RohanBeckett

Fully Technic? even the flags??? well done! reminds me a bit of this one, which I'd love to sit down and reverse engineer one day!

I have experimented with some of those orange tubes that I own.. and a ball does fit nicely... haven't actually used them yet I've had ideas for year or more, to have some form of spectator-interaction.. where a ball can be 'injected' back into the layout, via the Mars Mission air pumps.. but since the tubes are an odd shape.. they lose a lot of air pressure around the round ball

I actually find the use of narrow gauge track very clever - to create a tighter radius track.. I wonder if any of the Lego Trains guys have used this trick before? :)

Old Skateboard/Snowboard ramp curves https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=43085#T=S&O={"ss":"AU","rpp":"100","iconly":0} quite useful in GBC situations! and reasonably cheap

@Doug72 https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=44790#T=S&O={"iconly":0} From the Hockey Sports range (which also included the very useful return-to-centre spring unit) https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=x928cx1&idColor=11#T=S&C=11&O={"color":11,"iconly":0} I actually have a couple of these.. I'll go and see how good they are for scooping!

Very nice.. good clean lines! haven't had any balls get stuck as the sweeper bar comes around?

I don't care too much for GBC instructions... just a few, nice clear, well lit photos from all angles are usually enough to reproduce 'enough' to get you by... and yes.. Reverse Engineering is fun!

Ditto... I have about 20-30 ideas I want to build... some are copies of others.. some are originals.. yet to be tested in real life just not enough time!!

You really need to sit down and play with gears... there's almost no times, (esp in GBC building) that you will ever connect a motor directly to a mechanism/motion Some Resources: http://gears.sariel.pl/ this lets you play with gears.. http://www.isogawastudio.co.jp/legostudio/toranomaki/en/download.html Isogawa's PDF (and printed Books) are an excellent primer on basic Lego mechasnisms and best of all - try building other people's basic GBC's first, so you get a feel for how various mechanisms work.. and you get to see how GBC balls behave (how they bounce, how they jam.. how they fly all over the room!!) Maico has some excellent starter modules, many use very common parts.. and are easy to substitute other parts, as you build them.. http://www.greatballcontraption.nl/ Best of all.. GBC's are not colour-sensitive!! build it in rainbow, and it'll work just fine!! :)

really compact mechanism! definitely the smallest Cardan Lift I've seen! wonder what several of these chained together might look like?

G for GBC! :)

this is a very good version of the old 'flexible path', that I've seen before.... more amazing that you've made it out of a single set... lot of respect for those who can do that!

thanks for the comments... to be honest, I'm not that fussed about the balls scuffing.. they are really lightweight remember, and I've had my lot for many years now, running over many 3-day conventions, and apart from the friends' logo, and soccerball print coming off, none of them have 'worn down' at all I thought about the upside down tiles.. but the issue is getting them around the curve.. the other idea would be to somehow flip the plates.. not impossible, but would definitely raise the height of the whole ring.. Actually, just thinking now... one option would be to have TWO rings of train train... have them back to back, and use a bit of brick trickery to connect them on the outer stick-out sleepers.. then the whole ball surface would be studs up.. allowing the use of tiles But... I'm happy to keep it as is... it proved itself for 3 days at Brickvention, and I didn't hear any complaints from my fellow GBC'ers who were running it, about reliability.. (and trust me, we are all quick to blame/laugh/poke fun of someones module, when it fails spectacularly!!)

