35 replies to this topic

[Maxlaam]

Teaser Time!

I've started a new ride, I'd like to enter it in the SH contest, but it's incredibly unlikely it will be done in time. I ran out of (certain) pieces already and have to scavenge and/or buy a few more. (Seriously I need a lot more snowflakes!)

Spoiler:
The ride will feature 30 seats.

Teaser Picture:


Excuse me people for the exorbitantly large picture.

[timtimlaz]

Is it going to be like Max Air at Cedar Point? Looks good so far, keep it up!

Edited by timtimlaz, 26 July 2013 - 01:15 PM.

[Helmut]

Looks promising! I have no clue what this could be.

[Maxlaam]

Sorry for not updating this, it's on hold till I get more pieces because most of my metalic/grey connectors (and snowflakes!) are in the floor of Calypso and scattered around the R80XL model. I'll continue building this once I get far enough with another model.

Here's a pic that should give you a good idea of what I'm building.



There are a few hitches with this design, because of the rectangular shape of the main mast it's not very strong in all directions, hopefully this can be fixed when I get it properly balanced. Furthermore the mast is allowing a lot of rotation around the hub, too much rotation causes the front posts to disconnect from the hub. I need to look into this and make it stronger, but I want to keep it as clean as possible as it will be the viewing side.

I might have to stiffen up the entire arm in some way when I'm nearly finished because this is going to sag a lot.

Edited by Maxlaam, 14 August 2013 - 06:08 PM.

[ForgotToGrowUp]

don't you have a friend with about 3 gazillion pieces of Knex? won't he lend you some so you don't have to wait?

[CW5X]

Well so far it looks nice and it'll look even better once it's done. Shame about the issues you're having. I assume lending is an issue perhaps because you've already borrowed some pieces already?

[Maxlaam]

don't you have a friend with about 3 gazillion pieces of Knex? won't he lend you some so you don't have to wait?

I do, but I prefer not to. When I need to borrow pieces he tends to weigh them if it's a considerate amount, but when I give them back I do have to count them. Weighing is may result in a request for 200 pieces to only be 199 on the scale. Then again, it's a hassle as he's not always there where his collection is.

Well so far it looks nice and it'll look even better once it's done. Shame about the issues you're having. I assume lending is an issue perhaps because you've already borrowed some pieces already?

There's a list of pieces that I have borrowed, he's very neat on keeping track of that It's not an issue, but I prefer to have my own pieces in my models.

[Maxlaam]

Working on this machine again



Folds down pretty neatly for storage

[KBP2000]

looks good! Keep up the great work

[Maxlaam]

It's really starting to take Shape, Zierer StarShape to be exact

I'm aiming to recreate AIR from the UK Showman Danter, he visited the Netherlands a couple of times now with this machine and boy is it a good ride! It's white might not be appealing at first but the ride experience and the show given by Danter's crew really fit with the tribal decals. It's a thrilling and fast ride yet incredibly smooth, depending on what angle and speed you reach the top you might get some nice floater airtime Closest thing to being able to fly perhaps?

Here's my progress so far after today:


It's quite high, the sagging on the arm isn't too bad, but leaving it sideways is not something you'd like to do for extended periods of time.



It's fairly well balanced, there's 4 sets of 7 tires near the top of the counterweight arm but it still needs more. The white ball is obviously filled with water IRL and acts as the counter weight, but it's not easy to make a good looking white ball at this scale. So it couldn't double as a counterweight the way I wanted it to look. I think I might need to resort to using some nuts and bolts to fill up some nooks and crannies in the counterweight arm to hopefully reach a balance point.



The general aim was to make the entire ride fold down and transportable, so far not too bad but it's probably not going to be a complete folding model.

Because the seats hub can rotate independently from the main mast I will have to use 2 motors. Regular 12V K'NEX motors are too big to fit on the mast so I'll resort to epoxying gears to custom motors. The main arm is fairly well balanced so that shouldn't cause a lot of strain on the motors, the seats themselves only need to rotate fairly slow so a slow but strong motor is what I'm aiming for, should be fairly easy to get a decent geared motor for that.

[ZachCreate]

Woah... that looks COOL! Yay! For Maxlaam!

[Jumpge]

I love how you are able to make an amazing ride and still have it transportable. I love that about your rides.

[Maxlaam]

Woah... that looks COOL! Yay! For Maxlaam!

Hehe, thanks

I love how you are able to make an amazing ride and still have it transportable. I love that about your rides.

Transportable in the most literal sense my friend, while I try to recreate the real ride as much as possible the whole transportable part comes down to it being able to be stored in my room without taking up a godlike amount of space. I'm sure I could make most of my flatrides fold down like they do in real life, something I'd like to try sometime, but currently do need feel like doing

[Maxlaam]

Update

I finally had a weekend where I could go back to my hometown! I tried to get as much work done as possible, but had to tear some old miscellaneous builds down first for the pieces. I still have a lot of pieces left, don't worry, but after R80XL I'm running quite low on the grey connectors.



The floor on the real one isn't square like mine, but is more of an octagonal shape. I couldn't be bothered to ruin the floor by having to use a variety of rods and break up the colours.



I'm very happy with the way it folds down.



Plenty of clearance when it's fully down

Next time I hope to finish all the floors and walkways, build the two ticketbooths and the front set of stairs. I hope to install motors around the Christmas Holidays.

Bonus test video:



Enjoy

[CW5X]

From that video I can really see how that arm sags a bit but who cares (it's not like it can be avoided anyway), the crazy detail more than enough makes up for it. The seats spin surprisingly well too. I thought there would have been a bit more resistance from them to spin but apparently not.

[Helmut]

Everything on it looks super neat, I like your style. The seats spin really nicely and smoothly. The sagging is barely noticeable, so I wouldn't worry about that too much.

[ForgotToGrowUp]

Maxlaam === God of flat rides ;-)

[Jumpge]

Super cool flatride. I can't wait to see this ride running its full ride cycle after it's fully automated.

[Maxlaam]

From that video I can really see how that arm sags a bit but who cares (it's not like it can be avoided anyway), the crazy detail more than enough makes up for it. The seats spin surprisingly well too. I thought there would have been a bit more resistance from them to spin but apparently not.

The sagging is really minimal at the moment. I thought about fitting a steel rod in but it felt like cheating. In the end the grey rods on the outside of the centre hub pull it straight, and I've managed to fit some more rods in the hub itself that counter some of the bending. There are 5 sets of wheels in the counterweight arm and it's really heavy. I don't think I can prevent the bending any further, I was already surprised that it was not as much as I thought it would be in the beginning

Spinning the seats requires quite a bit of force, so much force that by spinning the seats themselves you can actually get the entire arm to do a full 360 is you waggle it back and forth a couple of times. Then again, the axle has the crown gear and an axle that runs down the arm to the seats.

Everything on it looks super neat, I like your style. The seats spin really nicely and smoothly. The sagging is barely noticeable, so I wouldn't worry about that too much.

Thanks, sagging will always be a part of the ride, the bigger you build the more it will sag. I try to build most of my rides to the same scale and this looks decent compared to Calypso.

Maxlaam === God of flat rides ;-)

Had a strong interest in building them lately. The roller-coasters are itching though!

Super cool flatride. I can't wait to see this ride running its full ride cycle after it's fully automated.

Thanks, but erhmm... No ride cycle for this. Too many variables, I'll build a little panel with 2 knobs on it that make it all spin, so it will have manual controls that I can just leave in it's position to make it go.

[TheSUCKCrew]

Yes, you deserve that title. Your flatrides are the best.