Singing Scales

geek2nurse · February 9, 2020, 4:50am

I caught my Glowforge singing scales tonight…

johnj · February 9, 2020, 5:25am

…she’s gonna blow!

GaryZ · February 9, 2020, 5:31am

Stepper motors are great musicians.

todd.hassell · February 9, 2020, 5:32am

Seems like we need a design contest… designs that make something… but also make music along the way. Reminds me of the Floppotron…

primal_healer · February 9, 2020, 6:03am

im partial to the Tesla coils myself

just something about your speaker being electricity seems badass

PrintToLaser · February 9, 2020, 6:19am

The tones of the X /Y steppers would describe a particular geometry…

geek2nurse · February 9, 2020, 8:07am

It was working on this:

It starts high pitched at 12:00, down to low at 3:00, back to high at 6:00, and so on. I recorded from 9 to 12ish.

timjedwards · February 9, 2020, 3:23pm

Is it weird that I could envision a small arc of this shape just by listening? Perhaps I’ve watched my cuts too closely… They’re even more captivating now that I have an inline fan cutting the noise.

rbtdanforth · February 9, 2020, 3:51pm

I used to have software back in the early AOL days that I could change the pitch only while not changing the speed etc, So I took the sound of a cat purring as example and set it for something larger like a dragon. Here are several I did (can’t upload wav files directly)
MEDIA.zip (292.1 KB) …

geek2nurse · February 9, 2020, 4:05pm

Yeah, the hand-me-down fan I got from you has made the music much more noticeable.

ben1 · February 9, 2020, 4:42pm

There was an article about some researchers that found after characterizing the sounds of a 3D printer they could record the noise of the steppers and recreate the model being printed to some precision. I think that this is harder to do with the newer stepper drivers as they are nearly silent, but it can be interesting to read about.

arh2 · February 9, 2020, 4:52pm

Now I know why I miss not using my Glowforge after a few days – it’s music to my ears!!!

geek2nurse · February 9, 2020, 5:02pm

Kinda like the spy equipment that can recreate a conversation from the vibrations of the windowpane in the room.

ben1 · February 9, 2020, 5:04pm

Yes, that is a laser microphone. The vibration in the glass pane causes changes in the pulse timing of a reflected pulsed laser. The timing is measured very precisely and then run through a set of filters to create the sounds in the room.

system · March 12, 2020, 7:05pm

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