Monday, September 29, 2008

Question and Answer with Dan

Q. What's a guy to do with a box full of dirty, dull, dingy geodes?

A. Pull out the old turntable, remove BeeGee's record, cover turn table with sandpaper, tape a ruler to the arm, and drop a small geode behind it so that as the disk spins the rock will get sanded and polished--like a rock tumbler with a turn and no tumble. 

Now if there were a way to do that while simultaneously playing the BeeGee's record I would be doubly impressed. I tell ya, everybody needs to hang out with engineers. They are hilarious.

4 comments:

Jennifer said...

Wow--very impressive!! I am married to an engineer, too. I bet if we got the two of you together you'd be able to polish rocks and play the BeeGees at the same time!

EmmaP said...

he is definitely an engineer at heart. and think of all that money he saved, when he could have probably found some machine to do it...lol!

K said...

So - did it work?

I have to tell you though - that turntable is an endangered species. You might get in trouble for abusing it.

Dan said...

Well, it worked for a few days, but then I think I overloaded it and burned the motor out. So, no more sanding rocks, but if you don't mind a somewhat distorted BeeGees sound, the record player still works.

I will post some pics of the finished rocks on my blog. I am now searching ebay for a motor to custom build a new rock sander. My thoughts so far include a 24V DC motor spinning at 60 RPM stemmed directly into a rotating cake stand. That way I can reduce power loss due to friction and the weight of the rotating plate. The motor I found so far has 20.5 in-lbs of torque, which would be sufficient to spin under even the biggest rocks that I have. The important thing is to find a motor that will efficiently work under my load demands and will not burn out when used continuously.

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