Spin the Wheel, no app, for real!

 A friend of mine has been running an occasional movie night at my local makerspace, choosing the film by way of a "Wheel of Flicks" app. While that gets the job done, nothing beats the real feel of spinning a wheel, and with nothing but junk laying around the shop I was sure we could cook something up.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

First thing was the wheel, and a means to hold it. I was going to use a 40" chunk of dimensionally questionable 3/4 ply i had laying around, but after cutting it into a lovely circle on the table saw, a couple folks pointed out that we had a perfectly 70s table top chilling in the parts piles. It was just barely smaller, but more importantly, it was flat and smooth, and had nice T molding already running around it's perimeter. I put my plywood circle where the table top was to not upset the shop's feng shui.

We scribed the middle from a bunch of angles on the back until we found the center point and drilled it out. A stack of four 608 skateboard bearings in a 2x4 and a through-bolt sized for the inner races did well for an axle. a plastic puck and threaded nut insert make the amount of compression on the wheel adjustable. Thrust bearings would be nice, but meh. There's a little bit of drooping, but not enough to matter much, and I added a guide wheel for that later on the back anyway.

 While my buddy laid out the spans between the pie wedges, I chopped down an length of nice stainless rod recovered from an old large format printer. We needed 16 pins total, and by sheer luck I managed 16 pins and 1/2" of scrap in the end. NICE. They were hammered into friction-fit holes around the perimeter once we had the masking tape sorted, and that really started selling the look of the whole thing. Given the breakneck and freeform pace of designing it on the fly, and needing it painted and dry tomorrow, we opted to let the wood show between the painted wedges. Call it an homage to 1970s game shows I guess?

 To expedite the painting process, i made a couple of masking wedges from hardboard scraps, and painted half the wedges on the wheel.

 With the first 8 of them done, i went back inside to work on the frame and supports. The host of the movie night had a great idea to make the frame's base from a foldable sawhorse, and to make the whole thing break down for storage. Some bits of 2x4, carriage bolts, and lots of long drywall screws, plus some rattlecanning of the whole frame and it looks ready for TV. Maybe like, 1970s tv in 240i so you can't see all the overspray and runs in the paint.

 

 

 

 

 

 

With the frame mostly sorted, and the paint on the first 8 wedges arguably somewhat dry, i did the second batch of wedges, and cleaned up shop a bit. while it dried enough to bring inside.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 With both parts put together, and the masking tape pulled it started looking pretty snazzy, and you can't see the flaws in the paint while it's in motion, so clearly the answer to quality control issues is to keep it moving whenever possible.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The only thing left to do was give it a clackety dial. I was mulling over cutting out custom indicators, and using springs and more complex mechanisms to show it's choice, but in the end, went with a quick and dirty bit of hardboard  wedged into a block on the frame. Minimum Viable Product is sometimes good enough, and we can always improve it later.

 Next up would be makign some kind of mounts for the films more than just strips of painters tape with names on them, a marquee for the WHEEL OF FLICKS and improving the overall finish, but it's ready for movie night and we have one less app to worry about now.