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Permalink Reply by Timothy Hunter on February 28, 2018 at 11:04pm

the floppy drives sing because they use stepper motors. you can control the speed and direction of the motor.  the speed controls the pitch of the note.

hair clippers are an AC motor so you wont be able to control its speed except by reducing the ac voltage...

in the clip you linked the magnets affect the windings and therefore the speed/pitch. you couldn't achieve what you want with magnets, but winding a coil of wire around the body and varying the voltage and current to adjust the magnetic field might do something...  

personally i would put it in the too hard basket.

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Permalink Reply by Br Harold F Stubbs III on March 1, 2018 at 1:51pm

what about battery operated clippers? Do they all usually use small AC motors or maybe they switch to DC..

I like the electro-magnet idea with the coil.. 

might just need to basically build something with a cheap/small DC motor that sounds similar to hair clippers than start with AC hair clippers and tear them down... 

hmmmm..

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Permalink Reply by Timothy Hunter on March 4, 2018 at 12:15am

there is a difference between a DC motor and a stepper motor. 

a dc motor has 2 wires , polarity on the wires dictates which way it spins and voltage and current how fast it spins. 

stepper motors have 4 or more wires and direction of spin is controlled by which wires are powered and then which next ones.. speed is controlled by how fast the steps are switched. 

those floppy drives etc are made to make a pitch by driving them with a PWM signal 

Pulse Wave Modulation is a bit hard to explain without pics...lol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmPziPfaByw  

if you want recognisable sound from the clippers then i think the only way would be to use the housing for a small LM386 amp and speaker...

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Permalink Reply by Br Harold F Stubbs III on March 4, 2018 at 4:24am

I am familiar with PWM signaling and somewhat with stepper motor control. I'm more familiar with brushless DC motor controllers though, at least the theory.

Pulse Width Modulation is only a method to approximate frequencies in a signal using only ON/OFF pulses - it also has the effect of approximating amplitudes / duty cycles.

My original thinking was -
Using a potentiometer as a throttle control for a DC motor would be the analog way of doing it.. Driving the voltage from a microphone / pickup signal would be related...

Assuming a battery operated clipper operated normally with an internal ~9v or so source, you should be able to use it as a speaker just using a psycho knob or LWM386 as the amplifier..

Trying to drive an AC motor via a mic/pickup signal would be just a bit more electrical engineering than I am familiar with, especially dealing with mains voltage.

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Permalink Reply by the anonymous pick on March 1, 2018 at 3:47pm

If they are old enough ( have dbl coils) , make a pickup , it essentially is a pickup . or use an old  razor

Find more videos like this on Cigar Box Nation
.

http://www.cigarboxnation.com/video/electric-razor-powered-guitar

you may have to clip an earth magnet on it  over night .  or leave a small one on it  .

but easy peasy lemon squeezy.

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Permalink Reply by Br Harold F Stubbs III on March 4, 2018 at 4:27am

The opposite of what I am trying to do but then that does sound so sweet.. 

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Permalink Reply by jabes on March 9, 2018 at 2:58am

mmm i shared this video on a facebook page just last week ,sounds great ..

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Permalink Reply by the anonymous pick on March 9, 2018 at 2:55pm

:-D cool Jabes 

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Permalink Reply by JL on March 6, 2018 at 12:24am

easy button:

gut the clippers and use the case for a cbgitty amp kit (like the cigarette box amps), you may need to find a smaller speaker

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