Zen Garden
Zen Garden
The inspiration from this project is an automatic Zen Garden-like table, similar to this example on Etsy. Effectively, it is a sandbox with a steel ball that moves around in different patterns throughout the day.
The design is integrated into a Ø3.5ft coffee table with a glass center. Below the glass is the sandbox area which is suspended from the top of the coffee table (see section cut below).
A 2D motion mechanism is mounted on the bottom of the coffee table, and is belt-driven by a pair of stepper motors. Zeroing the stepper motors will either be done with a set of limit switches, or a single quadrature rotary encoder (TBD which is more interesting to implement).
Current CatiaV5 CAD model progress, and mechanism layout is shown below. Rotary encoder is shown in the model but is not final.
Current BOM export as of 01-10-2025:
