The Time Capsule embedded in the Silicon Valley Nikola Tesla Statue
About the Tesla Time Capsule
Having recently met a very creative machine shop owner, Chris Rothe, and having been impressed by the complicated custom metal fittings popping out of his machinery, I asked him, "what can this equipment do?". Chris said, " anything you can make with a 3-D program, and anything you can draw on a napkin I can get a 3-D program made for it." I said I can do better than a napkin. I designed the Tesla Time Capsule, below, in illustrator.
Concept drawing for CNC milled Tesla Time Capsule.
My Nikola Tesla Time Capsule was imbedded in the pedestal of "A Statue of Nikola Tesla in the Silicon Valley" on December 7, 2013. The opening date to be 30 years later on December 7, 2043.
A replica of the time capsule was also made for the collection of the new Tesla Science Center in Wardenclyffe, New York and was delivered to the museum to coincide with the embedding of the time capsule in the pedestal base of "A Statue of Nikola Tesla in the Silicon Valley" on December 7, 2013.
The time capsule was filled with predictions of the future from KickStarter backers and local Silicon Valley school children engineering relics of our times, Tesla bank notes and one of the 6 inch resin statue replicas.
The time capsule was CNC (Computer Numeric Control) milled by a machine shop out of a 4x9x12" block of solid aluminum and constructed of over 250 custom made, and milled, pieces of aluminum, brass, copper rods, and stainless steel rods, based on my design drawings and improved upon during manufacturing discussions.
Yes, even the bolts were milled from scratch out of a hexagonal block of brass.
After all the 250 parts were created, Chris had a great deal of handwork to build out the time capsule to the design, like the almost 200 copper rods around the periphery. Each end had to be fitted into predrilled holes top and bottom for each rod.
The bas relief on the cover of the time capsule: ScanSite was able to create a bas relief STL file from the 3D data they captured scanning of my 7ft clay sculpture. The data was used by the machinist to CNC mill the image out of a plate of aluminum made to fit perfectly into the brass surrounded section of the time capsule lid.