#shineetools

Compliant structures are all around us and yet, so easily overlooked. What makes them interesting is they have a premise about them by engineers saying that they'll never wear out. Well, fun fact, FATIGUE! Everything wears out eventually.  I first started noticing compliant structures at a very young age. Some encounters were possibly the first fidget boxes. I was given a jam jar lid with a Push logo on the top. If you pressed the lid down and it clicked, it signified that the jar had been tampered with and you shouldn’t buy it. Amazing to think this a simple solution that went unoticed by the masses and yet children everywhere spent hours clicking the tops of jam jar lids when totally bored, waiting for cable television to be invented.

A picture is worth a thousand words, so here it is in true SHINee Tools fashion. A classic example of a compliant structure in its simplest form. When first pressed the side are forcing the central mass outwards until it reaches its its maximum states and flips over to the DARK SIDE other side.

Compliant structures are found in many other daily items such as mechanical metal switches, Childerens Jumping Toys and my personal favorite, Mole Grips (you’ll need to think about that one).

A rather interesting article can be found here: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0168218 I hope you find these structures as interesting and ingenious as I do.

I was watching a video this week and I noticed a classic example of a Moiré pattern. This is interesting as modern camera generally have such good filters, it’s not particularly common anymore.

The effect is caused by two overlaying lines colliding with each other, a single line example would be like a barber shop sign where the lines move upwards. The line’s aren’t actually going up but your perception of them is. When two lines clash they create a Moire Pattern. This is quite uncommon to see these days as most modern broadcast equipment has a Anti-Moire filter placed in-front on the imaging sensor. Its a fancy name for a blurry filter.

Using a anti Moire filter does cause a rather obvious problem. It reduces the overall image sharpness, to blur together the clashing lines, therefore removing the unwanted effect. In the case of a camera the TWO sets of lines that are clashing are caused by the lines on the shirt and the pixel alignment on the chip called a Beyer Pattern, later corrected by the filter.

A particular camera manufacturer figured that there must be a better solution to just blurring the pixels together. Well... Fuji figured out that if you randomise the pixel pattern, it would eliminate the Moire effect. And what clever peeps they are. It totally worked. They created a X-Trans sensor different to the traditional Beyer pattern sensor. This had many advantages, one of which was a much sharper final image, as nothing is being blurred. The second was a much greater light throughput, as adding filters reduces the amount of stops of light. By removing the filter it allowed the camera to produce better cleaner images in low light.

A living, breathing, moving, material. Today is a day to make something new. To put life into a underestimated block of wood. It has grain and structure and knots and burs. It's warm to the touch and speaks if you listen closely. Wood has a soul that's deeper than our understanding. Sitting in the corner of a room, silent while echoing signs of its past.

How many winters has this tree seen. Watching a man at work on the lathe, listening as the tool chatters over the knots not to be touched and gliding over the grain wanting to be cut. The man doesn't shape the wood, the wood shapes itself. The shavings stream from the sharp tool that's guided by its master.

For today we lack a intimacy that our ancestors had. We lack a sympathy for the tools and machines we use today. An age of industry blinded by technology. So today, stop and listen to the wood. Create something by listening to what it wants to become.