GBC Module - Ball Factory

 

 

My idea is to build a ball factory. The balls are placed in baskets in pairs, transported a little further by a conveyor belt, and then emptied again. For the baskets, of course, I will also have to build a return track. It's inspired by the Ball Factory from Akiyuki, but I made and will made some major changes, such as using only technic parts, the bigger conveyer and other mechanisms.

Here a close-up from the left part:

Due to the rotation of the light grey lliftarms and the yellow axles, the baskets will move one position approximately every 1 to 2 seconds.
Therefore, the feeding mechanism will also be placed at this point. The feeding mechanism will also be a conveyer belt.

After the conveyer belt for baskets follows the emtying mechanism of the baskets:

The mechanism will empty the basket to the right due the rotation of the dark bluish gray axle at the right side, the rotation of the yellow axle connector at the left side makes the whole platform tilt forward so that the basket slides away and makes room for the next one.

Next thing to do will be the feeding mechanism (a conveyer belt).

Edited November 14, 20222 yr by Philtech

Very interesting, I'm curious to see where this goes!

Do you plan to make all movements happen with just a single motor, like in the original Ball Factory?

20 hours ago, howitzer said:

Very interesting, I'm curious to see where this goes!

Do you plan to make all movements happen with just a single motor, like in the original Ball Factory?

Glad you are interested.

Yes, I'm planning to use a single motor, because of the various mechanism, which all have to have the same speed. There could be problems if one motor would turn a little faster than another, I think.

Thats an ambitious project! The original Ball factory is some kind of the holy grail and I am curious what you are going to make out of this Inspiration. 

On 9/13/2022 at 8:47 PM, Frequenzberater said:

Thats an ambitious project! The original Ball factory is some kind of the holy grail and I am curious what you are going to make out of this Inspiration. 

Great you're interested in it!

Here is the first update of the building progress:

The feeding mechanism is a simple conveyer belt. 50 balls fit easily in the in-basket.

I also built the return path for the baskets:

Here is the mechanism that pushes the baskets to the side into a kind of tower, where the baskets are pushed up by a rotating Triangle lift arm so that they can be moved on by the next mechanism:

Next I will connect all mechanism with a motor or handcrank and sync the whole thing. I am curious whether everything works as I want.

Thats pretty cool so far! 

On 10/4/2022 at 5:30 PM, Frequenzberater said:

Thats pretty cool so far! 

Thank you!

After a few major changes here is the next and probably last update.

The first of the greater changes: I increased the height of the conveyor belt of the return path of the baskets, to avoid the basket tower (see my last post) which wasn't reliable enough.

The next thing concerns speed of the factory. It wasn't fast enough. Even changing the gear combination did not help, because due to the large force needed to drive the machine, the whole thing still remained the same speed. Therefore, I have built a bypass to get the right speed. Every third ball is redirected.

The small red lever redirects them. It swings in this position for every third ball.

To get back to the right height, a simple conveyor belt is used.

The inbox is a little less than ten bricks high...

... and 15 studs wide and deep.

The output is a little more than ten bricks high.

A video will follow in the next days.

Any thoughts, questions, critiques or anything like that are greatly appreciated.

I hope you like it!

Edited November 12, 20222 yr by Philtech

Did I miss something?  Is there a video?

35 minutes ago, Fyredog said:

Did I miss something?  Is there a video?

In the entry topic: https://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?/forums/topic/191810-tc23-great-ball-contraption-contest-entry-topic/&do=findComment&comment=3567068

Wow - I have been waiting to see this one in action - Quite pleasing!  Nice job!

 

 

18 hours ago, Fyredog said:

Did I miss something?  Is there a video?

 

17 hours ago, mortenm said:

In the entry topic: https://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?/forums/topic/191810-tc23-great-ball-contraption-contest-entry-topic/&do=findComment&comment=3567068

Oh, I thought would have inserted the video here too. Just to complete, here it is:

 

14 hours ago, Fyredog said:

Wow - I have been waiting to see this one in action - Quite pleasing!  Nice job!

Great to hear this. Thanks.

Edited December 8, 20222 yr by Philtech