[GBC] Akiyuki Ball Factory

[Freezer118]

Yesterday I visited your LEGO World stand but the LEGO ball factory was separated from the GBC loop. Any specific reason the Ball factory wasn't working?

[Ankoku]

You can see that in a video as well (11:15 mark):

 

I think the main thing to remember, is that you are now longer confined to 2 base plates, so you have a lot more room for experimentation.

Edited October 21, 2019 by Ankoku

[9v system]

6 hours ago, Freezer118 said:

Yesterday I visited your LEGO World stand but the LEGO ball factory was separated from the GBC loop. Any specific reason the Ball factory wasn't working?

@Berthil said he had issues with the spiral lift jamming so had to take it out of the layout

[Ankoku]

I have done way too much work on sorting out Akiyuki spiral lifts.

I never liked how they collected balls which never got lifted. So I fixed that. Also, it means you don't get balls bunching and jamming together as much, which is nice.

The heights on the instructions tended to be wrong. Thus you would get the tubing too close, thus it rubbed, or too far out and thus the ball would get stuck between the tube and the column, those tended to be the worst.

So, the 3 main things I did, was:

Adjust the height slightly, usually only a plate or two. The Ball Factory is very forgiving in that respect.

Change how the tubing is connected. e.g. I don't think I use a 3L pin for any of my lifts where it connects two bits of tubing.

Buy black tubing from LEGO. The material it is made of seems to be softer and thus puts less strong on the whole structure. Might be an age of the material thing. I don't know.

 

Before long, I will post the changes I made to the lift on Cup-to-Cup.

Edited October 21, 2019 by Ankoku

[9v system]

sigh looks like im having the same issues with the spiral lift, it keeps jamming at the input, and its to high to modify to the large input without lowing the whole spiral part

[Ankoku]

How is the ball getting jammed?

[9v system]

8 hours ago, Ankoku said:

How is the ball getting jammed?

at the input of the spiral , just before they roll onto the tube, its an issue with the v2 ball factory as well, this is why i want to build the large input like akiyukis ones has

[Berthil]

I've made some small updates before I will rebuild the spiral lift to a wider version to prevent ball jamming.
With these updates bucket cycle has run for 2 hours without a problem.

All instructions on Rebrickable have been updated. Updates are:

• step 113: Bucket straightener (will push bucket back on wheel of not placed correctly by Bob)
• step 154: Bucket picker fortification (less movement of bucket picker tower)
• step 238: Timing rod bucket shifter back and forth 7L liftarm instead of 9L liftarm (the 9L was wrong in the instructions from the beginning, sorry)
• step 244; Timing rod bucket shifter back and forth better guide to prevent sticking (less force when pushing bucket on Bob)
• step 251: Timing axles 5L with stop and 9L for bucket shifter left right (fully utilize left and right bucket shifter carrier amplitude until stops)
• step 261: Timing rod on bucket shifter carrier 11L and wider to prevent sticking (less force when pushing bucket on Bob)
• steps 324 and 329: Faster gearing 2nd belt, now run with 21 buckets instead of 22 (no pile up of buckets on 2nd belt)
• step 352: Bucket pusher 1/2L outwards (ensure Bob gets a bucket correctly).

Edited November 5, 2019 by Berthil
All mentioned steps minus one because of 2nd update

[9v system]

thanks for the improvements @Berthil, is it possible you could implement the large input as per akiyukis original module?, it should fix the jamming issue

[Berthil]

I plan on adding 1 stud on each side of the inbox and lower the spiral lift by 1 stud.
Adding 1 stud will add room for the balls to go to when more than one ball tries to enter the spiral.
1 Stud lower will give more room in the inbox for better ball flow.
This is as in version 2 of the BF but I will not create the gigantic inbox version, I see no need.

Edited November 4, 2019 by Berthil

[9v system]

12 hours ago, Berthil said:

I plan on adding 1 stud on each side of the inbox and lower the spiral lift by 1 stud.
Adding 1 stud will add room for the balls to go to when more than one ball tries to enter the spiral.
1 Stud lower will give more room in the inbox for better ball flow.
This is as in version 2 of the BF but I will not create the gigantic inbox version, I see no need.

understandable, i want to make it on mine because i want to use it as a starting module for my layouts, as i run my modules extremely slow,

[9v system]

@Berthil, @Ankoku this might interest you

[Ankoku]

Yeah, I have seen various photos where it is in the background. Never really worked out how it worked. Maybe it was more transporting or buckets with added pneumatics.

