Spiral marble elevator with simple run

thingiverse

This marble machine is for 25mm steel balls. Scale down if needed, or scale up for larger ping pong balls. <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/B-EfAEkF2i8" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe> The elevator consists of a fixed spiral and a rotating shovel. Works very well. The attached motor is optional. Mounts for both a standard size or a micro servo are included. Servos need to be converted to contiual motion. I drive mine through a DC/DC voltage converter to produce ca 1.8V from a 5V USB supply. It can of course run at 5V too, but that seems to hectic :-) To do save electricity, a manual crank is also included. All components designed in FreeCAD. The floor plate was designed as a massive slab, but then fine tuned in prusaslicer, so that the infil is exposed: * 0 top and bottom layers, * select Honecomb infill pattern * test with a small block around 10.8% infill so that the 7mm posts can be nicely pushed into the holes. The actual tracks are cut from 1.75mm filament and snapped into the support arms. Downloads also available at https://www.printables.com/model/402421-spiral-marble-elevator-with-simple-run I did not try to print useable 25mm balls myself, as I had these left over of steel balls from another project. (Maybe print two hemisperes, and glue them together....)