The Sands Mechanical Museum
News!
updated November 2022
This website is now being hosted by Amazon Web Services (AWS). I tried for over three weeks to host on Google Cloud Services but was unable to get it to work, and me being a 40 year computer science veteran. The terminology is obscure, the documentation difficult or nonexistent, the development environment missing, and the requirements to host a static website excessive. Ask me for details...
The website is changing and moving. My wife used to host our website on her server. She is giving her server away and the Museum site must move. I will be spending October moving the website to Amazon Web Services. I will be making some changes such as removing all PHP generated pages, flattening the folder structure, and getting rid of dead files. Things will probably break but I will do my best to keep things stable.
The Pocket Watch Museum, pocketwatchmuseum.com, is also going away. It uses a LAMP server and requires PHP, MySql, and was poorly written. Please contact me if you are interested in taking it over.
I purchased a 2022 Corvette C8. I have driven it a little and painted a model the same color as mine. I will try and post more about the car as I grow more familiar with it. So far it is exciting and big. I think I prefer smaller cars like my Lotus Exige.
The Sands Mechanical Museum
The Sands Mechanical Museum contains many mechanical wonders, including antique coin operated games, nimble cars like the Super Seven and Elise, and unusual time pieces. While it is a virtual museum, many of the mechanisms are real and can be seen by appointment.
The goal is to reference the wonderful world of mechanical marvels, to astound and amaze you with things mechanical, both old and new. We want to show you how things work. There is a sample of our work to show how varied our interests are.
The arcade games are often ingenious in their design and construction. They seek to entertain. The Lotus Elise is a very advanced automobile, providing more entertainment than just the ordinary travel appliance.
Welcome! We hope you enjoy your visit.
The museum has three major wings:
- Coin operated game museum
- nimble cars (http://www.sandsmuseum.com/cars)
- the Sands Mechanical Museum (http://www.sandsmuseum.com)
Coin Operated Arcade Games
Coin operated machines are the perfect thing to have in a mechanical museum. They are the results of the best creative minds of their time, and are built to entertain. Through time, they show the current state of mechanical and electrical engineering.
- Mechanisms see how the mechanisms inside the machines work
- Coin Operated Machines
- Chicago Express - an old pre-flipper pinball with ramps
- Confucius Say - a unique table from the 1920s
- Contact Jr. - historically significant, first to use electricity
- High Speed - an example of a full restoration
- Knockout - an old pinball machine with boxers fighting in the middle
- Ritz - art deco pinball, very simple
- Shoot the Bear - shoot at a ray of light at a little mechanical bear
Nimble Cars (Automobiles)
Automobiles are mechanical wonders. They can be basic transportation or they can be fun. These three cars all share one characteristic. They are nimble.
- Nimble Cars
- Corvette (C8) a large, somewhat nimble car
- Lotus Elise from Lotus, a very light and minimalist car
- NSX is Honda's engineering master piece, an amazing car
- Super Seven, a street legal race car
Time Pieces
- Spilhaus Clock, designed by Spilhaus and built by Edmund Scientific, shows the position of the stars, tides, phases of the moon.
- Geochron, shows the sun lit portion of the world and time on a scrolling map of the earth
Stuff
- Sail boat, radio controlled model, using high technology materials
- Sous Vide Temperature Controller, a new, scientific method of cooking with a precise temperature controlled water bath. Eggs are divine, as are steaks
- Matching Colors to Repair Clock Faces, by John B. Lord Sr., reprinted with permission from the National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors journal.
- There are some jigsaw puzzles here as well.
- Velodyne ULD15 subwoofer amplifier repair and documentation
- Replace lamp in Itty Bitty Reading Lamp with a light emitting diode (LED).
Notes:
To find out more about the museum or to contact us, please visit the contact page.
Services available at the Sands Mechanical Museum
- We used to do Museum quality restoration of old coin operated games (1930-1960)
- Radio control model sailboat construction
- Automobile suspension tuning
- Frisbee dog training