Technic GBC MOC: Track Wheel Reservoir

[Brickthus]

I

[Starwars4J]

What a fascinating contraption! I've never heard of the Great Ball Contraption before, it's an interesting concept. It looks like you've done a fantastic job with this *y*

[Asuka]

Very interesting and still a beauty 8-| (it looks a bit like the Stargate....). Cool work. *y*

I was wondering too.... GBC.... I searched in Wikipedia and this is what I found (among others):

Green bean casserole, nahh.... :-P

But of course, Great Ball Contraption.... Yeah!

X-D

[Brickthus]

Very interesting and still a beauty 8-| (it looks a bit like the Stargate....). Cool work. *y*

I was wondering too.... GBC.... I searched in Wikipedia and this is what I found (among others):

Green bean casserole, nahh.... :-P

But of course, Great Ball Contraption.... Yeah!

X-D

Oops! Jargon alert! :-$

On Google I found there's a whole website devoted to it: http://www.greatballcontraption.com/

OK, I don't meet all the standards just yet http://www.teamhassenplug.org/GBC/ , but I can always build a special bit at each end in order to interface with other people's modules, whilst building wild stuff on my own modules :-)

Mark

[Asuka]

Thanks for the information! *y*

[Dark Brick]

Hey Mark, nice to meet you. Your GBC is quite intriguing. Very well thoughtout.

Seems like an engineer's dream machine. I wonder if this can be done on a larger scale like some kind of layout with a theme like a pinball machine.

I am curious, is your background in physics, mathematics, or a discipline of engineering? Or all of the above?

Lets just say that "inertia" is not a word heard/typed here often.

You have definitely posted some very intriguing pieces on EB. It is nice to know that LEGOs can be used in more intelligent ways.

DB

[mutex]

Very interesting design! You must had a lot of fun building this thing.

Now , I'm more and more impatient of finishing must old lego so I can put myself to work building incredible contraptions like you.

I'm just wondering how can I cheaply get this much amount of soccer balls ?

[UniqueBuilder]

Pick A Brick or:

If you are interested in participating in this event, but do not have a reasonable suppily of balls for testing, (~20) please contact me, (steve@teamhassenplug.org) and I will provide them.

:-)

[Brickthus]

Hey Mark, nice to meet you. Your GBC is quite intriguing. Very well thoughtout.

Seems like an engineer's dream machine. I wonder if this can be done on a larger scale like some kind of layout with a theme like a pinball machine.

I am curious, is your background in physics, mathematics, or a discipline of engineering? Or all of the above?

Lets just say that "inertia" is not a word heard/typed here often.

You have definitely posted some very intriguing pieces on EB. It is nice to know that LEGOs can be used in more intelligent ways.

DB

Thanks :-)

The idea of GBC (see earlier links) is that several people make modules with a standard interface and then get together and display a ball-run layout. Someone also made an entire pinball machine with a few RCXs http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=154358

I'm an electronics and safety engineer by trade, but I think I was born an engineer because I always wanted to know how everything worked. I have now learned to temper my curiosity by not taking apart anything I can't put back together! Whilst electronics is my first degree, I branch out a bit into mechanical stuff, primarily in LEGO. The safety part (my MSc) means I have to think how things might fail and ensure that the possible failures and their effects have been considered in the design. For instance, it led to me placing plates in strategic places on the GBC model to prevent balls straying off the track.

I hope enough people understand inertia :-)

I bought about 300 balls in Pick-a-Brick a while ago, for just this purpose. I filled a tall PaB tub because it was before PaB was sold by weight at Legoland Windsor. Besides, I think footballs are probably cheaper by volume than by weight.

I'll have to take some pictures of my ball lifter. I also made a double see-saw device that splits the balls into two streams alternately. A ball falls onto the lower see-saw, which tips the upper see-saw to send the next ball in the other direction. This is useful when the ball reservoir can put out more balls than the 1 ball per second standard!

A lot of the models I make are mechanisms rather than complete MOCs, particularly the Technic ones. My hope is that lots of people will use my brickshelf gallery http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?m=mbellis as a resource.

One reason I have been so prolific recently is that I have had the privilege of helping the LEGO company with electronics for the Power Functions sets. Once we were cleared to share information about the new elements I felt it was my duty to let fans know as much as possible, and to see the parts in action.

Mark

[Dark Brick]

Thanks for the background Mike. I figured technical background was what you have. Anyway it is nice to see that you can make LEGOs more engaging than the mere toy that they appear to be. Personally I do not do too much of that or rather much of MOCing in general due to lack of time and other hobbies. Maybe when I retire I will have the chance to make my own GBC. X-D

DB

[Brickthus]

Thanks for the background Mike. I figured technical background was what you have. Anyway it is nice to see that you can make LEGOs more engaging than the mere toy that they appear to be. Personally I do not do too much of that or rather much of MOCing in general due to lack of time and other hobbies. Maybe when I retire I will have the chance to make my own GBC. X-D

DB

The name's Mark ;-)

Here's a video of the GBC module:

My YouTube channel (with other MOC videos): http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=mbellisbrickmocs

Mark