New York, Vermont & Northern Rwy. (HOn3 coal line + HOn30 Quarry Line)

[Bernd]

For some reason the pictures didn't show up until after I edited them in my reply. Must be the delay though my cell phone hot spot and being up at Northern Command.

Bernd

[tct855]

Bernd~,
      I'm not sure what I'm doing, but I'll figure it out....maybe.
                                                                            Thanx Thom...

[Bernd]

Bernd~,
      I'm not sure what I'm doing, but I'll figure it out....maybe.
                                                                            Thanx Thom...

Hey Brother~

You need to stop by more often. 

Bernd

[Bernd]

It's been a while since I posted anything that's happening on the quarry line railroad. The last I left off was two pages ago when I was doing the quarry cars. Still lots of work to be done on them. In the mean time I was distracted by many shiny objects. The last being a couple of brass engines. The Heisler haveing the drive train rebuilt and then a narrow gauge 2-6-0 that needs a total motor and drive line rebuild. But, the 2-6-0 is a project for later. I'm back to the rotary dumper and have made several changes.

The first is a redesign to the pillow blocks from four to two. Much easier to align everything.





Milled out the bottom on the Grizzely manual mill so when dumping the material will go down a chute.



When I built the first version I was going to use a G90 servo that I had pulled the electronic guts out of and plastic chain and sprockets from Micro Mark. Problem with that was getting and keeping the chain aligned so it wouldn't run off the sprocket and tight enough.



After putting my thinking cap on I came up with the idea that I could use two servo motors to drive the drum shafts.



Then I remembered I had some small 90° micro-gearbox motors. They would work perfectly. At 5 volts these tiny motors have an amazing amount of torque at the out put shaft.



These motors have the tiniest worm and worm gear I've ever seen.



These will the motors used to drive the rotary dumper. Now I have to come up with a bracket to mount them to the dumpers platform and come up with a coupling design to drive the shafts.

Stay tuned more to come sometime down the line.

Bernd

[jbvb]

You must have a very interesting junkbox/parts cabinet.  Do you plan to design access to oil those shaft bearings?

[ACL1504]

Bernd,

Amazing work, love all the metal craft shown. 

Tom

[Bernd]

Bernd,

Amazing work, love all the metal craft shown.

Tom

Thanks Tom. More is coming as I work to get this contraption to work properly.

Bernd

[deemery]

Bernd, you have -2- motors driving this?  Doesn't that place a premium on both motors running at exactly the same speed?  Or do I not understand the mechanism?

dave

[Bernd]

Bernd, you have -2- motors driving this?  Doesn't that place a premium on both motors running at exactly the same speed?  Or do I not understand the mechanism?

dave

I'm going to post the same pictures here as I did on the MRH since very few, less than five maybe are on MRH also.

SO here we go.

Update on the HOn30 rotary dumper.

Got it all assembled for a test run before I add other details. Wanted to make sure it will operate before instaling other parts yet like track and system to hold the car to the rails while dumping and so forth.



Motor wired in and ready for "spin".



And the power is applied. We have rotation.

Now back to your question Dave. Take a close look at what drives the hole assembly. Notice there are no gears, rope or chain pulling on the drum. Can you guess what's causing that drum to turn and not put any strains on those motors? I'll give you sometime to see if you can come up with the answer. 

Bernd

[deemery]

I'll give you sometime to see if you can come up with the answer. 

'friction drive' on the shafts... 

But you didn't answer my question:  What happens if the two motors turn at slightly different rates?

dave

[Pennman]

Bernd,

Great video & presentation. It's beyond my knowledge, that's for sure!!

Rich

[Bernd]

Dave asked: "Bernd, you have -2- motors driving this?  Doesn't that place a premium on both motors running at exactly the same speed?  Or do I not understand the mechanism?"

Yes, two motors are driving the drum. Look close and you'll see that each motor drives one shaft. They are not mechanically connected to each other.

What happens if the two motors turn at slightly different rates?

Both motors are wired in parallel and receive the same amount of voltage. They are also identical motors and drive train. I believe those motors are N22 or something like that. So, they should run at the same speed no matter the voltage. I'm going to try a series connection just to see what happens.

You were close on the friction idea. The silver round pieces on the brass rods are axial magnetized Neodymium magnets that hold the metal part of the drum. I guess you can call it a form of friction since the magnets hold the metal drum to themselves and causes them to roll.

I got this idea from an old type of mechnical machine called " Victor Duplicator copy torch".

Here's a video of that machine in action. I've started the video at Josh explaining how it works.

Sometimes the old ways work way better than the newer CNC stuff. I believe it's hard for people who are mechanically challenged to understand how things like this can be used in modeling a railroad.

Hope this explains how the rotary dumper will work. The true test will be when I get some cars built to see if it will rotate them since they will built from brass and not plastic printing.

Bernd

[Bernd]

Bernd,

Great video & presentation. It's beyond my knowledge, that's for sure!!

Rich

Thanks Rich. Much appreciated. I would not know any of this if it wasn't for my high curiosity of things mechanical. As you see from the recent post where I got the idea from to use magnets. I guess this must come from not going to college and being book smart but street smart. There are many subjects I'm not knowledgeable in too.

Bernd

[deemery]

Using magnets for the connection is really cool!

dave

[Bernd]

Using magnets for the connection is really cool!

dave

Makes linking moving mechanisms easy sometimes.

Get my magnets from https://www.kjmagnetics.com/

Bernd