Kate SalesinBuilding a Xylophone, Part 7: Xylo-codaThe final piece of the puzzle was to create a base to hold the bars. This phase of the project took by far the longest, not due to…Jul 24, 20182Jul 24, 20182
Kate SalesinBuilding a Xylophone, Part 6: Xylo-sculptingAfter a couple weeks of computer time, I was ready for some hands-on work. Before even thinking about the undercurves, though, we had to…Mar 25, 20181Mar 25, 20181
Kate SalesinBuilding a Xylophone, Part 1: Xylo-troductionOne day, I woke up and decided to build a xylophone. There wasn’t a whole lot of rhyme or reason to this decision — it just seemed like a…Feb 28, 2018Feb 28, 2018
Kate SalesinBuilding a Xylophone, Part 2: Xylo-brationsOnce I decided to build a xylophone, the first question I had to answer was how I would tune the bars. I didn’t expect a simple answer, but…Feb 28, 2018Feb 28, 2018
Kate SalesinBuilding a Xylophone, Part 3: Xylo-sperimentsMy first stop along the research highway was to find studies on how cuts along the bar affect its resonant frequencies. It is known that…Feb 28, 2018Feb 28, 2018
Kate SalesinBuilding a Xylophone, Part 4: Xylo-gorithmsThe first step in the process was to create a Finite Element Model. Most of the software structural engineers would use for FEM is either…Feb 28, 2018Feb 28, 2018
Kate SalesinBuilding a Xylophone, Part 5: Xylo-nalysisI soon discovered that the optimization algorithm was very sensitive to the initial guess. Recall that the inputs to this algorithm are two…Feb 28, 2018Feb 28, 2018