Subject:
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Re: thoughts on gbc module reliability
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.robotics
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Date:
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Fri, 7 Jul 2006 20:04:03 GMT
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Viewed:
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6712 times
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In lugnet.robotics, Steve Hassenplug wrote:
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On Fri, July 7, 2006 12:09 pm, Dave Hurley wrote:
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In lugnet.robotics, Anders Isaksson wrote:
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Steve Hassenplug wrote:
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By design, all the balls go in one end of the GBC, and come out the
other. For the “throughput zones” to work, there must be a way to
get some balls from the middle of the GBC, around the slower modules,
and to the end.
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What about a ‘splitter’ with two outputs (nominally 0.5 bps/output) and a
‘joiner’ for combining the two streams later on?
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Another thing we might try is to implement this splitter at the junction of
the throughput zones to catch any ball overflow from the leaky bucket module.
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I guess I don’t understand what you mean by a leaky bucket module. I’m
imagining something that would work well for “smoothing” the flow, but it will
require the output to match the average input.
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Then
this shunted ball flow could be loaded onto several train cars and haulled
around the track to the high zone side.
Another idea I thought of was that last year’s BF contraption probably wasn’t
running at full capacity due to the slower/problem modules. This would
reduce the frequency of hopper overflow in this scenario.
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Last year, one section of the GBC was NOT running at full capacity. Kevin
(one of the people running the GBC) regulated the flow of balls into the
section, by turning off the train unloading station. That took a fair amount
of effort, and required the train to do fancy stuff.
There was another section with modules able to run well above spec speeds,
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that normally had about 10% of it’s capacity.
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But, the major leg of the GBC ran at spec speed.
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However we do it, we need a
plan for ball flow regulation, and I have a couple more ideas than this.
Does anyone else?
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When I set-up a GBC, I have a module that I always use to regulate the flow of
balls throughout the entire GBC. I usually put it right next to the train,
which can output about 60 balls in a few seconds. This module acts like your
“leaky bucket”, and spreads that batch out. It’s usually running off a train
controller, so > we can adjust the speed, if needed.
Is that what you’re talking about?
Steve
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I have three designs on paper for leaky bucket modules. The basic version of
what I had in mind was a simple large hopper to receive balls from either the
faster modules, the train, or both. The output would be a simple lifter, which
was run on a controller, much like you described.
Another one had a (powered) RCX 1.0 to control the train track voltage and a
dumper motor for the train car. The output of this one had two lifts that split
the balls from the hopper into two flows: one variable and one fixed at .5/1.0
bps.
The third one was a variation of the above one, but with a train dump interface
and RCX 1.0.
As it stands, I only have so much time and components to use/borrow. If you can
bring your stuf from last year, we will certainly put it to use! Also, if you
have pictures of this, I’d love to see some of these. I plan on starting
simple and building up from the basic one I described above. If anyone else
wants to build something to help split/merge ball flows, please do. The gbc
website has a section on this topic that I developed:
www.greatballcontraption.com/leaky-bucket.html
Dave H.
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Message has 2 Replies:
 | | Re: thoughts on gbc module reliability
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| (...) This is what Steve and I call "clocker" modules, and they have always been present. Here's a good example of Steves: (URL) can also redirect the output to a number of directions and heights. Very useful, in fact critical for the trains, as (...) (18 years ago, 7-Jul-06, to lugnet.robotics)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: thoughts on gbc module reliability
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| (...) I guess I don't understand what you mean by a leaky bucket module. I'm imagining something that would work well for "smoothing" the flow, but it will require the output to match the average input. (...) Last year, one section of the GBC was (...) (18 years ago, 7-Jul-06, to lugnet.robotics)
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