Marble Lift , Glass Bead lift

It is a "simple" design in order to lift a small marble ball "ou bille de verre en français" or a glass beads. I lets you choose how these marbles or beads will go down and will be lifted up again :-).

Be Careful, it is an advanced model, and it is not a print as it is, It will need more competences to mount the device, but it is not difficult, just need brass rod 2.9mm, and few small pieces of brass tube (inside 3mm, outside 4mm), and tools to cut this.

This was designed for 17mm diameter standard glass beads. In order to power electrically and involve the wheelwork on the top, I can give advises and designs in order to adapt an engine with the wheel, the machinery is 18 pin.

This design is delivered with mm precision but mounting it is not, since most of 3D printers are not able when a small tower is going higher that 10 centimeters high, the helix starts to swing, and it is no more possible to reach the correct length (like in the .stl file) So please cut horisontally both spiral at the point they starts to be not good, then you will have to adjust the arm/pillars (look at the pictures, arms/pillars are done with brass [diam 2.9 mm] You will have to adapt, and manage these 2 helix so both can be like only one. (There is a picture showing the junction). I Used glue and then smoothes helix rail junction with sand paper. Please use tools like needed to have a smooth connection between both helixs. There is hole for 2.9mm brass rod inside helix. You will have no pain to have it perfectly homogeneous.

However with bottom and upside basement parallel and adjusted , everything is ok, and glass beads will just follow the landform line to the lift for the bottom and to the next step at the Top!

I will give you for free the source files (freeCAD files) if you need it. There is a piece of brass tube in the top cover, in order to have the 2.9mm rod turning inside free (like with a simplified ball bearing fixed ouside by quick glue), same at the basement.

Also all brass rod were fixed with glue. I would be happy to answer all your questions about this design! PLease pay attention that the whole design must be really good leveled, otherwise the glass beads will fall down when lifted in the spiral. Worst case, the system can be lean to the back, but should be ok with 17mm beads.

All fedback welcome, including bad one!

Upate 01.10.2016 : add missing spiral stl file, update others with corrected stl files Update 02.10.2016 : update text for mounting the device with more details