Music Box Renders are finally here!

 


The music box is here! Took a lot of effort due to me messing up the measurements the first time around and redoing it. I was rushing and didn't take a proper count of the comb spokes, which resulted in the incorrect arrangement of pins on the drum. Had to restart from the beginning very late on. If I didn't mix up the measurements, I would have had more time to work on the box to make it more accurate.


I was running out of time, which is why I decided to skip out on the outer box, and only make the music box itself, as it is the most important part. I think the outer box would have made this design a whole lot more interesting, and I will make it on my own time.

The most challenging part was the gears. It was pretty difficult to get all the gears to line up with the crank, but I managed to do it by scaling the gear to the crank that I made rather than measuring using the caliper. Some pieces were oddly shaped, so I scanned them and traced the outlines instead. I did this for one of the gears and for the bottom of the music box.



The bottom of the music box was incredibly complicated. It looks easy at first glance, but the bottom has a lot of holes and indents. It was too complicated to just measure each and every part (plus there would be a high chance to get the measurement wrong, which is what happened to me). I instead used the scanner technique and traced the outlines.

Due to the bottom having a lot of holes, I couldn't extrude curves the way I wanted. Rhino would fill the holes in and leave the part I wanted filled in empty. I had to slow down and break each piece into less complicated shapes that I can extrude one at a time.


While disassembling, I noticed a signature left on the underside of the metal bottom. It is not the same company name as what says on the box, so this is probably the name of the company that provided only a part of the assembly. It's almost like discovering an easter egg, most people wouldn't have seen this if they haven't disassembled it.


 


The inside of the pin drum was glued together. I couldn't get it open without cracking the gears so instead I researched how music boxes are made. This is most likely what the inside of the pin drum looks like; a hollow inside with a steel rod passing through the middle that peeks out and clips onto the gears.


The note placement on the drum wasn't too challenging for me. At first it looked wrong because I miscounted how many spokes the comb has. I counted 14 at first, but then recounted. Turns out there are 18 spokes. 

Pin drums usually start out flat, and then get folded into a drum. I couldn't figure out how to do it in Rhino, so instead I used a protractor and the Rotate3D command. I placed the pins on the drum according to the angle that they appear from at starting from the seam.


Overall, this was a super interesting project that taught me a lot. I would love to work on something like this again in the future!



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