Blink

A while back I found these cool old display tubes (known as “nixie tubes”) that show scientific symbols.

I finally got around to building a little robot that uses the “volts” and “ohms” symbols as though they were different stages of eyes during a “blink”. Hence his name. There is a home made cam mechanism in his head that causes them to switch back and forth.

Every element was found — scrap yards, second-hand stores, dumpsters — then cleaned, stripped, sorted and rebuilt. Found aluminum is TIG-welded and sanded seamless; nothing is cast. The electronics are salvaged from consumer devices, repaired and rewired so the piece does something when you touch it.