[M/Bre]aking Things
My friend Mark P. Sullivan always said he wanted to make windchimes with all of the dead hard disk drives he had collected over the years. This came back to me as we struggled to find ways to make music with tops, so I started disassembling all of the broken drives I could find to listen to the sound of the platters
Case Mods
We modified our original protoype using one of the disk platters. Several small screws were placed within a cavity in the top beneath the platter in the hopes of making a sweet ringing sound. This was not successful. The centripetal / centrifugal (I always confuse them) force kept the screws jammed against the walls of the top as it spun so it didn't make any sound.
This is the best spinning top we have so far. Its proportions are comparable top those given in an article we found about machining tops from aluminum.
Whistling... Not Quite
I tried to drill holes in the platters, thinking it might be possible to get a whistling sound as the top spun. The only sound I produced was a pop as the platter shattered. It appears that the disk platters are not metals as I thought. They shatter like glass.
I constructed another test top out of a metal cone from a ceiling-mounted air vent we found on the junk shelf. I did my best to match the "ideal" top proportions.
This one doesn't spin very well -- and is quite dangerous when launched from the power drill.