Mystic Lite/Cloud Sphere by Rabbit Tanaka REPAIR

[Allen Pettner]

Hello Everyone, 

I was lucky enough to come across this cool Mystic Lamp by Rabbit Tanaka circa 2001. When i got it home it seemed like a fairly simple design. I thought maybe similar to a lava lite, the bulb heats the liquid and begins to move and swirl. Nope, not at all. The bulb lights and it has another speed control that controls the speed of the liquid inside. 

The unfortunate part the piece inside the globe that controls the motion seems to be broken. The speed control has no effect and the liquid remains still. I just get a green globe, which is also pretty cool but i know the swirling effect would be awesome. 

I am wondering if any one has or knows of anyone that has repaired one of these. I have had it apart and it has a pretty serious seal with two electrodes going into the liquid, i am assuming theres a small motor and fan inside. 

Any help or advice would be much appreciated. I think its worth trying to fix. 

Thanks in advance 

[Dr. WHAT?!]

I've taking one of these apart before and by no means is it easy to repair or put back together, in fact I had to trash mine. When you take apart the lamp, you'll see a rubber gasket (which holds the rheoscopic fluid in place) which is then glued all the way around the rim of the glass. The 2 wires you see go to a motor that goes in the rubber circle space that should have a something around it like a rubber band to hold the motor in place. You can undo that rubber band and take the motor out so you can just have the glass globe by itself and not attached. This motor magnetically spins a propeller that is fixed (built into) to the inside of the rubber gasket. So it spins by a way of magnetism, there are no wires going into the fluid. From the looks of the top picture, your propeller either broke off or just came off. The one I tried to repair couldn't spin because the propeller part sat too close to the rubber gasket and it just didn't move until I pulled the propeller away a little bit from the rubber gasket. But all that didn't matter when I tried to put it back together and seal the globe. The globe seal didn't work very well and leaked some so that fried the electronics therefore I had to trash it. Wish you luck trying to repair this. Also another thing I found pretty hard to find was the bulbs for these. Sure I found some bulbs that "fit" but they'd last maybe 6 hours and them blow. Hope this helps some.

[Leah Reick]

Hi Allen - 

I know this is a blast from the past being that you asked this question nearly 10 years ago.  I just bought one of these on eBay, also green, and was assured in the listing that it was working, well . . . by the time it got to me, the impeller and what not had disintegrated.  I was just curious, did you ever get yours up and working?

[Claude J]

Just a thought,..It might be possible to replace the piece in the fluid with a magnetic spinner from a laboratory mixer.

[Allen Pettner]

@leah unfortunately I was never able to fix it. It is still siting downstairs in the project pile. Claude has the right idea, that was my plan if I ever get around to it.