{"id":515,"date":"2017-10-23T07:42:12","date_gmt":"2017-10-22T21:42:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mindbleach.com\/words\/?p=515"},"modified":"2017-10-23T07:42:12","modified_gmt":"2017-10-22T21:42:12","slug":"modular-marble-decade-counter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mindbleach.com\/words\/2017\/10\/23\/modular-marble-decade-counter\/","title":{"rendered":"Modular Marble Decade Counter?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I want to build a unique mechanical counter and I&#8217;ve come across an interesting design challenge.<\/p>\n<h1>Background<\/h1>\n<p>There are marble &#8220;clocks&#8221; that count up the time &#8211; typically in a rack of single-minute balls, a rack of 5-minute balls, and a rack of hour balls.<br \/>\nWhen the last ball reaches a rack, it dumps out all the balls and sends a single ball to the next rack.<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-516\" src=\"https:\/\/mindbleach.com\/words\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/marble_clock_type2-1024x908.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"584\" height=\"518\" srcset=\"https:\/\/mindbleach.com\/words\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/marble_clock_type2-1024x908.png 1024w, https:\/\/mindbleach.com\/words\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/marble_clock_type2-300x266.png 300w, https:\/\/mindbleach.com\/words\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/marble_clock_type2-768x681.png 768w, https:\/\/mindbleach.com\/words\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/marble_clock_type2-338x300.png 338w, https:\/\/mindbleach.com\/words\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/marble_clock_type2.png 1361w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 584px) 100vw, 584px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m thinking this concept would be great for a mechanical decade counter &#8211; just have one rack per digit of what you&#8217;re counting.<\/p>\n<h1>Examples<\/h1>\n<h2>Type A:<\/h2>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/A7uOMHcb-44\" width=\"540\" height=\"400\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h2>Type B:<\/h2>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/zjhj0rGPC5I\" width=\"540\" height=\"400\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h2>Fancier:<\/h2>\n<p>With chimes, strange lifting mechanisms, or &#8220;complex just because&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/6oCjxN-81p0\" width=\"540\" height=\"400\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/FGigysskxig\" width=\"540\" height=\"400\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Most of these clocks are like type A &#8211; they use racks with a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=AigVsMveSOM\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">&#8220;deer scarer&#8221;<\/a> tipping mechanism &#8211; when enough balls land in the rack, they all tip out.<\/p>\n<p>Some like type B use a better alternative &#8211; the last ball bounces out and releases a gate that allows all the stored balls to roll through the rack.<\/p>\n<h1>Why not follow these designs?<\/h1>\n<p>All the existing designs have a common flaw; balls flow from top to bottom, the least significant rack is at the top. To read the state of the display you have to <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">unintuitively<\/span> read the racks from <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">bottom to top<\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>This seems a bit &#8216;wrong&#8217; to me. Naturally you read numbers from left to right.<br \/>\nAn ideal mechanism would:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Have racks arranged\u00a0<b>horizontally<\/b>\u00a0with the least significant digit on the right.<\/li>\n<li>Have each rack store the balls\u00a0<b>vertically <\/b>to increase density.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I want to design a 100% modular &#8220;digit&#8221; of such a mechanism, so I can stack as many of them horizontally as needed.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_518\" style=\"width: 616px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-518\" class=\"wp-image-518 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/mindbleach.com\/words\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/rough.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"606\" height=\"283\" srcset=\"https:\/\/mindbleach.com\/words\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/rough.png 606w, https:\/\/mindbleach.com\/words\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/rough-300x140.png 300w, https:\/\/mindbleach.com\/words\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/rough-500x233.png 500w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 606px) 100vw, 606px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-518\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Horizontal, ball enters from the right, currently showing &#8220;1 4 2 3&#8221;.<\/p><\/div>\n<h1>The Challenge:<\/h1>\n<p>Conservation of energy.<br \/>\nIf the design is like the above picture, where the rail is flat&#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>As the ball rolls it will slow down.<\/li>\n<li>Each rack the ball rolls\u00a0<strong>past<\/strong> needs to be emptied by some mechanical trigger &#8211; which will absorb speed.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><em>When a rack is emptied, surely those 9 balls that fall out could be harnessed to transfer energy\u00a0<strong>back<\/strong> to the rolling ball?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The devil being in the details, what would you suggest for the design of this &#8220;digit&#8221;?<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Must hold 0-9 balls in a visible way.<\/li>\n<li>Each new ball enters horizontally from the right with some initial velocity.<br \/>\n<em>(eg from the ball lifter mechanism)<\/em><\/li>\n<li>Balls #1-#9 need to be captured.<\/li>\n<li>Ball #10 needs to empty the digit, AND<\/li>\n<li>Ball #10 (or another ball if you&#8217;re fancy) needs to exit horizontally to the left\u00a0<u>at the same height it entered and at the same speed.<\/u><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Watch this space&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I want to build a unique mechanical counter and I&#8217;ve come across an interesting design challenge. Background There are marble &#8220;clocks&#8221; that count up the time &#8211; typically in a rack of single-minute balls, a rack of 5-minute balls, and &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/mindbleach.com\/words\/2017\/10\/23\/modular-marble-decade-counter\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[92],"tags":[94,98,97,95,93,99,96],"class_list":["post-515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mechanisms","tag-clock","tag-design","tag-energy","tag-marble","tag-mechanism","tag-puzzle","tag-rolling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mindbleach.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mindbleach.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mindbleach.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mindbleach.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mindbleach.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=515"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mindbleach.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":519,"href":"https:\/\/mindbleach.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515\/revisions\/519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mindbleach.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mindbleach.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mindbleach.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}