Hello gang,
Last year I made an ‘arcane device’ for some people to disarm at a LARP event. It was essentially a sort of magical machine that they had to take apart. There were cogs made from cardboard to remove to get to a light to turn off. To slow them down there were a few bells attached and if any of them sounded out, something bad would happen. Here is a photo showing how janky it was.
Yes it’s exactly a pretend version what you are thinking of, but I don’t want to say that word on the internet and get on a list. Here is a very bad photo of the players having a great time disarming it. It was a smash hit!
Anyway. I’ve said I’ll do a better one this time round.
My plan is to have two vertical metal bars sticking out of a box. The bars will be connected to a buzzer and a battery (5v probably). So if a connection is made between the two metal bars, the buzzer goes off. Sort of like how the board game Operation! works.
On the bars (with spacers in between) will be a series of cogs that have to be gently removed, without completing the circuit. Sort of like a fancy version of the mark 1 above.
My first idea is to laser cut the cogs - because they I can make them pleasingly complicated - but wood famously doesn’t conduct electricity. Unless you use a lot of power and that’s not what I’m aiming for.
So does anyone have any recommendations on a conductive tape or paint I could put on the cogs? Or some other way of doing it? Yes we could make them from actual metal but I don’t have the certifications and that would mean lots of sharp edges to round off.
The other advantage for laser cut cogs is I can cut test ones out of cardboard and do mock ups really fast.