One Loop for Every Tooth: Spirograph Wheel 52
Wheel 52 inside Ring 150/105, hole 1, changing pens
Back in the day, when I was a kid and the only pens we had to use with our Spirograph sets were the ballpoint ones that came with the set, I dreaded Wheel 52 with Ring 150/105!
Why? Because the pattern it makes has 105 loops – that’s one loop for every tooth inside the ring! The pen went over the same area of the paper over and over again, saturating it with ink. Eventually, before you finished the pattern, the ballpoint pen would be tearing the paper. Yuck!
No more, with fine felt tip pens. You can get great color with a light hand, and the paper stays intact!
In the blue and green design, I changed color every 5 loops, dark blue, light blue and green, making quite a pleasing design. There’s lots of room for experimentation, so here are some of my experiments.
If you change color when the pen is in the middle of the ring rather than when it is close to the edge, the color changes are less obvious.
There is a link to a Windows Spirograph package on my web page at
http://mkhometuition.co.uk/index_files/Page592.htm
(click on icon to download zipped file)
Best in 1024 x 768 resolution.
Thanks Mark. People, check this out. It’s a computer spirograph simulation program that accurately generates the patterns in the original Spirograph and more, with detailed explanations of the math behind the curves and the numbers.
I’m having issues with wheel 52 in my set. My set has only a 144/96 ring, and six wheels. Wheel 52 keeps slipping on me. It doesn’t go under the ring, though. It goes OVER the ring, and sometimes it gets stuck and doesn’t rotate. Even if I use my fingers to push it along, it gets stuck. Strangely, it only does this with the outer holes. I can handle it with the inner holes. Go figure. Am I doing something wrong?
Hmm. The outer holes are always harder because the changes of direction are sharper.
Make sure you don’t have putty interfering with any teeth.
Look to see if there’s any dirt between the teeth of wheel 52. Other than that, it’s one of the bigger wheels, so may just take more practice.
Thanks. I’ll look into the cleanliness of the wheel. I know for a fact that the putty doesn’t interfere with the teeth. I have similar issues with the outer holes on smaller wheels for some reason. As I said in my original post, go figure.