@HEC, without the impact plate and with a bigger barrel to accommodate the bigger ball size, it would really just be akin to launcher system used for the yellow flowers (http://tinyurl.com/2yj4xt). Actually suspect that the line-vac solution gets more velocity ... which still isn't enough to...
@CPosner, we use something like this for firing the balls through the stems of the yellow flowers (http://tinyurl.com/2yj4xt). This is based on the Ex-Air line-vac (http://tinyurl.com/23kjml). Up above in the red flower though, we have a bunch of balls to be tossed out, all at once and in...
@TVP, there were a few issues with the old system including: required frequent replacement of bungees 12ft in air; off-center pull causing abrasive wear on cable and pass-through hole in red flower; axle in the cam system failed (admittedly after several years of use). Watching this thing work...
How's that for a title? ;-)
We're working on a refit of another company's design for a kids' "ball room". Looking at the attached image( also viewable at http://www.edmstudio.com/temp/discovery/08C03-redflower.jpg)
tennis-sized light foam balls get shot through the stems of giant yellow...
@Alan, unless I'm mistaken, the spring counterbalances on the McMaster-Carr site don't have adjustable tension nor the 4m extension we need. We're really after a unit with a wire coiled on a drum. Just like the above SIKO unit but without the actual encoder and with adjustable tension...
We're working on a museum exhibit where the user input device is a sliding block mounted on a guide rail. The position of the carriage is sensed via a wire-draw encoder mounted at the left end of the rail with the wire fastened to the left side of the carriage. Here is the specific encoder...
Thanks tlee123. Regarding shock absorbers, to keep the original question simple I neglected to mention that we need the screen to come to a definite stop at the end. This would trigger a position lock (either solenoid or electromagnetic) and then playback of a final 30 seconds of animation...
Thanks sreid and lumenharold, I like the magnetic damping option as unlike the rotary dampers, the breakaway force/torque is 0. Our one concern with strong magnetics is their propensity for erasing credit cards and computer disks. Back in my undergrad days, we had MRI magnets that would wipe a...
"The defining function of a damper is T = f(n), where T is torque and n is shaft rpm. The faster you try to spin the shaft, the more torque the damper resists with."
Yes, I understand this ... but (and I might be wrong) the details of the function f(n) matter. If torque is linearly...
Re the centrifugal clutch, any sense about minimum RPMs required. I can, of course, gear up - but the main rack drive won't exceed 50 RPM. And we'd like the whole unit to be essentially noiseless.
Thanks so much for the quick responses. A rotary damper seems like the ideal solution to solve the "flinging problem", the case when a temporary force is applied horizontally to the screen. Even if the initial impulse/shove is large, the velocity can be made to damp relatively quickly.
My...
I'm working on a museum exhibit where a 65" plasma monitor (150lb) is manually moved back and forth along a 15' linear rail. We're looking for a passive (non-electronic) means of limiting the speed to thwart kids flinging the screen from one end to the other. We want the screen to move freely...