Ball Contraption

[Damian Axford]

Hi All

New thread to commemorate the start of a new group project, spear-headed by me n Rob.....   reproduced from our associated wiki page:

https://github.com/snhack/snhack.github.io/wiki/Ball-Contraption

What is it?

An evolving group project to build out a modular Rube Goldberg / GBC style ball-bearing churning machine

Why?

• Something everyone can contribute to, from very simple to fiendishly complex
• Something new members, or walk-ins, can tinker with
• Modular, extensible - so it can slowly grow over time
• Something we can take to events/shows to get people talking

Stuff it would be fun to explore

• Different fabrication techniques (old-school woodwork and brass; 3D printed; laser-cut; cardboard and hot-glue)
• Different mechanisms - both mechanical and digital, even fancy control stuff (think magnetic levitation)
• Interactivity - either mechanical (levers) or electronic (wifi, twitter)
  • Dr Nim game
  • Pin-ball table

Principles

• Bonkers is good, the crazier the better
• Aesthetics are not important (albeit pretty things are always good)
• Needs to be transportable (in bits)
• Power sources should be kept to a minimum and be shared/standardised (i.e. so all modules can work from a common power bus)
• Support for vertical arrangements/stacking (i.e. on shelves) for interest and to help pack more into table-top displays
• Interoperability with other ball-contraption standards would be nice

[Damian Axford]

The spec seems workable (at least for a v1) so we're ordered 100x 16mm steel balls ready to get building some prototypes.

Plan is to build an initial set of 3 modules for a demo contraption:

 - A double-height lift module

 - Two 1x1x1 modules to stack against the lift module

I'm going to have a go at the double-height lift, whilst Rob is tackling a 1x1x1 module.... and we'll go from there.  Please get involved if you're interested - that's the point! :)

  

[Damian Axford]

spec has evolved a little, along with the following visualisations of a single module:

and a possible arrangement of lots of modules:

the dark grey boxes are the IN baskets, the transparent grey boxes are the optional secondary IN baskets.  Out chutes are represented by the red arrows.   Some modules are shown with supporting posts, some without.

hopefully that helps understand the spec! :)

[Damian Axford]

Here's the quick OpenSCAD file for the visualisations...