Initial Design

This project was based off of Ferguson’s 1750’s orrey model, a tellurion, or planetarium of sorts that has the sun, earth, moon, and rings representing the ecliptic, day-night barrier, and lunar nodes. The orrey works based off of a fixed gear system and rotates on a board divided into month segments. As the orrey rotates, the lunar nodes, ecliptic and earth rotate.

CAD Modeling

The gears couldnt be built using Solidworks’ spur gear creation due to some of the custom dimensions, so one equation driven file was created and configurations were used for different numbers of teeth. The planets were modeling using Solidworks’ 3D texture, a tool that allows you to use an image to create a texture displacemnt map that is 3D printable.

CAD Models

Final Assembly

The board was created with laser cutting and etching, the gears with FDM 3D printing, and the metals rings were created using custom lathed punches and laser etched brass.

Final Assembly