I should probably send him an email and ask him.

[9v system]

57 minutes ago, Ankoku said:

Yeah, I have seen various photos where it is in the background. Never really worked out how it worked. Maybe it was more transporting or buckets with added pneumatics.

I should probably send him an email and ask him.

i would, i would love to get some details on some bits of it

Edited November 5, 2019 by 9v system

[Berthil]

It looks like a bigger Ball Factory on more baseplates and with more buckets. I think one Ball Factory on baseplates is enough :)
But would be nice to see some mechanics but I guess we will not see it as this is past time and we have never seen any footage.

[Berthil]

I've finished updating the Inbox so Spiral Lift does not jam anymore without redesigning the whole Inbox. I also updated the Bucket Emptier.

All instructions and parts list on Rebrickable have been updated. Updates are:

 

• Step 13: The two arches should be part 3307 Arch 1 x 6 x 2 with Thick Top, previously I used the wrong one with thin top so balls could drop in, I wasn't aware of this.
• Step 30 and onwards: Opened up the sides of the inbox so balls can escape somewhere. I've run the Ball factory for two hours with 35 balls in the Inbox and no jamming at all. That said, this Inbox together with the Spiral Lift will never be a forgiving Inbox and needs a machine in front of it that behaves, not a machine that dumps 100 balls at once.
• Step 272 onwards: Added ball guides to the bucket emptier because balls escaped the emptier on all 4 sides sometimes. For this the two 5L guide axles of the back slider have been replaced by 10L and added a two 5L axle at the bottom of the emptier. No spilling off balls anymore.

Very pleased with how it is running now after. the updates.

[tismabrick]

Thanks once more! I will build this eventually. Just need to find some time ;)

[Innocity]

 

Celebrating the 8th anniversary of the ball factory

[howitzer]

@Berthil I noticed in the parts list that there's 16x of 4865a and 1x of 4865b (panel 1x2x1) and one type comes with square corners and other with rounded corners. Is this an important distinction? I'm slowly gathering parts to build this, and I want to make sure I get the correct parts, but I couldn't quickly think of a reason why one couldn't be used in place of another.

What about 6542a and 6542b (16t gear with clutch), is it important to use b and not a (or even 18946)? From the instructions those seem to be interchangeable but I'm asking just to make sure it works, considering that it is quite a complicated and delicate machine.

[Berthil]

@howitzer There should be no influence, I'll update the parts list.

@Innocity Excellent!

[Berthil]

I have been running the Ball Factory for prolonged times and have come up with two additional small improvements.

• Step: 281 Heavier bucket grabber for better bucket grip by adding two 2x4 plates. On rare occasion bucket was not grabbed and stayed down so was not emptied.
• Step 338: Bucket guide bucket shifter made smoother on the underside and longer to prevent bucket tilting when sliding towards Bob. On rare occasion a bucket would tilt when entering the ramp coming off the belt towards Bob.

Parts 3 and 4 of the BI and parts list have been updated. I'll do more testing but it runs very well now so I don't expect any further updates from my side until after LEGO World next year :)

Edited November 7, 2019 by Berthil
typos

[Innocity]

16 hours ago, Berthil said:

I have been running the Ball Factory for prolonged times and have come up with two additional small improvements.

• Step: 281 Heavier bucket grabber for better bucket grip by adding two 2x4 plates. On rare occasion bucket was not grabbed and stayed down so was not emptied.
• Step 338: Bucket guide bucket shifter made smoother on the underside and longer to prevent bucket tilting when sliding towards Bob. On rare occasion a bucket would tilt when entering the ramp coming off the belt towards Bob.

Parts 3 and 4 of the BI and parts list have been updated. I'll do more testing but it runs very well now so I don't expect any further updates from my side until after LEGO World next year :)

Thanks for the quick and steady updates.

[Berthil]

Snake Bypass (WIP). Not only to bypass the BF (temporarily) but also other GBCs for less stress during events.

[OneMoreRobot]

Thanks Berthil for all the recent updates, with 3 copies under various stages of construction you have given me considerable additional work tearing-down & rebuilding :-)

Something went wobbly with the software on step 299 on the latest version.

Cheers OMR

[9v system]

heres a photo of my old ball factory with the large input added