Have you ever dreamed of sitting around the solar system? Modder at The 5439 Workshop on YouTube may have just made it possible with this new kind of solar system inside a . This is a cherry wood and aluminum coffee table with a precision cutout in the middle where a “mechanical orrery with both tilting orbits and an exploding star” finds refuge under a glass cover.
The modder refrains from calling this contraption a “particularly practical one,” but I stand to disagree. At the first given chance, I would put this guy in my living room without a thought and flaunt the celestial magnificence it beholds to just about anyone walking inside the main entrance.
Designer: The 5439 Workshop
If you don’t know much about 5439, the Swedish modder doesn’t have a massive following, that’s why. With only three published videos and a modest 5.6K followers, he is just starting out with robotics, and this coffee table is perhaps the “most mechanically complicated” – in his own words – thing he has designed and built. Before we get to the details of the star system, let’s get the other details of the table out of the way.
The table, as mentioned, is meticulously crafted from cherry wood. The wood is essentially chosen for its warm texture and its ability to reflect light at the right place. The two-layered table is nicely engineered by squaring the cherry wood planks – two of them, which are combined with three white boards to make up the tabletop. Once the top is created, a giant cutout is made in the middle, which, along with the glass top, creates a viewing window to the mechanical star system hidden below. The table sits on four robust pillars (legs) attached to a base frame.
After sanding and smoothing all the blemishes (after the glueing) in the top and the rough parts of the center cutout, the modder gets to creating the covering of the center hole with the sheet of glass and then gets to the bottom of the t where the celestial goodness is built. Visible through the glass viewport, this mechanical model of the planets dancing around the sun is not short of a feat.
The entire contraption of gears, bearings and motors finds an exploding sun at its center with the planets (in their usual) revolving around, happily on their own axis that of course, are elliptical and tilting to mimic the universe. The sun is notably a fist-sized sphere, built layer-by-layer using a selective laser sintering (SLS) printer with nylon powder, which splits open like the flower petals when it explodes.
Made of anodized aluminum parts, the star system features rings tilting at unexpected angles, making the planets move up and down on a single plane with the power of a nearly silent motor tucked into the table frame. The YouTube community seems to like what they see in the video demonstration (embedded above). The comment section is filled with positive feedback, including ideas where one commenter “suggests walling off the sides,” while the other recommends adding a “black run” underneath “to really make the mechanism pop.” What do you think?
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