Conveyor Belt Marble Lift - Marble Machine X #33

Welcome to another episode of Wintergatan Wednesdays.

Eh, and here it is business as usual, as you can see,

I am trying out yet another lifting mechanism.

It's a conveyor belt ratchet system combined.

[drill whirring]
[ratchet clacking]

That's basically the mechanism.

Slow-mo rolling.

[accelerating ratchet sounds]

[ratchet sounds slowed down]

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 have the ability to lift
eight marbles per crank turn.'

[poing]

That was all wrong.

That ratchet system and the way it's
driven only lifts four marbles per crank turn.

And in this episode, I'm going to
replace it with something better.

And I am also going to explain why we
need eight marbles per crank turn.

[♪ unreleased/Wintergatan Wednesdays Music Box ♪]

I thought I'd start with explaining why we
need to lift eight marbles per crank turn.

Do you remember this test music I made
to explain the magnet MIDI music system?

[♫]

Just to repeat, every click here,

[tap][tap][tap][tap]

is one crank turn.

turn, turn, turn, turn, right?
[tap][tap][tap][tap] .

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 Marble Machine X has more instruments
than the vibraphone. So if we add...

a simple snare.

[♫]

off-beat like that, we're up to...o...

nine marbles per two crank turns.

If so, and if we then continue
add a simple kick drum

and then we add a hi-hat on top of that.

[♫]

You start to see here now.

Seven marbles for that.

[♫]
Seven.

[♫]
Six.

[♫]
Seven.

Umm, but this pattern is really simple.

If you make more complicated
kick drum pattern,

[♫]

You see we're already up to
eight marbles per crank turn.

[♫]

So this is drums and vibraphone, but we
also have the bass on the Marble Machine X.

[♫]

So with a very busy vibraphone pattern,
we exceed eight marbles per crank turn.

Here we have four, seven and
eleven marbles per crank turn.

So... the marble machine would,
will 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.

[♪ unreleased/Plot Twist ♪]

Cheers!

Coffee. What would we do without coffee?
[chuckles]

[♫]

[♫]

Butterfly luck.

[bang]

[crash]

So... as you can see,

if we only had four marbles per crank turn,
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 cart slash Robot wars contestant.

The draw for a Sir Darthalot was a little bit tough.

He's meeting This Old Tony's
welding cart in round one.

So we'll see.

What I have to measure with
this prototype is the ti...me,

for the marbles needed going there,
because this will move extremely fast.

It will move, boom, boom, boom, boom...

[♪ unreleased/Plot Twist ♪]

This profile's nice! Cut.

Nice to see.

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.
[laughs]

I, I love animal but these long leg things,

I, have to, convince it,
that this is the wrong box to sit on.

Hello, my friend! [tap][tap][tap]
Can I please take my marble.

Whoa!
[scream]

Okay. He went there.

Good choice. My friend.

So, I'm gonna take the marbles,

and we can start the test.
[♪ unreleased/Plot Twist ♪]

We have bigger openings,
more like the CAD model.

We have shimmed the opening so the marble
queue won't rock back and forth as much.

being pushed back and forth,

I have a new ratchet that's better placed.

[♪ unreleased/Plot Twist ♪]

I'm gonna try to max this one out.

Just beautiful.

[laughs]

Let's analyse this slow-mo.

Um...

Wow!

[accelerated speech:] 17 divided on 25

0.68

four strokes

divided on 0.68 seconds, equals...

...5.8 marbles per second times 60...

This was 352 BPM.

Actually, that's some 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 we CADed a divide by eight swing.

Tobias Smidebrant from Götenborg has
sent me the first 3D print of that one.

And, here I am adjusting the weight
[bg:] Alright, pull back a little bit

nut on the backside to
[bg:] Nearly there.

really make the swing...

tip exactly when it has eight marbles on it.
[bg:] five...six...seven.

I tapped an M8 hole in the plastic,

and I used this lock nut
to lock the bolt into place.

and this really worked well.

You can adjust this with very high precision
to fall exactly when, when I want it 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 prototyping another system.

I've been trying this, I've been trying that.

What I come up with is this.

To divide one single row onto eight
just before the conveyor belt.

This seems to be very reliable.

So if I now...

If these marbles...

The marbles, come into the ring
gear from the planetary gear-set,

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 main frame here,
as you can see.

I added some texts (to)
this 3D printed part here.

Ehh... just for fun.

The marbles come in this thing.

Uh...

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.

Uh, the marbles done.

I'm not really done with this,
it's, it's sketches.

The marbles then get 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 CADed.

Because the geometries...
on these eight slopes are all individual.

Uh, so, they have a 5 degree 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... [breathes heavily]
eh... complicated

This works exactly like the marble divider.

The channels that are full,
will skip the marbles and the marbles will,

roll into the empty channels

And then they will be lifted up by

this, the conveyor belt system.

And the cool thing is, um...

So I found this inspiration from a youtube video

for, like, some kind of industrial solutions
for nuclear plants and recycling stations,

where they use this chain links.

And it was actually, seeing
that video, that got me into...

...understanding 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, uh, 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, as 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 a 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 chutes themselves.

Every chute will...

whoop-whoop-whoop-whoop, so there's,

There is 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 not 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're picked up is
just five centimeters or something, and then

We've done a lot with five centimeter fall height.

We've demagnetized the marbles.

And we've routed them around and back.

And if we look from the front of the machine

Umm..

We are actually not going out,
[♪ unreleased/Plot Twist ♪]

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.

And the marbles will then roll on the backside,
on the chute that was before them.

So 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

changed 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 dead ends and how I try to

[chuckles]
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.

[laughs]
I hope you like it.

I hope they're some kind of cohesion.

Have a great day everyone!

And see you on the next Wintergatan Wednesday.

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