I had a basketball, which I set in a suitably sized (crystal!) bowl to hold it steady, and proceeded to attach a Wild Gears ring (84 teeth on the inside) with putty and drew a pattern (Wild Gear 36 teeth). And to my surprise, it worked quite nicely.

I wasn’t intending to do it more than once, so I made a video of the whole experiment, which is below.

My basketball will never be the same. I used a black Sakura Micron 05 pen, which is permanent, archival and waterproof. Although I used some Wild Gears, I think Spirograph parts should also work.

Now that I think about it, though, the guy who asked the question was a wood turner. A basketball is spherically symmetrical and convex, so this might work on the convex side of a shallow turned bowl, but drawing on the inside of the bowl probably wouldn’t work as the inside ring teeth would be off the surface. An epitrochoid (drawing on the outside of the ring) might be possible, however, on a concave surface.

I don’t see it working on a spindle shape with cylindrical symmetry.

Here’s the video. Let us know if you try anything like this.

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Inside a 120-tooth ring, I used a gear with 96 teeth, which has an off-center hole with 40 teeth. (I don’t remember which set this came from.)

Then I drew the pattern six times with six different small gears inside the 40 ring to see the patterns.

Looking at the math of it

Each time I got a 5-lobed pattern. That’s the basic geometry of the 120-96 gear combination, 5 loops or points, as you can see in the table here.

But there’s a lot of variation in how that 5-lobed pattern is expressed, according to which small gear is used.

Small gears used are: 32 (navy blue ink), 26 (pink). 34 (purple), 18 (green), 30 (red), 16 (turquoise).

Using the same table, looking at the number of points each gear would give in a 40-tooth ring, we see that:

• Gears 18, 26 and 34 all give 20 points
• Gears 32 and 16 give 5 points
• Gear 30 gives 4 points.

Now the differences in pattern density make sense. The three 20 point patterns (pink, purple and green) look different depending on the physical size of the gear.

The other three looser patterns make more sense if you try to count the points or loops within each lobe. Some of the points are hidden in the inner part of the pattern, so they’re hard to make out. But they’re there. You may get an idea from watching the video.

So the overall geometry of a wheel-within-a-wheel pattern depends on the larger gear/ring pair, and the density depends on the inner, smaller gear/ring pair.

Here’s the video, filmed on a sunny summer day in direct sunlight. The glass-topped patio table gives a nice flat surface for this work.

The post Wheel-Within-a-Wheel Exploration with Wild Gears appeared first on SpiroGraphicArt.

I do know, however, that if your small gear isn’t much smaller than the hole in the larger gear you’re using, you get loops. This pattern has lots of loops, as it uses a #40 gear in a #45 hole. The larger wheel is 140 and the large ring is 180. All except the 40 are in Wild Gears’ Full Page Gear Set. The 40 came from the Plentiful Gear Set.

It’s fun to watch the pattern emerge, so I made a video of it (below). I messed it up 5 times before I gave up and used the blooper anyway. I tried again without the camera running and got it perfect the first time. Go figure.

The first time I discovered this combination of gears, I found the pattern interesting and coloured it. So I made it in black as a colouring page, and here are some results. A couple are done by an Australian correspondant, Suze.

In case you’d like to try colouring it yourself, you can buy the colouring page as an instant printable. Send me your pictures and I’ll add them to the gallery.

In the video, I’m using a Micron 05 pen (.45mm). This is a pricier pen than most that I use, but I wanted some archival ink to create more serious artwork with my Wild Gears and Spirograph. Christmas is coming, after all.

Colouring page available here.

Shop Wild Gears at this link.

The post Video: Loopy Wheel-Within-a-Wheel Design appeared first on SpiroGraphicArt.

It took 2½ hours to complete the intricate colouring page, which you can buy here if you want to try it yourself.

I had planned to speed up the video, because no one wants to watch me colour that long. My software (Adobe Premiere Elements) can speed up my footage 8 times. It made me look like a colouring whiz, but it was still 20 minutes long. It needed to be under 5 minutes. What to do, what to do?

So I cut out bits – lots of bits – and replaced them with a “clock wipe” transition to indicate the passage of time.

I used glitter gel pens for the foreground patterns, to make them pop, some metallic gel pens for highlights (the silver can actually cover the black lines), and dollar-store markers for the rest. At the end, I shot some footage at an angle to see the glitter catching the light. We didn’t have glitter or metallic pens when I was a kid.

Such frenzied activity required a fast, jazzy soundtrack, so that’s what I gave it. Sorry it isn’t very relaxing! But I’m getting over the cold, and at least I have something to show for it.

Shop Wild Gears at this link.

The post High-Speed Colouring Video appeared first on SpiroGraphicArt.

These designs use gear #40 inside the #64 hole which is asymmetrically located in a bigger gear #126, and the whole is rotating inside ring #180. It gives a bilaterally symetrical pattern.

