Turn Table on the cheap

[David Calson]

I need to create a 360 degree shot of an actor. I want to put him on some sort of lazy susan for people (something to brace his footing would be nice too). Anybody have some ideas for parts I could use to make this? It doesn't need to be motorized.

 

Thanks!

[Gregg MacPherson]

Is an office chair no good? Just tried a chair here, very slick bearings, smooth, feet just hanging felt ok. Is higher than normal with no arms or back but maybe that's not relevant.

[Chris Millar]

Built these from human size up to solid enough to spin a bus. Dismantling and reinstalling some that traverse while spinning a drummer + drum kit on the weekend ;)

 

For your purposes 3 castors mounted on a piece of ply should do the trick, you'll need a spigot of some sort at the centroid of the triangle the castors make. If you can weld then steel pipe is good - try dowel and plumbing supplies or maybe just a dirty ol' hole saw hole and so on.

 

We had great fun spinning people around at a party with one just like this. The gag was to stay on and hit as many ping pong balls out the window onto the police car outside with a cookbook as you could.

 

(we had about 1000 of the things at the time - try burning one... scary)

Edited December 14, 2012 by Chris Millar

[David Calson]

Sounds awesome Chris, thanks for your tip. I'll def give that a try

[Tad Howard]

sit n spin? take off the handle?

http://www.amazon.com/Playskool-34715-Classic-Sit-n-Spin-Assortment/dp/B002P7564Q/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1356210600&sr=8-8&keywords=playskool+sit+and+spin

[Dino Giammattei]

Even though this is an old thread I wanted to offer one of my crazy modinofications as an alternative to the complicated method of using casters or wheels which I had no luck in making work smoothly.. A few years back I built a small 12" prototype of the following idea that worked amazingly well. I never built the full sized version. I was trying to come up with a cheap, non mechanical, and very low profile turntable. I took plexiglas, some plywood and some very dense indoor outdoor carpet. I sandwiched the materials so that the plywood was top and bottom and the plexiglas and carpet were in the middle. I used screws through the plywood to immobilize the plywood/carpet & plywood plexi contact leaving the carpet and plexi to slide against each other. I impregnated the carpet with silicone spray so that it would slide over the plexiglas. Using a brick as the subject, the prototype worked but there was a slight issue when starting the rotation as the materials would stick ever so slightly until the thing got moving. Once moving though it would spin for quite a while, and it was quite easy to maintain a steady speed. I was going to experiment with other dry lubricants like silicon graphite, hexagonal boron nitride, molybdenum disulfide and tungsten disulfide but got sidetracked with other projects. If anyone is nuts enough to want to try this, contact me for details.....dino

[Igor Trajkovski]

Maybe this video from DJTV will give you some ideas:

http://www.digitaljuice.com/djtv/detail.aspx?sid=70

 

 

Cheers

 

Igor