[GBC] Akiyuki Ball Factory

[Frequenzberater]

Good catch! I didnt even noticed it yet. 

But I found out, that the yellow 4L tilting lever of the bucket emptier slightly collides with the exit switch ramp when it is switched to the right and the lever is in a lower position. That also causes some stress. 

Have you had the same issue in your build? 

[Fyredog]

22 minutes ago, Frequenzberater said:

Good catch! I didnt even noticed it yet. 

But I found out, that the yellow 4L tilting lever of the bucket emptier slightly collides with the exit switch ramp when it is switched to the right and the lever is in a lower position. That also causes some stress. 

Have you had the same issue in your build? 

I made that tilting ramp even on that side - but yes I had that same issue.  I made my own exit ramp system, I wasn't in love with the tube style exits.  I also made the lever to that 4L lift arm a straight shot instead of that modified one that is supposed to clear all of that on that side.  That's the beauty of GBC, you are able to make your own mods based on your needs and experience, and share with others.

[Frequenzberater]

I got the bucket cicle working more or less. But there are two main issues with it so far:

1. The buckets are not grabbed properly "straight" by the emptier. As a result, the buckets were not put back correctly aligned which sometimes causes blockings. (Can be seen at the end of the video) 

2. Sometines Bob fails to put the bucket back on the wheel properly and the bucket falls down. 

I need to investigate the root cause of this issues now, but currently I have no clue, because the timing seems correct to me. 

 

Edited November 14 by Frequenzberater

[Fyredog]

9 hours ago, Frequenzberater said:

I got the bucket cicle working more or less. But there are two main issues with it so far:

1. The buckets are not grabbed properly "straight" by the emptier. As a result, the buckets were not put back correctly aligned which sometimes causes blockings. (Can be seen at the end of the video) 

2. Sometines Bob fails to put the bucket back on the wheel properly and the bucket falls down. 

I need to investigate the root cause of this issues now, but currently I have no clue, because the timing seems correct to me. 

 

I had a lot of issues with the bucket emptier and buckets turning on their sides and jamming.  I played with timing quite a bit trying to solve this.  I finally determined that the bucket needed more room when being returned back to the slide table. I removed one of the Connectors and replaced it with a 1x4 thin arm and a bush.  This allowed the bucket to be placed flat.  This would be the one to the right of the bucket while in the jaws of the bucket emptier.  That solved my issue - which looks to be exactly your issue as well.  

2 minutes ago, Fyredog said:

I had a lot of issues with the bucket emptier and buckets turning on their sides and jamming.  I played with timing quite a bit trying to solve this.  I finally determined that the bucket needed more room when being returned back to the slide table. I removed one of the Connectors and replaced it with a 1x4 thin arm and a bush.  This allowed the bucket to be placed flat.  This would be the one to the right of the bucket while in the jaws of the bucket emptier.  That solved my issue - which looks to be exactly your issue as well.  

Also, The bucket lifter, I can tell you that you need it to slide more into the bucket.  Your amplitude is not enough, It will drop buckets back on to the wheel when balls are loaded, which causes Havoc.  

 

I'll need to watch Bob more - but if you had a video of Bob dropping the bucket, that would be helpful.  Also you need to load it up with all 21 buckets.  Before you put any balls into it, be sure the bucket system is working perfectly first.  You are close my friend!!!!!

[Frequenzberater]

Yesterday, I was able to get a full bucket cicle running flawlessly for over a minute. I replaced the connector of the lifter as suggested and it improved the situation a bit, but the bucket emptier is still causing trouble. 

Main problem is, that the buckets were grabbed in a tilted position, as you can see in the video. Up to know, I have no Idea how to avoid that. Slight adjustments of the shifter timing, had no effect to it. 

Yes, the bucket lifter could need a half stud longer amplitude. But I have no idea how to achive that, because the lever would need a lenght of 4,5L for that. In that case the connector would just be placed on a half lenght of the cross axle, what is not good in my opinion:

How did you achived the 4,5L? 

Bob is running fine now. It just needed to be lifted up for 1mm to provide some clearance between the bottom of buckets and the wheel. 

Edit: To add another point, occasionally I experience some issues with this guide structure:

Sometimes, when a bucket has reached the end and is blocked by the shifter, waiting to get moved to the sliding table, it gets lifted by the conveyor underneath somehow, tilts over and get stuck in between. Until now, I have no idea how to avoid that. I tried several guiding designs but without succes so far. 

