#41 Hanzos Swirl Attacker 3.0
This designer thought very carefully about how frequently this would be able to play the note - and saved our engineers a job! A conplex combination of swirling mechanisms and pedals, this is a fantastic invention from Rookery School.
Rohan’s design has some fantastic decoration and we’ll return to Rookery school to ask for help in painting the plywood we’ve cut out to his design. But the way he’s thought of playing the piano is terrific. Rohan’s idea is to use compressed air. This is often used in factories for mechanisms that have to operate very quickly or where electricity cannot be used. As Rohan says on his drawing, “this has a quick repetition therefore the note can be played quickly.” The player pumps the system with a foot pump and plays the piano by pressing a button. To make this work, we needed a suitable pump, some stiff hose (normal hose would blow up a little like a balloon) and a metal bottle to store the air at high pressure. Finally, we need a valve to allow air out of the bottle when we want to play the note, and a small piston that uses the pressured air to play the note. These are all components we could buy from people who make machines in factories, and just like them, we had to check the design very carefully to make sure that the air couldn’t escape or any of the components fly off.
