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Back to the Future – Build your Flux Capacitor

Back to the Future – Build your Flux Capacitor

Practical Realization

Since we wanted to create something that would replicate the panel of the movie’s Flux Capacitor in the most faithful way possible, our project had to have, in addition to the electronic parts, mechanical parts that would look as much as possible like the original ones. Since the switchboard in the movie was the typical one, in metal with a glass window and rubber gasket, we created therefore a “fake” one, made with a grey cardboard box, painted grey, in the place of the switchboard. Then we applied a thick acetate leaf with a fake rubber gasket, 3D printed in black PLA, by means of our 3Drag printer.

 

Collegamenti

 

You could make a plastic box instead, but still you would have to paint it grey.

The strips have been arranged in the shape of a three-pointed star, and applied to a false bottom made in corrugated cardboard and painted black, while Arduino has been assembled behind it (between the false bottom and the bottom), secured with distance rings glued to the bottom of the box by means of hot glue.



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To make the emitted light more uniform, and more similar to the tubular discharge lamps that were used in Back to the Future, we inserted each strip in a transparent plastic sheath, obtained from a part of a transparent pipe (of those used for watering), having a diameter a bit greater than the strip’s width. You could use a transparent and smooth pipe, as well as a translucent one, or one having a machined surface.

The strips’ connection wires come out from a hole in the center of the star (at least the real ones, that is to say, the three ones that go to Arduino). They can be obtained with pieces of a twin lead having three wires, that then have to be connected in parallel with three points (or Arduino’s jumpers), inserted in Arduino’s expansion connectors, in the position that is indicated by the wiring diagram.

The wires that are applied to the other end of each strip are purely for scenery purposes (they are totally fictitious) and simulate the wires of the discharge lamps’ ends that are found in the panel, as seen in the movie. Each one of them can be secured by means of (red) pipe insulators, coming from the spark plugs of a petrol engine, applied on metal screws that are tightened on round 40mm insulators, that are 3D printed and glued to the black cardboard. The fake wires, that in the original machine in the movie would bring the high voltage, can be obtained by painting transparent rubber pipes (with a diameter of 6÷8 mm) in yellow: you will take care to introduce them in the cardboard.

 

flux

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