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In praise of mechanical things
The marvel of simple repetitive movements
Dale Dougherty
November 14, 2025
3D image of Chime Machine by Jack Ellis and a team of fellow RIT students
A high school teacher I met this week showed me around his school’s makerspace. It was 4pm and the students in the Robotics Club were working independently in small groups. He described himself as the physics teacher — the Rube Goldberg challenge, the gravity race track where students must build a car that no only goes down the track but also climbs back up. His Robotics Club will be competing with Plastic Antweight–class combat robots (see “Build Your First Combat Robot” article by Brandon Bennett Young from Make: Vol 81) in the spring. Almost all of the robot, except axles and motors, is 3D printed and two students were testing out the small tires they had printed using TPU (Thermoplastic Polyurethane) filament, which is flexible and rubber-like.
I asked the physics teacher about electronics and he stepped back and shook his head. “I don’t do that,” he said. “I don’t do computers.” End of conversation.
Thinking back on it made me realize that some people are into mechanical things and mechanical engineering, but they are not into digital things and electrical engineering or computer science. To each his own. At Make, we enjoy seeing mechanical contraptions, just as much as we enjoy blinky LEDs and computer-controlled interactions. Even more so in an age of AI, these mechanical things are more fascinating than ever.
This week’s newsletter features several creators of mechanical or kinetic contraptions, all of whom were found by Maker Faire program manager Jennifer Blakeslee.
Table of Contents
Mechanical Fish Tank
The Mechanical Fish Tank by artist Peter Lewis is one of the most beautiful things I’ve seen. Too bad (for me) that it is on exhibit now in the Newcastle Museum in Australia.
Here’s another from the artist:
A local reporter covered the exhibit.
To look at the machine in action is to fall into a marvelous reverie, imagining a mess of endless cogs and clockwork gears turning somewhere in its inner workings. But when the artists looks, it is as a loving and slightly exasperated creator.
Lewis worked on this project for 12 years. "It was not a smooth road," Lewis said of the project. "It was a road with potholes you could drive a car into."
The Junk Thief
Argentine Guillermo Galetti is a kinetic artist who builds things from junk that move gracefully, if also unexpectedly. Online he’s called the Ladron de Chatarra, aka the Junk Thief. Galetti is also a teacher who has shared his creations in the classroom. In this Orato profile, he talks about putting up his work on social media, at urging of his wife.
As time went on, I felt surprised to discover an audience eager to learn about my gadgets, and to hear the positive reactions from my students. The basement of my home became a sacred space for me, offering a workshop and storage space to stockpile items and replenish them as needed. My neighbors, catching wind of my work, often gift me materials. Sometimes, when I return home, I find items at my gate that make their way into my projects.
Each week, I climb on my bicycle with a wagon attached and embark on an expedition in search of materials. Showing up regularly to the garbage dump, I scavenge for useful items. When I come across heaters, I strip the external coating. The thin sheet metal proves ideal for students to work with in the body shop.
Here’s a short video of a running man with just incredibly smooth motion.
@art_dailydose has a compilation of Galetti’s work.
His own Instagram page is HERE. On YouTube, he has a short video of a homemade cement mixer (mezcladora de cemento casera).
In the profile, the Junk Thief says: “My happiness comes from the simplicity of my creations, driven by three important factors: my ideas, the material, and a sense of purpose.”
Maker Faire Rochester (MFROC) this weekend
Back for its 12th year, Maker Faire Rochester takes place Saturday, November 15, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Gordon Field House on the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) campus.
Among the 90 makers is Jack Ellis, an RIT student who has been sharing maker projects since middle school on his excellent project portfolio website. At MFROC this year, Jack is demonstrating his team project, Chime Machine, which was built for an Engineering Design Tools class. “Our task is to build a chime machine and through the process, learn about teamwork and the engineering design process,” he said. Here’s a video of the finished project and you can learn more about the build and team HERE.
In other news, we sent Make: editor David Groom to Maker Faire Shenzhen in China, which is this weekend — but we haven’t heard from him. No reason to think anything’s wrong, except for problems with the Internet in China. We’ll have a report next week.
Mechanical Memorabilia
I’ve had this crank-toy or automata by Ernie Fosselius since 2008 when Ernie exhibited at Maker Faire Bay Area. He had a collection of humorous wooden crank toys on a wheeled cart. Kids love crank-toys. They turn the crank and watch things move and they can see the mechanism that controls the movement. I recall one of Ernie’s toys was a man with the label “Politician” and no matter how much you turned the crank, nothing happened. On Makebot, the four tools move up and down.
Ernie Fosselius “Makebot” from 2008
Ernie is a filmmaker and he is best known for the Star Wars parody, Hardware Wars (1978).
Make Things is a weekly newsletter for the Maker community from Make:. This newsletter lives on the web at makethings.make.co
I’d love to hear from you if you have ideas, projects or news items about the maker community. Email me - [email protected].