Archived from the Tools In Action forum (Around The House). This thread is read-only.
Hello everyone, I know I have been MIA from posting for awhile but I do check in regularly and read everyone’s post. It’s great to see the forum growing, it seems like new members are joining everyday! The ‘old’ guys are really stepping up and owning the forum, your hard work shows!
That’s enough stroking your ego though, I’m posting today to show off my badass-ness! For those who don’t know me, I’m a military vet (robotic weapons), have a background in industrial Maint & automation, electronic product design, CAD drafter (AutoCAD/Solidworks/etc), and hobbiest woodworker. I have a lot of skills and enjoy being creative.
About a year ago I got a job with a pro audio video company. Although we are an AV company at heart, we specialize in the bizarre and ‘creative’. Often we build exhibits and interesting interactives.
One such project was a 20 foot indoor tornado. Yep, a big ass tornado that kids can control, play with, interact with, and even change the color of.
I had a team backing me up but I was responsible for the overall design, SolidWorks drawings/Simulations, fabrication, and install. All my skills were put to the test, from structural engineering, metal work, fabrication, project management, electrical, ….. You get the idea.
I think the tornado looks great, but I am a bit biased;) if your ever in the Los Angeles area, take a trip to the Discovery Science Center and check out all my hard work.
A coworker made this YouTube video, although it doesn’t show all the capabilities (color changing, intensity control, etc) it’s still cool!
That’s awesome man, nice work!
Very cool!! good to c U back!
minds and technology what a great mix, some people still have their VCR’s flashing 12:00 and yet some are putting together tornado’s…cool job …..
That’s pretty cool, nice job.
Now if only they had little towns made of paper for you to suck up.
Glad to see you are back EE! You have made some cool things since you have been there.
nice work man – looks good
Wow! That must have been a blast to work on!! What kind of power does something like that have? Count you stick your hand in there??
Actually you can walk through the tornado. It’s not very strong, a few standard industrial fans and motor controllers. Some special engineering and programming. Standard parts, but creative engineering.
Very cool!!! I want to walk through a tornado 🙂
I’ll be in LA in May actually.. I’ll have to add the sciencecenter to my to-do list
THat is way too cool.
Can you make a video on how to make a 8 foot high one for your house?
NERemodeling wrote:
Very cool!!! I want to walk through a tornado 🙂
I’ll be in LA in May actually.. I’ll have to add the sciencecenter to my to-do list
got a remodel job in LA ?
Well I am working on an 8′-10′ portable one. The biggest problem with the big one, when they run the AC full blast, it kills the tornado. 🙁
The small 8-10′ is going to be more a ‘tornado’ in a box design. Traveling exhibit or allow for comercial buildings to easily install a cool exhibit.
My current project is a full audio design for Discovery Science in Santa Ana. 3 stories of low voltage, networking, and 100+ speakers, including a theater. Not as impressive but it’s a good size project.