Screwed up

[Hoody]

A few weeks ago I tried to make a helix-type lift for a next marble run. The idea is pretty simple and the base material available at a hardware store (okay, things in Germany are metric not inches).

http://imgur.com/iM7AIXE

Not shown are some screws and spacers. Here we have a close up of the ends:

http://imgur.com/O7T9Di9

The biggest issue for me is winding the spiral since I have no workshop, no dedicated machines. So I took household material (a rolling pin) to wrap the aluminium strip around. The outcome assembled together still looks reasonable.

http://imgur.com/xb2BSrT

Unfortunately the precision is less than I hoped. The spiral I expected to get not more out of shape than 2mm. Actually I got 3mm and so the construction will not fit to 16mm marbles. 22mm will work better but are not intended here .

Oh I notice that I am lacking some pictures of the current assembly with the housing. I will post them later. Anyway for the next 16mm-run this lift is deprecated.

[Steph]

You're right it does look nice.  I'm impressed that you could get that close and that neat on your first try without the dedicated equipment.

[Hoody]

On 10/15/2016 at 4:29 PM, Steph said:

You're right it does look nice.  I'm impressed that you could get that close and that neat on your first try without the dedicated equipment.

It was a hard job and I am impressed myself how things worked out just without the lack of precision.

Still there are two pics I would like to share now:

The completed assembly in a housing to do a verification. And it really works with some drawbacks:

http://imgur.com/FXXQEeW

 

And here is a close up on how the lack of precision interferes with the housing construction. The vertical guide must be exactly there for the 16mm marbles. For the 22mm ones there is a re-arrangement possible but this is out of scope here.

http://imgur.com/F0oM2dX

Hope you enjoy the story a little bit. For those who like to try it themselves: The helical core could be used to lift ping pong balls as it is. There precision is less stringent and the vertical guidance gives more room to the helix. Okay, the housing then needs a reconstruction to fit the larger ping-pongs.

[Steph]

Always enjoy the story.  I hope you call it progress.  Glad to see you're still working on it.