Prepare for a significant decline in gang activity.

July 29, 2014 7:10 AM

This person made a giant spirograph and it's actually pretty awesome.

Here's the reddit link where the creator, HaHaBird, talks some more about it.

posted by phunniemee (37 comments total)

Banana for scale.

Though I think it seems obvious that a giant spirograph would be awesome, not surprising.
posted by jeather at 7:13 AM on July 29, 2014 [6 favorites]

Yeah, most superfluous "actually" ever.
posted by hydrophonic at 7:15 AM on July 29, 2014 [3 favorites]

Well, they could have left it plain wood colored but it's painted, you see? Giant spirograph, now with even more whimsy!
posted by phunniemee at 7:16 AM on July 29, 2014 [1 favorite]

There's a "positive graffiti day" or something coming up on Aug 19th where you scrawl positive stuff on your sidewalk to give people a something to smile about or something but who really uses sidewalks in the suburbs? But a giant spirograph? Rockawesome.
posted by Buttons Bellbottom at 7:18 AM on July 29, 2014

the thing i like best about this is the confusion I assume it inspires in the people who don't know about the giant spirograph. I mean this is come crop-circles type of street art.
posted by rebent at 7:23 AM on July 29, 2014 [4 favorites]

I love people who can think of things like this *and* make things like this.
posted by xingcat at 7:24 AM on July 29, 2014 [8 favorites]

I don't believe it. I just don't believe it.
posted by bondcliff at 7:26 AM on July 29, 2014 [1 favorite]

This is great and good.
posted by Rock Steady at 7:27 AM on July 29, 2014 [2 favorites]

I would love to see a teacup ride-sized Spirograph. You'd get in and hold on to a giant marker and at the end you'd have a drawing the size of your house.
posted by Metroid Baby at 7:33 AM on July 29, 2014 [17 favorites]

I want one, but there's no way I'm ever going to build one. I'm glad someone else was motivated to make this real.
posted by alms at 7:33 AM on July 29, 2014

Banana for scale.

Clearly, they're not familiar with the standard geology and paleontology tools for scaling: penny, rock hammer, person.
posted by filthy light thief at 7:35 AM on July 29, 2014 [2 favorites]

The meticulous craftsmanship put into this project is outrageous. I love the obsessive attention to detail. I haven't read the AMA yet, but I hope he says how long the whole project took, start to finish.

If he had all of his plans available, like the templates for the gears and the scale used, could more of these giant Spirographs now be made on a 3D printer?
posted by misha at 7:47 AM on July 29, 2014 [1 favorite]

I would love to see a teacup ride-sized Spirograph. You'd get in and hold on to a giant marker and at the end you'd have a drawing the size of your house.

done!
posted by sexyrobot at 7:47 AM on July 29, 2014 [21 favorites]

Clearly, they're not familiar with the standard geology and paleontology tools for scaling: penny, rock hammer, person.

Spirographs use a different scaling system, which shouldn't really be that surprising when you think about it.

It's a logarithmic scale that goes: pea, banana, person, stadium, Earth.
posted by Naberius at 7:48 AM on July 29, 2014 [6 favorites]

Love the title of this post
posted by obscure simpsons reference at 8:00 AM on July 29, 2014 [6 favorites]

This is four kinds of awesome. I wonder if I have the patience to cut all those nice even teeth on the inner gears. Though thinking about it it should be possible to use a jig to cut the teeth with a router once one has cut three teeth by hand.
posted by Mitheral at 8:00 AM on July 29, 2014

Oh great. This is just like Clarke's "The Nine Billion Names of God," except it creates every possible diagram for summoning Cthulhu.
posted by straight at 8:03 AM on July 29, 2014 [2 favorites]

[spoiler] none of them work
posted by straight at 8:04 AM on July 29, 2014

[spoiler] none of them work

For that you'd have to build a giant non-Euclidean spirograph and use eldritch chalk.
posted by Foosnark at 8:12 AM on July 29, 2014 [1 favorite]

Clearly, they're not familiar with the standard geology and paleontology tools for scaling: penny, rock hammer, person.

'Banana for scale' is a long-running Reddit inside joke.
posted by shakespeherian at 8:12 AM on July 29, 2014 [2 favorites]

Leaving a few of these drawings around is a great way to start a small-town panic over satanism.
posted by kiltedtaco at 8:18 AM on July 29, 2014 [1 favorite]

I've never heard of banana for scale, but that will now be the new metric. What else could possibly meet the required awesome standard for a ginormous spirograph?


Spiro on!
posted by BlueHorse at 8:23 AM on July 29, 2014

I like this, but "giant" should be reserved for much larger scale. This is merely a "big" spirograph.
posted by rocket88 at 8:26 AM on July 29, 2014

rocket88: I like this, but "giant" should be reserved for much larger scale.

I'm envisioning an orbital-scale spirograph using interlocking ringworlds.
posted by Rock Steady at 8:52 AM on July 29, 2014

That's if you are using an absolute scale for what constitutes giant; usually people use a relative scale. So for example most of the giant animals on this page are at most a couple times larger than their standard size relatives and almost all of them are smaller than this spirograph.
posted by Mitheral at 8:52 AM on July 29, 2014

Orbital-scale? Bah. Galactic-scale!
posted by moonmilk at 8:55 AM on July 29, 2014 [2 favorites]

crystal energy cult gang symbols. Wonder what type of engineering would be required to get this wall mounted, and accept spraypaint rather than chalk.
posted by jonbro at 9:02 AM on July 29, 2014

Ooh, nice. I'm sending this to my brother who also made one, out of an old bicycle
posted by iotic at 9:30 AM on July 29, 2014 [6 favorites]

Those skipping spirograph gears can sometimes drive a person to desperation.
posted by orme at 9:51 AM on July 29, 2014 [2 favorites]

Banana for scale
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 9:55 AM on July 29, 2014 [4 favorites]

Orbital-scale? Bah. Galactic-scale!

True story: the Puppeteers first considered using a massive Spirograph made of exotic matter to contain and neutralize the black hole at the center of the Milky Way. Couldn't get buy-in from the then-Hindmost, so had to settle for moving their home system to the Magellanic Clouds.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 11:48 AM on July 29, 2014 [1 favorite]

I remember when Spirogragh came out. Every kid I knew got it for Christmas. Then there was an option for a swinging tray that made new patterns so everyone got that one. And then, I don't know, I discovered boys or something. Lost track of my Spirogragh wheels.
posted by ThatCanadianGirl at 12:03 PM on July 29, 2014

I feel like this is the kind of project where the process of designing and building it is way more interesting that the eventual result. For some reason, this makes me like it even more.
posted by inertia at 1:29 PM on July 29, 2014

Don't they make a more complicated version of this for designing patterns in banknotes and securities certificates? I've always looked for information on the machines that do this but never found anything, and I've already forgotten what they're called.
posted by crapmatic at 5:17 PM on July 29, 2014

Crapmatic, you're thinking of Guilloché patterns.
posted by egypturnash at 5:47 PM on July 29, 2014 [3 favorites]

Here's yet another variation on the giant spirograph that someone brought to Maker Faire this past spring. (video)
posted by otherthings_ at 9:26 PM on July 29, 2014

There is a less giant spirograph for chalk drawings on Amazon. I was looking at it this past weekend :)

The timing is so funny - I just sent off a design for a custom wheel for the Klutz Spiral Draw toy - can't wait to get in the mail from Ponoko.
posted by Calzephyr at 5:26 PM on July 30, 2014