After drawing the pattern with a sequence of holes to create a ribbon-like effect (a common technique in many Spirograph/Wild Gears designs), I did the same in a different colour, starting at a point 90° away on the big ring #180.

I actually counted the teeth to find the exact spot, though I don’t show the counting in the video (180 teeth ÷ 4 = 45 teeth) and made a little mark with the pen.

I made a blooper in the second video, but decided to keep going, as I was working outside and was gradually losing my light. The direct sunlight you see in the first video had gone. A cricket started to sing as the afternoon waned and you can hear it in the second video.

These videos are real-time and all you hear is the sound of the pen and gears moving. Good for people who like relaxing videos and those who get off on ASMR (soft noises that create a pleasurable response).

I used cheap gel pens for these, the kind you can buy at a dollar store, although I got mine on Amazon when I was buying something else. There’s a link on this page to the ones I got; there are many other sets with even more pens – hundreds even. I don’t think brand name matters. They’re probably all made in China in the same factory or factories, and just given the label of the wholesaler. They work with Spirograph too, even the vintage sets (mostly) which have smaller holes.

Which colour combination do you like better? In the first, I used black for the first and last line of each ribbon, which outlines the shapes and reveals interesting patterns including a circle in the middle. In the second, I used the same colour throughout the whole ribbon.

The post Two Wheel-Within-a-Wheel Videos appeared first on SpiroGraphicArt.

He applies his logical, problem solving mind to common pitfalls people run into, and comes up with creative solutions: where to keep your eyes, adding extra rings, using rare earth magnets rather than pins or putty, marking up your gears, and even cleaning up your mistakes!

A must-watch even for serious spirograph artists!

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Delcopond is the science teacher you wish you had in school. His videos demonstrate the fun stuff, and he is not afraid to play with fire. There is no fire in this video, fortunately, but it is so beautifully made that you don’t have to know Spanish to enjoy it.

Shop Wild Gears at this link.

The post Wild Gears: The King of Spirographs – Video appeared first on SpiroGraphicArt.

Wild Gears’ creator, Aaron Bleackley, invented this cool feature. Most of the larger gears have different sizes of holes. Since the gears are laser cut from a sheet of acrylic, the “holes” fall out when you unwrap the gears. But some of the holes have holes. I call them donuts. They can be used to draw lines in parallel by placing them in a hole you just used and drawing again with the pen in the donut hole.

In this video, I use different colours for the parallel lines. See also this older post on parallel lines.

This video unfolds in real time without commentary, just the quiet sounds of pens, gears and paper.

Shop Wild Gears at this link.

The post Wild Gears Video: Drawing Parallel Lines appeared first on SpiroGraphicArt.

Two rack setup with pins

Ready for a Spirograph challenge?

I didn’t get into the two-rack designs as a kid. Maybe I tried it once and found it too difficult; I don’t remember. But a request for some videos about them prompted me to sit down and give it a try.

The result is four videos (below), each one dealing with a different design.

Page 7 of the old Kenner Super Spirograph manual

I followed the instructions in my old Super Spirograph manual (image right). I have prepared PDFs of this page that you can download and print. Choose 8.5 x 11 (North America) or A4 (elsewhere).

The first video shows me first attaching the racks with “Spiro putty” (poster putty). Normally I prefer the putty, but I decided to use pins in this case as they make it easier to position the racks correctly. Note that I’m using a corkboard with the pins.

Not all the new sets (by Kahootz Toys) come with two racks. The Deluxe set has only one; the Tin set has one; the Die-cast set has none. However, the new Super Spirograph has two racks, as do the old Kenner Spirograph and Super Spirograph. See a detailed chart of what’s included in some of the sets here.

These designs are more complex and require a lot of concentration. However, I am now quite curious about experimenting with this method and creating some new designs!

If you try this technique yourself, feel free to share your experience in the comments below.

I’ve put my four videos in a playlist so you can watch them all together.

The post Designs with Two Racks: Instructions & Videos appeared first on SpiroGraphicArt.

I have one more video to share that I filmed last summer in the bright sunlight. I put it together with Curtis Thorpe‘s rendition of The Ecstasy of Gold, the classic spaghetti western theme composed by Ennio Morricone for Sergio Leone’s 1966 film The Good, The Bad and the Ugly starring Clint Eastwood. It’s such a famous tune that it may sound familiar, even with Curtis’ instrumentation of harmonica and guitar. The harmonica has a wistful, lonely feel at first, then picks up speed like a horse galloping across the prairie – until it stops for a drink.

I’m not sure what all that has to do with Wild Gears (the Wild West?), or even this design, except for the gold bits, enhanced by purple. By the end, it looks something like an eye, with the pupil in the middle and a purple iris, surrounded by big golden eyelashes.

Anyway, it was fun to speed up sections of the raw video to match the music. If you’re trying this at home, don’t expect yourself to go so fast. Take your time!

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