Spiraling Marbles almost Hypnotic Relaxation.

Well folks,

While this isn't about robots it is about relaxing. Dunno why but watching the balls spiraling down and being recycled to the top again is relaxing for me.

The project (Thingiverse) really didn't look too challenging but the first print of the spiral failed at about 80% printing on my Delta It was calculated at about 18 hours. I printed it on another machine successfully and then dealt with the moving parts.

The original design called for a motor powered drive gear to turn the large gear. Been there done that. I prefered to drive it with a 28BYJ stepper mainly because I could set it up as a direct drive and adjust the speed of the rotation as I wished.

This is where Tinkercad came in. If you're doing 3d printing and not any CAD it's like driving a car with a wheel missing. Tinkercad is simple and opens worlds for you.

Anyway I built the stepper mount and attached it to the motor stand which required much measuring as to height and distance from the wheel the distributes the balls. I left the teeth on the gear only because it adds visual interest to the project even tho the teeth have no function.

I made many measurements but tinkercad allowed me to set it all up virtually. The visuals helped tremendously. The big wheel now attached to the spiral through use of a pin and a spring to add a minor amount of tension to the adjoining pieces. I made a floating hub to connect the motor shaft to the large wheel. The stepper will likely be attached to arduino nano but at the moment it's driven by a board made specifically to operated small steppers.

Questions or suggestions? I'm open to them.