The next step was to build an actual physical device.

I went to the V&A Childhood Museum to an original phenakistoscope which was made in about 1850.
I have also checked another animation devices of that time.

Then through the deeper research and experiments, we figured out, that it will not work without a mirror because you could see the animation without it only when the disk rotates with the certain speed which is almost impossible to achieve using SAM’s DC motor. So then I have made a small paper prototype just to get a general understanding of the shape.

We decided to make it minimalistic and use transparent acrylic, laser cutting and bending.

The next step was to create a source file in the Illustrator.

But the trick is to make all the lines the with the same thickness 0.028pt, otherwise, you will get a faulty cut like this:

To avoid that, you should make sure there are no double lines in the file and the “Align to Pixel Grid” option is ticked off.

Essential thing you should consider when engraving is a power of the laser because if it is not right the dust be ignited and damage the acrylic making it cloudy:

After the laser cutting was done, it was time to bend acrylic to make a clear stand.

There was another surprise when all the bending lines were traced using scoring. That was a mistake. When we started bending, the acrylic cracked where the lines were made:

So if you need to mark where your acrylic should be bent, it is better to make tiny curvy dents on the opposite sides.

When all the stand was ready, we moved on to testing it and assembling: 

Using a short custom code we have made the device work on the maximum speed when the proximity sensor registers an object closer than 80% of sensor’s sensitivity.

So the end device works like this: