oversight. These have all been extremely simple, the keys almost all being exactly the same, while their supporting struts are broadly similar throughout.
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| The black colour is just to make the keys easier to distinguish. |
It's not immediately obvious, but this structure is extremely complex. The 'base' the hammers sit in describes a curve. The hammers themselves each rotate slightly as they get to to the periphery; lastly, the keyheads themselves rotate.
All of this together is incredibly complicated to construct. It's only thanks to my wife that I was able to crack the nut - I had been trying to work out a way to build this as you see it now - from above, taking into account all of the angles. Wife - brilliant, as always - pointed out that the hammers are not as complex as I'd first though they were and, instead of building them on a slant, I should build them as if they were. That led to my finally working out how to make this structure. Nearly finished:
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In the image above I have accidentally orientated the hammers the wrong way round; however, I hope it's relatively clear. I need to figure out how to rotate the hammer-heads correctly and I will be able to slot this into place. Each hammer is an individual piece meaning that, in theory, I could animate the typewriter such that a keypress triggered a hammer-press. Fun stuff!
Tomorrow we are taking the photographs into which we will be compositing our objects. This means I am bringing the typewriter in, to get a good reference photo of it in situ. A fellow student is modelling old camera of mine, so I will be heavily laden down!
I'll post another update soon detailing this week's lessons - on Light.
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