11 replies to this topic

[RightWayTrey]

Lately I have been working on an automatic tire drive, station gates, and an automatic lift for the Corkscrew. Here's some pics.

The automatic tire drive



On the left of this picture you can see I made some gears with whole moon connectors. By taking some teeth out of one of them, I can lengthen the amount of time the motor stays on before automatically shutting off.



This picture shows the switch the train hits. The circled piece is what hits the switch to turn it off.


The chain powers the other tire.



The circled piece is powered by the motor that operates the station gates, and it switches on the motor in the picture, right before the station gates motor shuts off.



Again here you can see I made custom gears. The custom gear that is powered by the motor only has two teeth. This way the motor stays on a long time before shutting off, and only uses two regular gears.



The motor in the last picture turns this arm, which moves the black rod back and forth.




The gears in the to-be station will be changed to a tire when the tires I bought arrive.


Video

[big builder145]

Ooo.. ahhh yet another automatic masterpiece from you.

[DDRman732865]

Holy shit. Like, holy shit.

[~stεεlspectrum~]

You somehow manage to make these things so complicated...yet they work beautifully...great work man, I especially like the custom gears.

[Maxlaam]

Toys are meant to play with, not watch and stare!







That's awesome, now incorporate my blockbrakes. You should be able to use it as an mcbr if you make the rods long (and especially complicated) enough.

[RightWayTrey]

On the unicyclist.com forums, a unicycler (Terry Peterson) came up with cool way to film his videos. He strung a wire at a shallow anlge and made a little car that holds his camera to coast down the wire.

I thought this was a very good idea, so I made my own cable-cam (as Terry calls it) out of knex to try a couple shots with it for the Corkscrew. It worked even better than I thought it would!


Two pics:




I got a really cool shot from the setup you see in the pictures. That is the first and only shot I have for the video so far. You'll have to wait for the video to see it!

[DDRman732865]

That is badass. It looks like it could easilly fall off, though.

[~stεεlspectrum~]

That is completely awesome. I've always wanted to film smooth shots where the camera moves but have never been able to find a way. I thought of putting the camera on wheels, but that was still bumpy and it didn't have nearly as much freedom as this. I'll have to try this sometime.

I just thought...this should be patented. I'm 100% serious.

[RightWayTrey]

DDRman: Nope, it stays on really good.

Steel: Sure, I'll patent it once I make my video.


Been pretty busy lately, haven't had much time to film. I hope I can pick up the pace though.

[DDRman732865]

Sweet. This is why I left Aminspec-they didn't have you.

[~stεεlspectrum~]

I tried the little thing with the moving video camera...it didn't exactly work out for me. The shot was bumpy, the camera stopped in the middle of the string, and it went too fast. I'm pretty sure that's because the string wasn't tight enough, but I didn't feel like experimenting any further.
I've been thinking that maybe I could try the car with wheels again, but do it on a smoother surface than carpet.

[RightWayTrey]

DDRman: Thanks


Steel: Yeah, your string was probably not tight enough. The way I did it, one place I tied the sting was moveable, so once I tied both ends down, I moved the object back so that string was very tight. I pushed with almost all my strength to get the string as tight as possible.
If your string is tight then you can have it at a shallower angle to reduce speed.


I had the same problem with the bumpiness at first. It's really hard to release the car without having it shake after releasing it. Try not to push either up or down at all on the car when you release it, and release it slowly. After experimenting with it for a little while the way that worked best for me was to put a finger in front of one the wheels to hold it. Just expirement with it and practice releasing the car until you can release it smoothly without shaking the car or the string.