Steven Shamlian Creator of Things

Buried in Minutiae


2014 July

Pipe Pipes

I'm a sucker for free building materials. Some friends were unloading some slightly used 3/4" PVC pipe and fittings, and of course, I volunteered to take all of it. After cleaning and sorting, I thought it might be fun to see how hard it might be to build something musical. I found some web pages about using PVC to build a recorder, and a design of something called the "Epiphany Pipe." Mixing and matching elements, I managed to build some pipes which sounded nicely. The next step would be to sequence them. I purchased some surplus solenoids and designed valves using them. They take an awful lot of current to actuate, though; I've stopped working on this project and will pick it up once I figure out a more efficient valve design.

10/58

Next project: → Dacta Driver

Previous project: ← OSUR Hardware