wong makes: Exploratorium: San Leandro Chime Way

Chime Way concept drawing.

In March of 2016 I started on the San Leandro Chime Way project with the Exploratorium. Chime Way is an interactive art installation and seating area placed at Joaquin Plaza in downtown San Leandro. I worked with an architect and another engineer to turn concept drawings into reality.

My tasks were to engineer the arm that holds up the chime, the ratcheting system that raises and drops the hammer, and the concrete base. After my parts were designed and sent out for manufacturing, I was moved into another project and construction was left to the other engineer.

Components I designed.

The arm that holds up the chime was designed using the architects sketches for the overall shape. Strength of the structure was checked by an outside Structural Engineer. There are 8 different lengths of chimes so I CADed the models with adaptive features so I would only have to change the dimension of the chime and all the relevant parts would change.

The concrete base was again design using the architects sketches for the overall shape. My job was to figure out mounting and assembly of all the components.

The ratchet was designed so that it would only move one tick for every swing, no matter how large. This was so that a people of different sizes could time their swings together and have the chimes sound at the same rate. See the video for the ratcheting action.