mechanical design help needed!!!!

hi,

i am a architect/designer and work in beijing. Me and my friend won the red-dot award in 2010 for a clock
clock
which by now is well know... I have been developing the mechanism of the clock for the last 2 years.. I have developed most of the electronics and the base mechanism of the clock... but i am stuck with not having a good mechanism to keep the blades equidistant while functioning....

the thing is that the blades for to be kept equidistant all the time...no the japanese fan mechanism wont work.. ( i have developed a mechanism but it is far too complex )

Anybody willing to help and coming up with a good solution can partner with us in production...

thanks...

No videos are working on your website, is this normal?

sorry about the videos ...something wrong with the website.. here is the link

clock

What are the blades made of? Are they touching because they bend? Or is it the central axle which is not holding them correctly?

the blade are made of aluminum and they dont touch each other... only the first and last blade need to be fixed to two concentric axis so that they can be rotated ... the other blades should be kept between these two blades somehow... that is what it challenge is!!

It doesn't look like the positioning of intermediate leaves needs to be high precision. Springs between adjacent leaves.

Why not magnets on the leading and trailing edge of each blade? you could sandwich them inside aluminum and still get a pristine surface. then you would just need to have enough resistance on the pivot motion so the blades would only move when pulled by their adjacent segment.

Aaand, after typing that I realized the topic is months old aside from that reply. But it's still a useful idea so i'm gonna leave it.

@hanelyp

the springs dont work .. i have already tried that

@piercet

by far the most innovative idea i have heard of... will try it soon and keep you posted .. if it works i will be damned...have been trying since last two years

Yay! I potentially helped!