17. August 2016 1

[Josh Sheldon] created a “Stepper Motor Organ”, that uses stepper motors to a static waveform. The principle reminds of the Hammond Organ where the sound is also created with rotating disks. Aesthetically it reminds of the Incredible marble machine.
Josh also build the keys himself. Whoho!

The operational principle is that when stepper motors are back-driven, they induce a pseudo-sinusoidal alternating current. If this signal is amplified and connected to a speaker, you can listen to it as sound. The pitch of the sound is determined by the frequency of the wave, which depends on how fast the motor is back-driven. Higher speed will be a higher note. I thought this sound was interesting, so I wanted to make an instrument that used this mechanism to make music. This is an experimental instrument I built that uses back-driven stepper motors to synthesize sound.There are 49 stepper motors, one for each note in my four octave instrument. At rest, each motor floats above one of 49 disks, which increase in size exponentially as the notes ascend in pitch. The disks spin together, driven by a single speed-controlled DC motor. When a key is pressed, the corresponding stepper motor is engaged with the corresponding disk in the disk stack, and the disk back-drives the stepper motor.

Wooden Organ Built Around Stepper Motors to Create a Unique Synthesized Sound