Quiksilver

Description

Changeable, unpredictable, variable, fluid, something that moves or changes very quickly, or is difficult to hold or contain are all good words to explain Quiksilver. Quiksilver is the liquid metal mercury. Quicksilver is my first prototype I designed for the Automata Project. I was going after trying to hang one gear over the other and I wanted to display helical teeth on the gears. I have often been asked, what comes first, the name or the prototype. Good question. It can go either way. In the case of Quiksilver the name came second. Upon connecting the two radii with tangent curves I saw the liquid metal mercury flowing in the base. The top two radii where the gears are looked like drops of mercury to me flowing uphill defying gravity. It was at this moment I thought of the term Quiksilver.

Quiksilver is a display of straight tooth helical gears in the spur arrangement with 10 teeth, a 1:1 ratio. The gear movement is displayed between two bases created by using radii and tangents and features slots that are parallel to the base. I focused the center of interest on where the gears meet right between the two upper radii.