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In lugnet.technic, David Laswell wrote:
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In lugnet.announce.moc, Shaun Sullivan wrote:
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As is my tendency, here’s an absurdly long treatise describing the
development of a LEGO Train Odometer Car (a.k.a. the “LEGOdometer”).
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Interesting. I thought this might be interesting to use in our
displays...until I read that it binds up in reverse. When we lose a car for
whatever reason (often some young kid’s hand straying where it ought not to),
we usually recouple by running the train in reverse to pick up the
stragglers. Perhaps your next iteration could have a slip gear system that
disengages in reverse and engages when going forward?
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First off, “wow!” A great idea, what sounds to be a very thorough design (and
documentation), and an aesthetically pleasing package.
A few thoughts, suggestions, and so forth. First, while the videos are
impressive, I wonder if the performance on the dynamometer is representative. In
the videos you are driving the counter with a rubber tire, with a much higher
coefficient of friction than you would find on track. I’ve found that the BBB
wheels can slip around curves, especially if they are tied together and pushing
a bit of a load. So you might wind up measuring a distance even shorter than the
inside rail with your current design. If you want precision, I’d suggest using a
rubber wheel (actually a few rubber wheels in a cylinder like arrangement)
pressing down on the top of the rail, with a technic shock absorber or some
other spring to keep the pressure on, e.g., some combination of:
Make the cylinder of tires wide enough to catch all curves, placing it as near
as possible to the flanged wheels to keep the width down (or even better, devise
a dynamic system such that it will swing out/in on curves as needed, grin). And
to avoid the fact that one rail is longer than the other on curves, orient the
tires such that they are only on one rail.
As far as ease of reading, I think a face that only shows the current readout
would drive that point home. But it would be a shame to hide all of the eloquent
mechanics under a cover. So at most, just cover the side showing the reading,
leaving the top and back open to show off the workings. Or better, just build a
two wide ring around the actual readout.
As for a train club not wanting to run the car, you could easily put it at the
rear of the train so that you never have to back up. Or pull the partial train
forward, pull the odometer car out, then go retrieve the other half of the
train. It is cool enough that any club would be crazy not to make accommodations
for it.
Very nice,
Benn
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: LEGOdometer
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| (...) Interesting. I thought this might be interesting to use in our displays...until I read that it binds up in reverse. When we lose a car for whatever reason (often some young kid's hand straying where it ought not to), we usually recouple by (...) (16 years ago, 5-Aug-08, to lugnet.technic, lugnet.trains, FTX)
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