Saturday, December 22, 2007

rolling ball sculpture #72 in progress


This is my current rolling ball sculpture. It is 26" tall and 30" wide and 16" deep. The frame is made from 1/4" stainless steel rod. The track is made from 1/8" stainless steel rod. There will be three tracks on this sculpture. Right now, two of the tracks are installed; the loop d' loop track and the single marble track. Yes, all of the track you see is just for one track. It takes over a full minute for the single ball to get from the top to the bottom.
I have installed two track splitters. One is on the top left and the other is on the far right, top. The left splitter is the first and the one on the right is second. The top left splitter sends the marble - left onto all the track shown, and to the right into the next splitter. The second splitter sends the marbles either (left) to the loop d' loop or (right) into the ball collector, not built yet. The ball collector will be adjustable. This means you can choose if you want to arm to tip with three marbles (minimum) or up to 7 marbles (max). The idea for the adjustable ball collector is from the Chaos Tower I got my son Kennedy for Christmas. Their website had an adjustable ball collector for sale, I didn't buy it....I just needed the idea. I think I will use a weight that slides along a rod with a set screw. The farther out the weight is from the pivot point, then the more marbles the arm will hold.
I plan to be finished by Monday. I will post video to youtube when it is complete, and post the link here.

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