Steampunk themed inventions have been around for a while now but this turn table stands out among the best of them. Simon Jansen from Auckland, New Zealand designed his turntable using a miniature boiler and an Arduino unit. He describes the process he used to achieve this, “The engine was made mainly from bits and pieces I had lying about in my junk box. The boiler was made from some copper water pipe and a bespoke platter and base was made using wood. I am using an Arduino to control everything buy using a coil to detect the passing of magnets in the edge of the platter. The Arduino works out the revs then feeds this information into a PID controller the output of which drives a servo controlling a throttle on the engine. The speed is regulated to 33 1/3 (well, more or less) and displayed on an analogue meter. The tone arm uses an old phono cartridge that connects to my phono pre-amp and into my stereo. The hardware is complete and works well but the software could use a little tweaking. It does however run!” As he built this primarily to play the Sex Pistols on, it is indeed steampunk in the truest sense of the word. To see a complete detailed process on how he made everything (even the Arduino) please visit: http://www.asciimation.co.nz/bb/2010/11/30/a-steam-punk-record-player
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