Here are some of the small parts that I machined with the very fine help of my pal Nathanial at Radiorobot. These square parts will be used to make the alignment brackets on the underside of the tray. The round parts will be used as stoppers for the rods.

Here the square parts above are aligned and welded together.

Here the outer tray ring, inner tray rings and brackets are laid out on a square piece that will become the tray.

This is one of the pieces being build right next to me by Ryon Geskin a kinetic/fire artist and down right fine fabricator.

With the brackets fully installed I’m able to add in the gears which meshed up nicely and spun in satisfying little circles.

Ahhhh …. my trusty shop boy always eager to help.

The next step was to start building the hubs on the bowls. I laid out an ~11″ circle and three lines at 120° form the center then I secured the rods to work table at 90° at the center. I lowered the bowl down the rod and positioned it over the drawn circle, I then squared it and tacked it in place. I then placed the hub tube down the rod, positioned the side bands and then tacked all that together.

Once the two hubs were on I was ale to place them on the rods with the gears. Although everything should have lined up perfectly there was a slight problem. Although there were positions where the two hemispheres sat flush with the main body band they were ~0.25″ - ~0.5″ off if rotated 90°. To correct for this broke off the tacks on the rid brackets and added small boring parts to make them adjustable. Once I was able to tweak the alignment with the bowls in place I was able to find a position where everything lined up nicely.

Once that all the principle mechanical components are working I started working on the hubs and detailing the bowls. Here you can seen that I’ve changed the design for the hubs which involved making four more 2″ circles with a 3/4″ centered hole. These came out much more accurately then the first set. These were then drilled and tapped to accommodate the threaded brass rod. The first bowl bowl detail is that sea mine looking thing with the brass studs. Eventually there will be more of these brass studs on the bowl bands. They’ll all be slotted and linked copper wire and copper strips.

Ack. Three week to go and only two more weekends to get this puppy done.