Conveyor Belt Marble Lift - Marble Machine X #33

welcome to another episode of intellect

on Wednesdays and here it is business as

usual as you can see I am trying out yet

another lifting mechanism it's a

comparable ratchet system combined

that's basically the slow more rolling

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in the last week's video I built a

ratchet marble lifting system and in

that video I said this instead I came up

with this a ratchet lifting system this

system really had the ability to lift

eight marbles per crank turn that was

all wrong that ratchet system and the

way it's driven only lifts for marbles

per crank turn and in this episode I'm

going to replace it with something

better than a mouthful to explain why we

need eight

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I thought I start with explaining why we

need to lift eight marbles per crank

turn you remember this test music I made

to explain the magnet MIDI music system

just to repeat every click here is one

crank turn turn turn turn turn right so

if we have a busy pattern on the

vibraphone like this you can already see

that we have one two three four notes

that means that we need four marbles per

crank turn to only to play this but the

more machine X has more instruments in

the vibraphone so if we add a simple

snare of be like that we're up to nine

marbles per to crank turns if so and if

we then continue add a simple kick drum

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and then we add Hyatt on top of that you

start to see here now seven marbles

product seven six seven but this pattern

is really simple if you make more

complicated kick drum pattern you see

we're already up to eight marbles per

factor

so this is drums and bar before girls

have to face so with a very busy

vibraphone pattern we exceed eight

marbles per crank John here we have four

seven and eleven marbles per crank turn

so the marble machine would we'll be

able to play this for some time because

it has a lot of marbles stored upstairs

but it won't be able to sustain it for

five minutes when I make a really busy

vibraphone pattern I need to keep the

drum pattern a little bit less busy

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yes coffee what would we do without

coffee so as you can see if we only had

four marbles for a crank time we would

only be able to play either only this or

like only this or only this but if we

can get eight marbles per crank turn we

will be able to play almost something

like this

so that's why it's so important okay

let's do some prototyping to solve this

problem I started with some spring

cleaning on my workshop and I built a

weld card slash Robo wars contestant the

draw for a sardar thought was a little

bit tough his meeting this old tony's

welding art in round one so we'll see

what i have to measure with this

prototype is the time for the marbles

needs going there because this will move

extremely fast

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so this is the improved prototype with

some changes and see if we can get up to

marble speed with that I have a slow-mo

camera set up the only thing I need now

is the marbles so let's go over here and

look and of course the one box I need is

guarded by a demon I love animal but

these long leg things have to convince

it that this is the wrong box to sit on

hello my friend can I please take my

marble whoa okay he went that good

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this one up

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17 divided on 25 0.68 four strokes

divided on 0.68 seconds equals five

point eight miles per second times 16

this was 352 BPM actually that's a nice

Headroom yay this proves that the

marbles loads fast enough in this method

for playing music up to 200 bpm

and in the prototype I'm using one row

of marbles but in the real version we

have eight marbles so now I need a way

to divide all the marbles onto eight so

if you remember week added a divided by

eight swing to be asked me the branch

from Gothenburg has sent me in the first

3d print of that one and Here I am

adjusting the weight not on the backside

to really make the swing tip exactly

when it has eight marbles on it I tapped

and made hole in the plastic and I used

this lock nut to lock both in to place

and this really worked well you can

adjust this with very high precision to

fall exactly when when I wanted to fall

but I realized that this swing is too

slow because the conveyor belt can lift

eight eight eight eight eight eight

eight marbles fast like that and the

swing can't handle that high marble

pressure so I needed another way to

divide by eight so I've been toting

another system I've been trying this

I've been trying duck when I come up

with is this to divide one single roll

onto eight just before the conveyor

about

this seems to be very reliable so if I

know these marvels the marbles come into

the ring gear from the planetary gearset

the blue line there and they come in

this new exit thing here that has quite

complicated geometry but I think this

will work great it attaches to the

mainframe here as you can see I added

some texts this 3d printed part here

just for fun

the marbles come in this thing they get

split up onto the four channels like I

talked about last week over the big

demagnetizing wheel the magnets are not

gonna be colored it's just for symbolism

the marbles done I'm not really done

with this is it sketches the marbles

done gets collected into one row by this

loft command I used to create this shape

here and then they go into this and this

is one of the most complicated things

that I've ever carried because the

geometries on these eight slopes are all

individual so they have 5 degrees slope

seen from this direction but they also

have a 5 degree slope seen from this

direction they're all individual from

the start and need to end up at the same

spot in the end so that was a little bit

complicated this works exactly like the

marble divider the channels that are

full we'll skip the marbles and the

models will roll into the empty channels

and then they will be lifted up by this

the conveyor belt system and the cool

thing is so I found this inspiration

from a YouTube video for like some kind

of industrial solutions for nuclear

plants and recycling stations where the

uses chain links and was actually seeing

that video that got me into understand

how I can build a marble conveyor belt

that is efficient and looks good

so each chute that holds the marbles has

a gear tooth shape so up here they turn

into a gear drive and the chain links is

also fitting in here

between the gear as you can see here and

the cool thing is that this conveyor

belt is not driven by these gears it's

not driven by a rotating mechanism this

conveyor belt is driven by the two

Pistons these two Pistons will move up

and down with 40 millimeters travel so

just just you can see here the right

piston here is connected to half of the

fish stair steps and the left piston is

connected to the other half and I also

implemented spring tension mechanism

here to help the Pistons fight gravity a

little bit and on this side we're going

to have ratchets they are not sketched

in this design yet but they are coming

out to the left side here and they will

go inside this conveyor belt here and

the ratchet will lift the tooth

themselves every chute will

what-what-what-what so there's there are

several things that is very very good

with this design we're losing very

little height if we look at it straight

from the side like this let me put on

orthographic and another perspective and

then we have a really flat view like

this so you can see that this is the top

of the marbles and down here where they

picked up is just five centimeters or

something and then we done a lot with

five centimeter fall height we

demagnetize the marbles and we routed

them around and back and if we look from

the front of the machine

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we are actually not going out that far

to the left with this design this

conveyor belt reminds me of this snake

rattle and roll game which I loved when

you climb the waterfall you know in the

like world seven super-difficult the

marbles are like climbing the snake

rattle and roll system so when these

marble shuttles reaches the top it will

tip over then the marbles will then roll

on the backside on the chute that was

before them if you see the structure

here is that the marbles will start to

roll on this surface so to speak it's

right under the marbles on this one so

they will roll on the swing that was

before them and roll off into some

tracks that I did not design yet so so

that's the idea right now I think this

is very viable because I've done a lot

of prototyping to get to this point so

when I built the first machine I only

made videos when I was done with parts

and I was regretting off towards that I

didn't show all mistakes and all the

change designs and stuff and the way I'm

making the videos now update every week

you really get to follow how I go into

the dance and how I try to dig myself

out of them thanks so much for watching

I'm editing these videos nowadays a

little bit with shoot-from-the-hip

attitude I hope you like it I hope

they're some kind of creation have a

great day everyone and see you on the

next main - got that Wednesday

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