New Track - Giant Loop

I can not bring myself to construct a large ball machine without including the classic giant loop. Despite my success in constructing the first successful K'nex corkscrew, that track has been abandoned for reliability and space issues. This has freed up space to construct the two new tracks I have posted recently. Due to the space taken up by the loop, the programming for the robot arm track had to be adjusted, slipping the arm through a tiny gap in-between the loop supports and the giant supporting arch. With this track, I hope to add some balance to the flow of the balls from tower to tower.

K'nex Ball Machine Robot Arm Track Test 1

The robot arm is now fully integrated into the rest of the machine.

2-axis K'nex robot arm proof-of-concept

Bi-directional K'nex Motor Control with an Arduino

So this is what I'm up to this week, now that I am done with school. I purchased a bunch of new electronic components, as well as two new k'nex motors, and am experimenting with programmable bi-directional control. So far it's working great, I plan to integrate this into my latest ball machine, if possible.

Blue Fox - Interactive 360° Panorama

I discovered Photosynth recently, so I made a 360 degree panorama of my room/ball machine. This way, you can see the entire machine in a 105 megapixel image rather than one piece at a time, because it really is impossible to photograph it all at once.
Anyway, enjoy! Link

Blue Fox - Preview Video

This video is now two months old, but I just realized I completely forgot to post it here. You may have seen it on my youtube channel, but here it is.






There are 11 working paths in this video.

K'nex Corkscrew

Corkscrews are relatively common in K'nex roller coasters, so I decided to make one with a 2-railed ball track. After several days of tedious fine-tuning, I finally have a working model completed. I can not guarantee that this will make it into the final machine, as reliability may become an issue, but here it is now. Filmed at 30, 300 and 840 frames per second.