Praxinoscope Build

Ok, so turns out a praxinoscope is no easy task! We underestimated how fiddly it would be to cut mirror, get all the measurements right and glue the whole thing together along with the bike wheel!

First of all, we found the circumference of the circle, which Faysal's maths qualification came in very useful for. Then we divided this by 12 (the praxinoscope's we saw in the childhood museum had 12 mirrors so we thought we would do the same) after doing this we attempted to find the middle of the circle, however this proved fairly inaccurate because the garden sieve we used to attach to the wheel was not perfectly circle. After this, we constructed a dodecahedron (12 sided shape) to glue the mirror panels to in the centre of the praxinoscope. So far, so good...now the hard part: cutting the mirror.

We found the mirror outside James and Faysals flat, it was very thin so we thought this would make it easier to cut. Turns out it was pretty old and therefore brittle, so it was a real challenge getting 12 panels out of it with a glass cutter. With mirror shattered all over the place we eventually managed to get a set of 12 mirrors and 2 spare ones. They have a few cracks in them but we feel this will add to the DIY aesthetic.

So once it was all superglued and screwed together we attached the motor and powered it up...it works! Now all we need to do is put the animation inside it, mount it and it is sorted.