materials

The machine has been designed to be manufactured using the absolute minimum number of working parts, for easy, unskilled assembly, adjustment of operation and manual servicing without tools and with operator safety in mind. The parts have been designed to be robust, impossible to wrongly assemble, and to snap-connect together.

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PTFE Piston Coil Formers protectively enclose and support the piezoelectric transducer elements. Thus:

Coils may be wound coaxially around the speaking-length, apply synchronising feedback fields which are induced by current flow from voltages supplied via the piezoelectric transducer elements mounted within the two speaking length string tension-bearing supports.

one half (one end) of the pair of coil assemblies

The assembled stators (7a) and the contact terminals (7b) in the coil formers (10) are held in place by spacer rings (11), which also serve as bushes forming a hydrodynamic gas bearing with the rotor (4) spindle and act as 'crash barriers' in the event of string breakage.

Terminal Crowns

Designed to spread the load of the string tension over the outer faces of the piezos and to protect them and the string bend-around section:

large animated exploded planssection of central part of machine

At the heart of the system is a wire-wound, carbon-cored, water-filled music string which serves as the axle for a spoked rotor. At either end:

An electrical insulation (P.T.F.E.) coated example of this type of composite string is used :

(a) as a 'speaking-length' of music string, supported in (variable) tension between two adjustable points of support and:

(b) to be wound as coils, coaxially around that (a) speaking-length, to apply synchronising feedback fields which are induced by current flow from voltages supplied via piezoelectric transducer elements mounted within the two speaking length tension-bearing supports.

Manual pressure control assembly (12,13,14,17) enables mercury to be drawn into the central chamber for start-up. When priming is complete the chamber is emptied, admitting air. Parts (17) are copper rings, set in the plastic handle to provide (a) a manual protective short-turn screen and (b) together with Pin (14) an attempt to directionally focus any fields of unknown provenance (the best I could do in the face of the uncertain). Pin (14) is for fine adjustment of chamber pressure and, slightly flexible, is of magnetostrictive alloy to aid system resonance.

Piezoelectric transducer elements mounted within the piston coil formers are of an industrial standard design, polarised in their depth/thickness vector and silvered on their flat circular faces to act as electrical terminals, making contact in assembly with terminal crowns (8) and wound-in ends of string (where string is used as coils).

Capacitive spike discretion is maintained by the shape of the exponential cavity formed between these components (7a, 7b), when joined in assembly.

Any rotor spoke ball-end, in passing the flat face of stator (7a), experiences this discrete spike. Maximum field compression occurs at the exact coaxial centre of the string.

Mounted to spin freely at the octave node of a speaking length of the string, the four-spoke (aluminium) rotor is synchronously driven, magnetically and electrostatically, by a reciprocal system of coils and stators. Two sets of three stators are arranged either side of the rotor. These may be rotated out of mutual alignment, thus initialising harmonic multiplication in the string's vibration. Resonant feedback is supported within the system by piezoelectric transducer elements bearing the string's tension (which is slight). Voltages transduced are passed to induction coils, wound of the same type of string.

At the heart of the system is a wire-wound, carbon-cored, water-filled music string which serves as the axle for a spoked rotor.

The rotor is (diamagnetic) aluminium, as is the string winding. Water is also diamagnetic.

Together, these combined properties result in complete hydrodynamic governing of the internally supported water-strings' behaviour.

Seeding energy for initial rotation may come from manual stimulation. This is achieved by use of a rattling mechanism (23,24) or, conversely, by any externally applied electromagnetic alternating field from a separate power supply. Such is the sensitivity of a taut music string that, in air, human vocal drone power will also serve this purpose. Providing a suitable resonance is adjusted for and set, the rotor will be induced to spin and in the absence of any further stimulation, that said rotation and vibration will decay over a period of several seconds.