Novatropes Kinetic Sculptures

My son Brandon has spent the past few years developing a remarkable kinetic sculpture called the Novatrope. You can see his entire story here at Novatropes.com.

We have been working together to create and mass produce the wooden bases for these and it has been a fun and interesting project. The key is that the bases need to be very exact in order to receive printed circuit boards, a switch, power input, and an adjustment knob, as well as show quality and exacting construction. This means that all the mitered corners must come together tightly, the box must be strong (you can drop them on a corner from 6 feet off the deck and they do not break!), and they must be mass produced in batches of 100 – 150 at a time. Bringing all of those specifications together in an affordable base unit has been no small challenge.

I build them from 1/8″ thick material which requires resawing the rough wood on the bandsaw to about 3/16″ thick, taking them down to finish thickness on a bench sander, and then lots of steps to machine the parts to exacting specs. The build process includes a bank of glue-up jigs so I can assemble 10 boxes at a time. The entire work process written up takes two pages of instructions and specifications. Numerous runs of these has brought the build time down to 30 minutes per box when done as a large run! They are finished with a hand-rubbed lacquer coating and they come out beautifully. We have three models – black walnut, padauk, and zebrawood. The best part is working on this project with my son. Very satisfying!

Black Walnut Novatrope

Padauk Novatrope

Zebrawood Novatrope