After conversations and emails the decision was made by my customer to go ahead with the sketch I had emailed to her.
The top sketch shows the base drawn in color and its relative size to a person. The sculpture needs to fit into a glass case measuring 6' x 6' x 3'. The frame will be made of wood and stainless steel.
The bottom sketch shows some possibilities for the track and for track elements such as the loop-d-loop,
spiral, and so on. I've decided in this piece to incorporate some small wooden cups that I'll make on the wood lathe.
- July 31 -
I managed to get a jump on those wooden cups and have started to glue up some blanks. The wood is Poplar, a semi-soft domestic wood. I use it because it's easy to get, and mills very nicely on the lathe. Without plenty of glue the boards can fly apart at 2400 rpms on the lathe.... Lots of glue!
I also created the helical lift. The lift is basically a spiral that the balls ride on. It takes time to make this part as it has many welds and precise bends. It needs to be straight and run true if the balls are to make it to the top.
- August 4 -
This past weekend I was a woodworker, the sawdust was flying! I have most of the parts for the frame completed. I'm using cabinet grade oak plywood for the structure. Everything needs to be square and straight. I love this kind of precision work, it's very satisfying when the pieces all fit. Perhaps by next weekend I will be a welder!
Here's a picture of those cups I was talking about last week. I had pretty good results and managed to create three different styles. I'm not sure which ones I'll be using in the sculpture yet and may only use three or four of them. The others will end up in the shop filled with bits and pieces.
The motor mount is made from 22g. stainless steel. The motor is a continuous duty, 110V, turning at
24 rpm, and it'svery quiet. I've used 12V motors in the past but they're really LOUD. The key to this whole assembly is the bearing at the top of the shaft. This bearing will carry the weight of the helical lift and the balls. I don't want to put any downward pressure on the motor as that would adversely effect the motor's operation and it's lifespan.
I'll be finishing up the woodworking this week. I hope to have a pretty hefty supply of steel coming in on Wednesday or Thursday and want to be welding by next Monday.
- August 11 -
This past week I started by finishing up the frame. The plywood had to be edged and all the parts needed some sanding. Next I'll take it all apart and apply stain, clear coat and paint.
I did do some welding! The lift and the tracks leading to it are complete. You can see the balls moving towards the top in the photo on the far left.
A track switch is pictured here. There are two of them, one on each side. They will split the two sets of balls onto four different tracks. The switch tilts from one side to the other with the weight of the ball. The arched piece on the top is a counter weight. As the counter weight swings from one side to the other past the center of gravity it holds the track down. I build this part very sturdy and use a quality bearing in the center. It needs to move from one side to the other a whole lot!
Where did I spend most of my time over the last week? Here it is! I designed and created these things. I don't know what to call them, circles, dishes, they're not really spirals or cones. What they are is the end of the line for the balls before going back to the lift. The tops are made from four poplar boards glued together, cut in a circle and "dished out" in the center. The hole in the center is only about 3/8" lower than the sides. When the ball goes in here it spins around for a long time before finding the center hole. There are two of them (one at each side leading to the pickup) and they are very cool. I'm sure you'll see more of these in my designs.
And today I made this mockup. This is where I will build most of my track. It's made from the cheapest oriented strand board one can buy. The mockup is necessary for welding. Most of the track can be built on the welding bench but for the pieces that need to be hanging in position I'll weld them on the mockup.
This week and into the weekend I will be finishing some of the wood pieces and starting on the tracks. I am really looking forward to getting some track going.
- August 18 -
Another week past and I have made some good progress. The photos to the left show the completed wood frame and a close-up of the disks. All of the parts are sanded to within an inch of they're lives using 220 grit paper and finished in either latex paint or stained and finished in polyurethane. I included the close-up of the disk to show the finish. I want the disks to be smoooooooooth. The ball is going to fly on these things!
I built track 1, the loop-d-loop. This track is all about speed. It starts right from the top at a steep descent into the loops. There are two and a half loops in all and the ball really moves. In the photo you can see the track heading towards the disk in the background. The green ball on the disk just came off the loops.
The photo on the far left shows the loops a bit more clearly. The second loop is smaller than the first and the third smaller than the second. This difference in size is what maintains ball speed. The third loop also tilts to the side and the track twists. I call this an inversion and is not a full loop. The inversion is necessary to get the ball back on top of the track and continue to the disk. The whole thing is a lot of fun to watch.
I also began work on track 2, the cups. I finished the cups along with the frame and they came out nice. Putting the steel on them without destroying them is a challenge but I have a few extras just in case. This track is going to take a few days to complete but it's going to be worth every minute. I love the look of the steel and the wood together. It will be a nice contrast from the fast moving loops. The balls will roll as slow as possible clunking through all the cups and ending in the same disk as the loop track. Nice.
I'll be off for a few days this week but hope to finish the cups by the weekend. Next week it's teeter totters and the infamous capacitor.
- August 25 -
Here's a few shots of the "cups" track. I finished it up on Saturday. The ball is doing exactly what I wanted. It's moving slow and clunking nicely down the track. The two smaller photos show the track passing through the center of the loop-d-loop and down on to the dish. I know these are really hard to see, click on the pics to get a better view.
After finishing the cups track it was on to some parts and pieces. I spent a couple days creating these parts, form the left, the teeter-totter, the pacman, and the capacitor. Each of these moves and has an important part to play in directing of the ball.
The teeter-totter is very simple. The ball will enter on the left and the track teeters down to the next track. It's just a bit of movement but is also cool.
The capacitor is exactly what the word means. Just like in electronics a capacitor is used to store a small amount of energy ( in this case balls) and then release the energy when it's full. This capacitor should hold three balls before releasing them- I may try to push it to four. The capacitor will feed the final track. It's going to be a roaming kind of choo-choo thang. I want the three or four balls to follow each other in and out and around the entire sculpture.
With the motor turning at 24rpms the capacitor will receive a ball every second turn. If the capacitor can hold four balls how often do the four balls travel the track together? The bonus question, when did the train get to Chicago?
To the left is a picture of a pacman in position. The green clamp is holding the on coming track on top. When the ball goes into the pacman's mouth it turns downward releasing the ball in the opposite direction. The steel piece on the back of all these parts is the counter weight. After the ball leaves gravity is what returns the part back to the beginning. The counter weight is what accomplishes this.
And yes I called that thing a Pacman. Hey, I grew up in the 70's. Pacman was the best game going!
In my next blog I hope to have most of these bits and pieces complete and working.
- September 2 -
Week five! As you can see in the photo to the left, the mockup is gone. I spent a lot of time this week finishing up the teeter-totter track and then moving the three completed tracks to the final sculpture. The last track is the one with the capacitor. The capacitor (the choo-choo thang) track will interweave the other tracks. There would be no way to create this track with the others and be able to move them all at once. So creating it will be this weeks task. It will probably be a bit more difficult as I will have to weld it on the finished piece.
This photo shows how I weld the steel tracks and supports on the final piece. In the middle of all those green clamps is the area that needs welding. The sculpture is totally covered in welding blankets. The blankets are thick canvas treated to be heat and flame resistant. I say resistant because a hot bead of metal falling from the weld will burn through the canvas. Just one of those red hot beads hits the finish on the wood working and ..... We won't talk about that.
That's really about it for this week. It doesn't sound like much but it is a good amount of progress. I will surely be done with all the track by the middle of next week. When the track is complete it will need some tweeking. I've had the three tracks running a few times and they seem pretty stable but there's much work to be done.
Check out the last couple of pics. And yes it is pretty much as cool as it looks!
- September 10 -
This is my last real week on this project. I say real because the work will be completed by Friday or Saturday of this week. Next week I'll be running the machine almost nonstop and looking for any imperfections like dropped balls, jams, etc. I have run the completed piece for a few hours and it's pretty sound. It is almost inevitable that after time a ball will drop. Sometimes there is nothing to be done it just happens, a quirk, some vibration, or a bad ball. Anything can happen.
I ordered the final balls and received them earlier this week. The colors I choose are light blue, orange and yellow with brown swirls and the steel colored one shown in the center of the picture. I will run 20 balls of each color at once except the steel colored one. There will only be one of those on the machine. It's fun to watch the one odd ball as it travels the tracks.
This past week I finished all the track and spent a lot of time adding supports. Most of what I did on the mockup was held in position with as little as possible. After moving and testing the tracks I added more support and the circles you see here add even more strength, they look good too. The smaller picture shows a few green clamps still on the tracks, they indicate where I still need to do some work.
Here are two pictures of work still in progress. To the far left is the track changer. In earlier pics you can see the screw that holds the changer in place. Here I've added a wood cap which I will finish to match the other woodwork. The spider looking thing is a spinner. I hope to make three or four more of these and place them around the sculpture. You'll get a better idea of how they look and work next week.
Below are a few shots of the sculpture. I took them while it was running to get a better feel for the motion. Next week I will be shooting (and directing) a movie and this puppy will be ready to ship by the week of the 22nd.
- September 25 -
This will be my last blog on this piece. To the left is a picture of the final sculpture. I finished the welding on September 18, and after a few days of adjusting track and redesigning some parts I called it complete September 22. I put a camera in front of it for three days to catch any glitches. The camera worked out great. There were a few issues and it seems every time I'd turn away a ball would be on the floor. The camera caught the problems and I was able to fix them. In the end the machine ran for eleven hours without dropping a ball. I call that success. We'll see what happens after a few days bouncing around in a truck!
The last two days were spent writing setup instructions, shooting and editing movies and building a very large shipping crate. Here are a few photos.
Shipping is as easy as:
Build a box (big box)
Secure the sculpture
in the box
Ship the box
I almost forgot to mention my friend.
His name is Meteor. He hangs around the shop with me. I don't know why I keep him around. He's not much of a talker and never gives
me a hand. Somehow he is
always around when I get
the camera out. You can see
him in a lot of the photos I've
published in this blog. I
counted 19 times he snuck
into my pictures!! Well, I told
him I'd give him his own little shot at
fame so here he is Meteor! He's sitting atop the crate waiting for the truck as if he did all the work!
I need a new friend.
Below are links to movies I
made of the final piece. I hope you
enjoyed following along
as I created this sculpture.
I had a great time
building it.
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