h a l f b a k e r yMake mine a double.
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Conventional Christmas tree rotators turn the tree around its longitudinal axis.
This is, quite frankly, a bit dull.
BorgCo engineers have designed a Christmas tree rotator that really does rotate the tree.
Consisting of two large rings made of carbon fibre composite, the tree sits inside a
two-axis gimbal frame supported on a heavy stand. Power and control signals are passed to the motors and the tree lights through the opposed pairs of bearings using brushes and commutators.
Thus the tree can rotate around all three axes.
Decorations need to be very firmly attached, particularly if the higher speed settings are selected ; rotation rates on the three axes are independently controlable.
*don't worry about it, [xenzg] - we'll send you a link to some web pages that explain what "friends" are, but don't get your hopes up. Think John Lewis/Watrose dragon, but without the feelgood happy ending.
[link]
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//Conventional Christmas tree rotators// I had no idea such
things existed. |
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//Thus the tree can rotate around all three axes.// So, this is
basically a 3-axis tourbillon? Does it significantly improve the
tree's positional isochronicity? |
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Disconcertingly so. If you haven't seen it, you won't believe it. |
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If you're really keen, we're working on a special "Event Horizon" edition, but we haven't quite got all the bugs out of it yet (the main one being its tendency to open a transdimensional portal into a domain of absolute evil and limitless suffering - quite how the prototype managed to link itself to Oxford Circus underground station on a friday evening rush hour in December is not clear). |
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////Conventional Christmas tree rotators// I had no idea such things existed// - they are fantastic things. We have some friends who, every year, mount their 2-metre-high Christmas tree on a 19-century German clockwork Christmas tree turntable, the tree being lit with actual candles in little holders clipped to the branches. It's a disaster-waiting-to-happen fire risk, but it looks lovely. Oh, yes, because the mechanism is clockwork, it incorporates a music box playing Christmas carols. |
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A tree standing on a conventional rotor is conventionally approximately conical. i.e. with one degree of rotational symmetry. This is so that the tree presents approximately the same volumetric appearance as it rotates, and merely brings subtly different aspects and decorations into view. |
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Logically therefore, the tree in this system must have three degrees of rotational symmetry. I think that means it has to be approximately spherical. |
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Also the musical versions of the normal tree rotor plays a linear melody. I suppose that a three-dimensional melody (i.e. with three temporal dimensions) is required for the tourbillon tree. |
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An octaedron or a dodecahedron would also exhibit suitable symmetry; even a Cube would have considerable merit. We like Cubes; Cubes are good. |
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Rotational topologyof Christmas decorations as a general field of academic research is, regrettably, much neglected. |
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Though our talents and accomplishments are almost beyond measure, music is not one of them. If you care to compose a suitably Christmassy "3D Christmas Tree Suite" it will be given due consideration. |
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Cubes are spherical to a suitable approxamation. |
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Really ? We've never tried approxamating, is it fun ? |
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//Though our talents and accomplishments are almost beyond
measure// Oh, I dunno. Nowadays we have electron
microscopes and other very sensitive technologies - they
might be able to find something. |
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Wow, I didn't even know they MADE a Christmas tree rotator. I live in a third-world country (The United States) and I've never seen a rotating tree before. It would have been nice to know about this before, so that decorating the back side all those years would have been worth the effort. |
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