Edited November 15 by Frequenzberater

[Stereo]

Depending where you have clearance to work with there's a few ways to make a strong connection at ~4.5 length:

Piece 7244 + 22961 can also work, attached together with a 4L beam, but I don't have 7244 in my Stud.io cause it's recent.

[Fyredog]

14 hours ago, Frequenzberater said:

Yesterday, I was able to get a full bucket cicle running flawlessly for over a minute. I replaced the connector of the lifter as suggested and it improved the situation a bit, but the bucket emptier is still causing trouble. 

Main problem is, that the buckets were grabbed in a tilted position, as you can see in the video. Up to know, I have no Idea how to avoid that. Slight adjustments of the shifter timing, had no effect to it. 

Yes, the bucket lifter could need a half stud longer amplitude. But I have no idea how to achive that, because the lever would need a lenght of 4,5L for that. In that case the connector would just be placed on a half lenght of the cross axle, what is not good in my opinion:

How did you achived the 4,5L? 

Bob is running fine now. It just needed to be lifted up for 1mm to provide some clearance between the bottom of buckets and the wheel. 

Edit: To add another point, occasionally I experience some issues with this guide structure:

Sometimes, when a bucket has reached the end and is blocked by the shifter, waiting to get moved to the sliding table, it gets lifted by the conveyor underneath somehow, tilts over and get stuck in between. Until now, I have no idea how to avoid that. I tried several guiding designs but without succes so far. 

From your video Here is what I'm seeing:

1. Your bucket picker now appears to be picking the buckets up right in the center of the bucket - Perfectly.  So whatever you did it worked.

2. Your bucket slider has 3 issues that I see.

          1. When the buckets are slid into Bob, you can see that it is putting quite a bit of pressure against Bob, sliding too far into Bob.

          2. Same for the bucket emptier.  The buckets are slid too far causing the tilt when the bucket is raised. 

          3. The buckets appear to stop for a moment then are pushed into the slider from the conveyor then slightly pushed back before sliding over.

So a trick I use is to take the tubing like on the spiral lift and slice one ridge or whatever length I need and use it as a spacer or bushing. On your bucket lifter I see a small gap between the bush and the connector. I believe I used a spacer there to keep it in place.  Plus you are keeping it Lego with a modified lego tube!

Go back and watch BH's Video and my video.  I must have watched BH's video at least 50 times.   I solved quite a few issues along the way watching his video.  Anyway, clearly from BH or my video you can see the bucket slides into the pusher from the conveyor with no pause.  then  slides over.  I would also replace the connector of the pusher with a thin 1x3 lift arm on the right side of the bucket as it is pushed into the emptier. that will give some room and can help the buckets to not tilt.  I think you need to take a small bit of amplitude out of the slider when they are sliding into Bob. That could also maybe solve any issues with Bob and bucket placement back on to the wheel.  I would suggest looking at the timing of your chain drives that drive the slider.  It looks like the timing is off.  I had someone tell me that they timed everything to Bob.  Your motor sounds pretty good.  It sounds like you have eliminated a lot of friction.  You are getting close and closer.  Keep going - you will get it!

Edited November 15 by Fyredog

[Frequenzberater]

Thx mate, for your helpfull advices and constantly trying to keep me motivated :D I really appreciate that. 

I think Its almost done. Full cicle including two balls per bucket has worked flawlessly for a few minutes recently. 

But when I switched to the ball feedback path, I experienced some blockings and jamming within my spiral lift. But I am confident to find a solution this evening. The light is near :) 

[Fyredog]

Do you have a photo of the inbox and the spiral lift?  I had many many issues with the spiral lift from the get go.  Did you modify it at all?  My modifications seemed to fix the jamming of the spiral lift.

[Frequenzberater]

After I took the video, I had still experienced some jamming with the spiral lift. So I modified it again and it seem to work. I have just one picture, but tomorrow I could provide more details:

I am also interested in your modification. So it would be great if you could share some details. 

[Fyredog]

Here is a pic of my spiral lift currently - I experience NO jams with an overloaded input box of balls.  They do recycle along the backside of the lift if they get pushed through.

 

 

BRAVO on your quest!  I do see only one thing, which is minor because it doesn't seem to harm anything.  The buckets entering the shifter - they seem to push back slightly before sliding.  You may want to put a thin 1x3 lift arm on the far side - I think that would eliminate it, or add a bushing.  Otherwise, time for testing - let it run and run!

