GBC General Discussion

[Hanso]

On 2/28/2020 at 1:19 PM, Hanso said:

Will going to do a test this weekend. Let's see if it holds.

Hans

I have added a ball loading mechanism to my module, you can see it here:

 

While adding and testing the additional loading mechanism, I also increased the speed of the belt. During all these testing (> 2 hours), lots of things went wrong before I got it right. But the belt never cracked. Difficult to do a real duration test because I don't have a closed loop (yet).

In this update (version 2.1), the ball loader dispense a ball exactly that it enters the belt, when the bottom flipper is set to its base position. Because of this specific timing and the increased speed, I can now reach 10 balls in 42 seconds. When I have widened the belt to 4 studs (instead of 2) and I clone the belt, I should be able to reach the speed of 1 ball/second.

Waiting now for the ordered bricks. Will keep you posted.

[Hanso]

New post here:

 

Including a link to my latest video:

 

[Hanso]

Latest video:

 

[Frequenzberater]

Also a mechanical masterpiece:

 

 

Edited March 15, 2020 by Frequenzberater

[Hanso]

My third module I am working on, is called "Tower Shoot". Balls entering the tower, are catapulted to the top. This is done by hitting the lever with the green beam.

A first prototype has been built and you can view the action on Youtube.

 

Enjoy, Hans

Edited March 18, 2020 by Hanso

[dr_spock]

Having a ball in lockdown. 

 

 

Powering Powered UP Simple Medium Linear Motor the old fashioned way.

 

Variable speed with the PU medium motor from the Batmobile set.

 

 

[RohanBeckett]

My version of Sawyers' Fork Conveyor..

quite a nice little module.. very suprised I haven't seen it more often at shows, as it was an easy build.. easy to get timed.. and after a few small mods, seems Very reliable! and fun to watch! :)

[Ankoku]

I hate working with angles in Stud.IO

[Ankoku]

It impresses me that 3 can be correct, but the next one be so far out of whack.

I have no idea how to fix that.

[Thierry-GearsManiac]

With a so significant difference in the angle, it looks like the snap algorithm or something else got in the way but did it wrong.

Then, the only solution I see is to manually enter the angle (textbox at the center of the dial) when using the [hinge] command on the hole at the liftarm's angle, after deducing it from the one in the previous sector : +-30° increments as I see.

(I once had to do this for a heptagonal structure in a MOC, in this case with 0.01° approximations).

I recognised the Orbit Overlap from Riku KATSUMATA, a rotating 12-carriage Archimedes trammel variant !

[Ankoku]

Yeah, it is the Orbit Overlap which I am working on, since he provided photos.

Having built 4 arms in the real world, the issue is that it doesn't fit perfectly, so there is a tightness which you can't replicate in Stud.IO

Essentially, it is all squeezed inwards. You find that with some of the small GBC wheels. The angled pieces don't naturally make a circle, so the shape is weird and you will have snapping issues in Stud.IO

The moment you add the 4th arm, it pushes the others to the left. It is interesting how much that 4th addition moves it all The other 3 sit pretty happily.

I may just leave the wheel in segments, rather than try and render the whole thing.

[Thierry-GearsManiac]

I've understood : I forgot that, even with angles of round numbers, some parts could still be under strain.

Of course, when hit by a software limitation, letting the model partially unassembled is usually the solutions (belts and chains too, for example).

Otherwise, if still trying to model this wheel, perhaps (rather complicated to explain) using another order of build : in order to force 30° between one arm and the next, while attaching it on the banana gears :

• create a submodel for the leftmost one (the one attached to a banana gear end hrough a cross-terminated 3L friction pin) in which you include the 7L beam and the 7/3 liftarm
• delete the other arms
• attach a second instance of this submodel on the next adequate hole on the banana gear and hinge it at a manually-entered angle of +-30° with respect to the first instance
• unlink this instance (this makes a copy of the submodel) in order to create the variant using a standard 3L friction pin instead of the cross-terminated one
• reuse these instances by copying them around the banana gears and hinging them accordingly

The trick is to avoid trying to snap directly one arm to its neighbours (this is where deviations form perfect 30° angles occur), even if pins linking neighbouring arms appear unaligned (and perhaps colliding) with holes afterwards.

Idea not yet tested.

Of course, it would have been even easier if Studio would have allowed us to add arbitrary hinge points anywhere on parts or submodels, not necessarily located on holes/axles/pins of placed parts.

 

 

Edited April 13, 2020 by Thierry-GearsManiac

[Ankoku]

For me, the issue is that there will always be collision detection since Stud.IO doesn't do bending :) And neither should it.

The structure for The Sun has some collision detection issues which irks me to this day. That is just me though.

I have tried doing it in a number of different ways. e.g. each arm is replicated identically from the last. Cut n paste job. First three worked pretty much fine. 4th one, not so much. I find it reassuring that building it in real life is kinda the same effect. I did the first 3 without issue, then the moment I got to the 4th, I basically had to scrunch up the previous 3 and "bend" them, to add the 4th. 3 were fine, the 4th required pressure.

I think with Stud.IO, I would most likely have to move everything to the left as much as I can, before it start to collide and hopefully, across the three, it gives the 4th enough space to work. That said, dealing with angle rotation in Stud.IO is not pleasant and right now, I don't have the will to fight it. So I may just work on other bits.

Although it really doesn't do this sort of thing well, even trying to get an arm to connect to a hinge point can be a chore as it wildly tries to snap on to anything entirely inappropriate, it always surprises me how far you can get with normal stuff in a few hours. Doing a thought out set of instructions takes way longer than actually creating the model itself.

Will be interesting to see what LEGO does with it, if much.

[dr_spock]

Mix of PU and PF GBC. 

Gotta love software. The PU part stopped working after the latest PU App update. My tablet can't maintain a stable BT connection with the PU hubs. Drops happen a few seconds after connecting.  Oh well, at least there is no events coming up...

 

[Ankoku]

This doesn't seem to have been posted yet.

I really like the hopper design. Seems to avoid idle balls well.

[Philo]

This table top Small Ball Contraption was built for FreeLUG Spring 2020 on-line contest, whose theme was "Perpetual Motion". This is a small scale version of a Great Ball Contraption loop, fit on top of a 32x32 baseplate. I tried to keep the modular structure, with a specific color scheme for each module.
More details and LDraw file available on Rebrickable: https://rebrickable.com/mocs/MOC-41488/Philoo/table-top-small-ball-contraption/
 

A must-build for all GBC fans

 

Edited May 5, 2020 by Philo

[Ankoku]

Rather nice:
 

 

[Philo]

4 hours ago, Ankoku said:

Rather nice:

Thanks ;)

[Ankoku]

It very much has a sculpture look to it and people will always be fascinated by the mechanism.

[dunes]

The is my version of Lasse Deleuran's Ring module Shishi Odoshi.

I put the ring in an Akiyuki style frame and removed the recirculation option cos it don't use it.

The idea for the frame design is from @9v system but I rebuilt the whole frame from scratch.

 

 

[9v system]

thats really nice @dunes i like it

[dunes]

And here is my reversed engineered version of JK Brickworks - Robot Dreams.

Did some modifications for reliability during this process.

More pictures can be found here: https://bricksafe.com/pages/dunes/gbc/jks-robot-dreams

 

[OneMoreRobot]

@dunes excellent reverse engineering & great to learn about reliability improvements.

[Ankoku]

Has to be said, that is an attractive looking stepper module.

Congrats on getting the reverse engineering done and module constructed!

[Ankoku]

This is the guy that did the escalator you seen in some of the Akiyuki vids, along with the Geneva Drive GBC module: