Berthil

I've updated the Ball Shooter Marble Run with a longer inbox to make the entry better reachable for the previous module. The exit is now centered, previously the rigid hoses ended from the side. The top ball gate that takes out the speed of the ball has been optimized. Sometimes the ball would bounce right back into the tubing to fall back to the spinning wheel causing congestions. The gate would also come apart because of the high velocity ball impact. It seems that after about 300 hours runtime on events the ball goes up faster and faster. Both problems have been solved with the update. By the way, the first tire is still being used, it shows little wear. The overview in the first post has been updated. The free building instruction is NOT updated. I use Stud.io and it is nearly impossible to bend all those rigid hoses in Stud.io. If time permits I might give it a try and create new building instructions including all the updates. The video before the update is here.

The two under carriages have studs to hold on with via 4 x 4 round brick and attached turntable so not only by weight of the boiler. Haven't tested that but inside the boiler is 4 studs wide so should fit. Instruction are free so it is easy to have a look or do a small tryout with real bricks.

With my Big Boy I had two M motors (and a City Hub) and the M motors did not have enough torque to let the locomotive drive slowly only with tender. My industrial train and tram run fine with the M motor. So depends a bit on what you want to do with the M motor. Another plus from PU is the fact that you can hook up a color sensor to program in stops. Did that with the tram an Pybricks and works fine, no telephone or tablet needed.

@OneMoreRobot Wow, 17! Excellent and thank you for letting me know. I make the machines and free instructions for feedback like yours, happy to read you enjoy them.

I'm using the holidays clean and check most of the machines listed. Some I further improve, like the Marble Run. That really needed a clean because the high spinning wheel is a dust magnet somehow, I guess it 'cleans' the balls with the wheel and the dust needs to go somewhere. I'm also extending the 'lime theme' to all the machines. The Marble Run got a longer inbox, the exit is now parallel with the machine and the ball catcher at the top has been modified to prevent balls shooting right back into the up shoot. Below a picture of a 24t gear that ran with PTFE (dry teflon) for about 30 event days as first drive gear against an 8t gear in the Marble Run. At the top a new gear. It didn't fail and I didn't clean it as you can see. The black fibers are from the black cloth that covers the exhibition tables and the black dust is from the balls that pick up dust going through the machines and black paint coming from the soccer ball prints. It shows gears have a hard life in GBC machines but mostly keep working.

Here you go with free instructions, already did that :) https://rebrickable.com/mocs/MOC-127323/Berthil/planetary-lift-gbc/

Thank you all that voted and have given support! At the moment I'm rebuilding the ball pod loading gate back to what it was (at the start of the video) but with a double gate to improve reliability. First results look very promising. This by the way shows the work of a GBC builder is never done :) I have a Stud.io file of the wheel and Planetary Lift ball feed, but not of everything else. I'm not sure if I will create instructions for the entire Ferris Wheel module because it will be a lot of work and not many will build it as it is both difficult and costly to build with the 128 strings.

@astyanax Great work! You would make many happy with sharing (after permission by @langko) including me! If you need help to create instructions from the Stud.io file just let me know, meanwhile I've got quite some experience in creating (free) instructions.

Thank you Jim for organizing and thank you to everybody who voted and of course also thank you and congratulations to the other contestants with their amazing machines which, no doubt, took al lot of engineering and time to create. No prize is not a problem for me, I'm very happy with the honour on itself, a big motiviation to be more active in future competitions.

Good that it works. In the last version of Stud.io on my iMac, all custom parts I had imported were gone. With Time Machine I got back the 'CustomParts' folder that resides in the ldraw folder on an iMac. Upon restart I had all custom parts back but the folder had been renamed to 'Custom Parts' by Stud.io (with space).

No answer from the topic poster. I suspect the new horse with 'posable' back legs is meant here. In general, these are treated as one part in Stud.io and individual parts can't be moved, e.g. all movable pneumatic components and 3L Technic joints. To be able to move individual parts these need to build up in Stud.io from their individual components. If the individual components are not available as official parts, most likely they are available in LDraw library. In the case of the horse they are. Download all .dat files (and their related files) and put them in the right location in your Stud.io folder and restart Stud.io, they should appear as Custom parts. If not, try opening the .dat files in Parts Designer and 'publish' to Stud.io from there. Note that custom parts are not transferred to Bricklink wanted lists on export, in the case of the horse it should be added manually to an exported wanted list.

3: 10 2: 6 5: 4 6: 3 4: 2 1: 1

I can't vote at all as I was (technical) captain helping Jim.

I also really like this module. As such the mechanics are not new and sliders have also been used before, but both have been combined into a new and attractive module so well done! Also thank you for the IO file.

No, because the ball pods trigger the ball load, it's not timed.

They are indeed to keep speed contant as much as possible because the ball flip at the top takes more force. But you haven't missed it the first time because in the Ferris wheel ball supply there are no steel balls, only in the stand alone Planetary Lift. The Ferris wheel itself is the mass that ensures smooth movement and in fact does a better job so no steel balls needed there. For who does not know, the steel balls are from EV3 sets so 100% LEGO.

Ferris Wheel GBC App. 1 meter diameter Ferris wheel held together by 128 x127c41 41L strings with 63 ball pods. Detachable planetary geared straight line mechanism ball feed. Ball feed has 'on the fly' timing adjustment through a differential.

Nice slow-motion from Brick Engineering of the Planetary Lift ball supply of the Ferris wheel, should have done that in my video :)

I have build a pneumatic scissor lift for GBC with compressor (free instructions). The timing is done by the train. Worked like a charm on events so far.

I got used to it but that doesn't mean I like it of course. They even use my foto and video material to sell a bag of clone bricks together with my original building instruction. The only one that behaves well is Mould King to whom I licensed out a few designs. Although even these Mould King sets are copied too. I'm a believer of karma, 'do good for others and ...'. That's why I keep my instructions free despite these clone copiers. Why should many 'suffer' from a few rotten apples.

Ik really like the design and GBC potential it has, too bad it didn't work out. I also see potential in a setup where there are unexpected situations the three motor system has to react to because it is flexible/dynamic in its movements, probably more flexible than GBC needs as in GBC situation is always the same unless randomness is build in.

@DrJB the wider center was the backup plan in case the wheel would not be strong enough but turns out it is with the current structure, it's not a bicycle wheel :). I can lift it up from the table horizontally and put upright, even without the rigid hose reinforcement. The wheel needs to be assembled flat on a table without hose reinforcement so that's how I know.

Spin-off from the Ferris wheel, Planetary Lift module with free instructions:

Nice work! It seems to run slower than 1 ball per second, can it run faster?

The strings are 41L LEGO strings x127c41 which have studs on each end, no knots needed. It's visible in the video.