[WIP] Cipher Wheel

[Berthil]

I'm busy making a mechanical ball counter GBC and designed the below cipher wheel. There will be 5 of them so counting to 99.999 because per event day about 26.000 balls can run through a GBC. Each cipher wheel can be taken out to set to zero because I don't want to turn the wheels back 26.000 times and the end of the day. The mechanism to pass on 1 turn per 10 turns is an excellent design from Pallax. When more parts arrive I hope to finish it soon and present a video.

 

 

Edited March 18, 2018 by Berthil

[MajklSpajkl]

Wow, looks really good! So is the gearing hidden inside the wheel?

Regarding that 26000 per day. I just returned from our lugs weekend event. My small GBC setup which included a mechanical ball counter ran for 8+5 hours straight. 18919 balls ran through the counter in 13 hours. I know, it's only 0,40 per second in average although the module kinda put out 1 per second. I don't really mind the losses because the visitors were dropping jaws all over the place :-)

I wonder if anyone actually got 1 ball per second on average per event... 

 

[Berthil]

1 hour ago, MajklSpajkl said:

Wow, looks really good! So is the gearing hidden inside the wheel?

Thanks! The gearing is between the wheels and is a really smart design by Pallax. As you may know agreement is a GBC must be able to handle 1 ball per second but that doesn't mean 1 ball per second actually goes through the machines. That's an ideal situation and very rare in a GBC circuit with multiple machines because there are always hickups as you know :)

You have a video of your counter?

[Frequenzberater]

Looks great so far! I am curious how the whole thing works.

[lcvisser]

I'm guessing @Berthil means to refer to Parax77, although you can't see anything in the video below:

I think @nico71 is explaining the same principle here. I don't speak any French, but it's easy enough to follow:

 

[Frequenzberater]

Thats a great mechanism. Very clever. Thanks for sharing the vids! 

[MajklSpajkl]

On 19. 3. 2018 at 12:16 AM, Berthil said:

You have a video of your counter?

Hi, for now I only have a rather bad photo, but I'll try to upload the video of the whole setup soon.

My version is a variation or an interpretation of the one by James Fitzgerald (video below). What I didn't like there, was turning of every other drum in a different direction, because I find it rather unrealistic - at least I think that in the real counters, all drums roll down, so I added additional gearing to achieve all the drums are running in the same direction. Although there was a price to all this gears - the counter needs help at turning the fifth drum (10k) because there is just to much gears to turn by just one ball. If anyone is curious, those are home-made stickers, printed on a transparent sticker sheet for laser printers. I was really satisfied with the outcome. But - those brick built drums by Berthill look way way better. I'm looking forward to see the end result.

 

[Berthil]

It's indeed the mechanism by Parax77. Advantage of this mechanisme is that numbers stay put until they are ready to turn to the next number like in the counter of Fitzgerald which also seems to be a good mechanism although not all numbers line up in the Fitzgerald video. In the Parax77 mechanism the numbers stay lined up most of the time, they turn in two steps instead of 10 steps. Another advantage is they turn light if build well so no additional forces needed to use 5 wheels. In my version the wheels turn opposite, it doesn't bother me and I want to keep them turning as easy as possible with numbers lined up, no slack caused by many gears. Parts are almost all there so hope to finish it soon and make a video.

Edited March 21, 2018 by Berthil

[MajklSpajkl]

Alignment of the cyphers at Fitzgeralds counter mostly depends on fine-tuning of the drums. I tried my best but it is indeed rather hard to make it perfect. And yes the slack between so many gears doesn't help either.