Hand-cranked paper bellows bird call project by Rob Ives

Here's another great mechanical paper design by Rob Ives called the "Twitterer Type 3". This one really sounds like a tweeting bird!

From the project page:

In the previous blog post I showed a design for a crank driven bellows to be used at the heart of a bird box project. I have taken that basic design and made it more sturdy. I liked the way the bellows in the previous model were completely visible so I've fitted the crank to the inside of a box but kept the bellows on a pair of slide rails outside the box. You can see the result in animated action on Instagram by clicking the picture to the left.

If you are a Member of Rob's site, you can download the parts to make this project. An annual membership to Rob's site, which provides access to LOT of amazing paper projects, is $14.95 per year. Here is where you can see the step-by-step instructions for the Twitterer Type 3.

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Rhino Training - automaton by Dave Johnson

I have often said that many contemporary automata are animated three-dimensional single-panel cartoons like the ones you might find in the pages of The New Yorker. The piece shown in the video above is a perfect example of what I mean. A familiar scene such as training a dog to sit is turned on its head when the dog is replaced with a rhinoceros. The piece is by Dave Johnson who you may remember as the creator of the famous Buckyball-moving machine.

The artist explains the origins of the piece:

I got an email at work one day, and the subject was "Rhino Training". (We use a CAD program called Rhinoceros.) My colleague Arlen and I thought that was a hilarious image: trying to get a rhino to sit, with no effect whatsoever. All day long we'd say "Sit!" and then crack up.

So I made a machine about it.

Humor, sound, a slew of nifty mechanisms including the one for the word-bubble, and some truly organic twitching motions for the rhino's ear and tail. An excellent machine all around.

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