My Second Automaton (Harlequin Magician)

For my second musical piece, I created the automaton to link to the musical movement.

For this scene, I decided to create a harlequin figure performing a magic act on a stage. As the harlequin is attempting to open a red box to reveal a monkey, the other green box would open by itself, thus revealing a chicken.

A small wooden box was created to house the musical movement and mechanism within a u-shaped cradle made of three pieces of perspex. Two holes were drilled in the perspex to support a spindle rod onto which I slotted and glued two separate cams, one to raise and lower the monkey in the red box of the harlequin, and the other to raise and lower the chicken in the green box. One end of this spindle rod was allowed to protrude from the side of the box and bent to form a turning handle. A wooden bead was threaded onto this handle and held in place by simple short brass tubings glued to the rod.

 Both cams were cut from rigid plastic and glued to the rod. A simple irregular pattern to depict a rise and fall was cut out for each cam. A follower was fashioned for each cam, and linked to the monkey (just a simple head) and the chicken respectively, both items being culled from cheap toys. Thus the monkey and chicken would compete to pop out of the boxes. The harlequin was made from discarded model figure parts. I created articulations for the arms and neck. In the event, only the left arm was positively attached to the red box lid. Every time the monkey popped up from the box lid, the left arm would appear to be opening the lid, with consequential slight movement in the rest of the figure.

Six small LED lights were fitted onto a balsa strip which was fixed to the front of the stage. These LEDs were connected in series to an A-sized battery case within the box and a small on/off switch fixed on the side of the box.

The scene was decorated with a potted plant, a foot pillow and pictures taken from magazines. A table to place the boxes was made from balsa and covered with patterned paper. The back screen was created to frame the scene. This was cut from rigid plastic and decorated with more pictures. the box was finally varnished with gloss.