GBC Carousel During the last few weeks lead up to Brickvention 2018, in January, I decided to have a quick attempt at building a module I have seen on other GBC videos I take no credit for it's general invention, and I actually can't remember where I saw it.... it's just one of those 'cool ideas' that sticks in your head, and you decide to sit down and recreate it from memory! If I find a video, I will link it.. or if anyone knows who built it first.. please post, so I can credit them! For my version, I decided to use the smaller Lego tracks, from the Indiana Jones minecart.. they are fairly cheap on BL, and work very well, and doesn't take up too much space on the table The main ring is made of fairly basic pieces... always a great chance to use those less popular colours! I was quite happy with the red and yellow - giving it a circus-like feel The inverted slopes are fairly new, and worked very well at helping balls slip down the holes I had a bit of fun with some mixel faces, and eyes on the outer ring, as you can see in the video! The track is supported by a nice sturdy frame.. I can pick the whole thing up in one hand, and it doesn't flex. It is driven by train wheels, at each quarter/axis. With the first prototype, it didn't drive very well, and I needed all 4 corners to be driven. But I was testing with bare track, which is very light. Once I added the bricks/plates, it became heavier, and I only needed 2 driving wheels to operate it.. This simplified the design I needed to make it GBC standard, so a simple input + conveyor was added. If balls happen to drop, as the holes are passing, the large tile/catcher underneath sends them straight through. If they land on the wheel, then they go for a ride, accumulating in a pile, before the holes come around again, and they drop down The input rate is just right, so that not too many balls accumulate to 'overflow', and spill..occasionally balls don't fall down the hole, and they just wait for the next loop. For a bit of fun, I decorated the 'engine' in the middle. Note that I have 2 Motor inputs. This lets me alternate between an XL, and M motor, without having to alter power. I wasn't sure at the time which motor would be best (or what I had spare to use) It turned out to be a very reliable module, and I'm quite proud of how it came out. It's nice that there's no major timings to work out, and I think it's reasonably interesting to watch aaaaand... here's the video! :)

I may be swapping mine over soon, as I need the older style to rebuild an older set... the newer ones feel a lot smoother (aside from being brand new! :)

3: 10 2: 6 10: 4 11: 3 15: 2 22: 1

sometimes, when you come across an unusual part, that you don't own, I find it best to look at the sets it appeared in, and see how it was used: as you can see.. this clearly shows that it's basically a 5L liftarm, with no holes in the middle!

there's an axle hole, as well as 2 curved slots, in which the special hub clips in.. so you can use either I guess they were trying to come up with a design that would support more weight than a single axle could.. it works... but introduces a lot of friction

https://bricksafe.com/pages/rbeckett/batteryboxmod Although I've since modified it to use the standard 2.1mm power plug, rather than the cheap audio sockets I used initially :)

all these posts! it's encouraging me to dust off my completed-but-never-timed Ball factory!

I dislike flickr too.. I find it incredibly slow to browse photos... Bricksafe on the other hand is miles faster! :) (I was a Google/Picasaweb user for many many years)

where are you trying to upload to? you can't really upload to the eurobricks forums.. they don't give you much space (this is by design.. they don't have the storage space for photos) See: Accepted file types gif, jpeg, jpe, jpg, png · Max total size 0.06MB I wish they'd just remove this from the editor.. since it confuses so many people. Instead, I'd recommend going to www.bricksafe.com, creating an account... and using that to store your lego photos The site will auto resize your images, and you can link to whatever resolution you want.

all the issues on Windows with EV3 software I've had - working in schools.. 95% of the time, it was silverlight. even with it installed, and up-to-date.. it could fail to launch EV3. to fix, I'd sometimes have to uninstall silverlight... clear out any silverlight leftover files (on disk, and in registry), and install a fresh, latest version.. and then it'd work Not one of TLG's best decisions to use this particular programming system.... (at least it wasn't flash! ;)

interesting.. in the rebrickers prototype video, he has a 5.5l axle in there...

I have a feeling the watch winder are for those watches that have an internal counterweight, that generates a small amount of electricity, to keep the watch going... the idea is, when you wear it all day, it's forever charged by the movements of your arm/wrist. (I own one, but haven't worn it in years!) However, if you take it off, and don't wear it for a few days, it will go flat. Then it needs a few minutes of motion to get enough charge, to start again.. (and then you have to fix the time!) I'd imagine a gadget like this, is where you would store your watch, when you're not wearing it, and every few hours, it spins the watch around, to activate the internal counterweight... to keep the watch charged, and working and yes... it should be easy enough to make one out of Lego.. and have it operate every so often, on a timer