So I had some time on my hands between projects and cleaning up the shop, that I decided to pull the beast out and fix an issue that has not happened yet.  I have over 30 hours on the L motor, and who knows how long it will actually last??  But instead of taking 30-60 minutes to swap it out in it's current state I decided to make it easy to get to and a 5 minute swap.  It took me a bit to get it figured out because that sub-assembly sits a half stud off from the frame from side to side.  I'm super happy with the result, and now I think the beast is show ready for an event at the end of January.  I did a few support mods to make the transmission structure a bit more sturdy.  I also included a photo of it in it's transportation box.

 

 

Edited November 17 by Fyredog

[Frequenzberater]

After some more tweaking and adjusting, the module finally runs not that bad. During several test runs, I observed two issues which I need to take care of:

1. The combination of the bucket slider and emptier still doesn't work reliable. I already tried slightly changing the timing but without success. In addition I modified the lower grabbing part a bit (more details at the end of this post) which brought some improvements, but not fully eliminated the problems. This malfunction occurs approximatly one time in three minutes. Here is a short video showing the moment when it jams:

 

2. Occasionally the ball picker doesn't pick up the right ball properly and drops it midway. I am not sure yet what causes this. Maybe the amplitude of the stamps is to low, or maybe its just a simple timing issue. Here is a video of a good working five minute run,where you can see the ball dropping at 01:45 :

 

Finally some pics of my modified bucket emptier:

 

As you can see, I raised the yellow 1x4 panel at the back of the lower grabber by one plate, because I had the feeling, that the buckets were placed back too close to the grey panels on the table behind. 

In addition I replaced the other yellow 1x4 panel (frontside of lower grabber) by a tile, because the balls were not dumped out reliable because the edge of the panel was often blocking it. 

[Fyredog]

53 minutes ago, Frequenzberater said:

After some more tweaking and adjusting, the module finally runs not that bad. During several test runs, I observed two issues which I need to take care of:

1. The combination of the bucket slider and emptier still doesn't work reliable. I already tried slightly changing the timing but without success. In addition I modified the lower grabbing part a bit (more details at the end of this post) which brought some improvements, but not fully eliminated the problems. This malfunction occurs approximatly one time in three minutes. Here is a short video showing the moment when it jams:

 

2. Occasionally the ball picker doesn't pick up the right ball properly and drops it midway. I am not sure yet what causes this. Maybe the amplitude of the stamps is to low, or maybe its just a simple timing issue. Here is a video of a good working five minute run,where you can see the ball dropping at 01:45 :

 

Finally some pics of my modified bucket emptier:

 

As you can see, I raised the yellow 1x4 panel at the back of the lower grabber by one plate, because I had the feeling, that the buckets were placed back too close to the grey panels on the table behind. 

In addition I replaced the other yellow 1x4 panel (frontside of lower grabber) by a tile, because the balls were not dumped out reliable because the edge of the panel was often blocking it. 

Lets talk about the ball picker first.  I had this issue as well - what I did was took the white elastic band off and found a slightly smaller one, put that one on and my issue went away.

 

Your bucket emptier - What I notice is that the buckets wobble a lot!  and when they wobble they won't set down flat, which causes the bucket to hang up on the emptier frame.  I also notice the contact points - they are not even on the front as opposed to the back.  The bucket emptier should have the same contact point on the front and back at the top ridge of the bucket.  You talked about a mod you did to the bucket emptier - I would revisit what you did, or go back to the original design.  I only made one change to the bucket emptier which I pointed out earlier on step 276 leaving the 2x4 plate out.

[Frequenzberater]

I finally got it! After building the emptier back to original design I noticed a mistake I made earlier. I accidently placed two of the yellow panels which are supposed to grab the bucket not as shown in the instructions:

but facing to each other. That Was the reason why the buckets were hold so "wobbly". After correcting the panels the module works like a charm:

Last thing I need to do is to exchange the elastic band of the ball picker. As you can see, it still drops some balls occasionally. But I am happy how it works now! 

[Fyredog]

YAY!!!!! BRAVO - Welcome to The Ball Factory Club!!

[Frequenzberater]

Thank you very much for guiding me through this! 

I already replaced all "miscolored" parts and Iam really happy with the result. Now I finally have a free mind for other non Lego related projects again :D