Sisyphus Table

| December 2023 |

Sisyphus, from Greek mythology, earned Zeus’ wrath after revealing that Zeus had kidnapped the river god Aegina. As a result, Sisyphus was forced to roll a boulder up a hill, only to have it roll back down each time, for eternity. This Sisyphus table takes inspiration from this legend where a ball is moved through the sand to make intricate geometric patterns.

Sisyphus Industries creates commercially made tables for consumers. However, they range from $725 at the low end to $15,750 at the high end. Therefore, I decided to follow a tutorial from DIY Machines to try and make my own. This process took much longer than expected, especially since I ordered the parts from Aliexpress to save money, but at the cost of much longer shipping times.

For my table, I decided to make it square where the shell is made from plywood. The hardest part of this project was building the gantry, which included creating CAD models for my specific parts, and getting the hardware and software working together.The gantry is controlled by an Arduino through a Raspberry Pi which connects the system to the internet, allowing the status of the table to be monitored from a computer. A second Ardunio is used to control the LED strip lights around the border of the frame which is made from plywood veneered in Red Oak.

Overall, the table kind of works. The gantry has too much slop to effectively move the head and ball bearing accurately. This is unfortunately a project that I will end up scrapping, but it was a good experience in trying a project where I had to integrate woodworking and electronics.