Ball lifter project

[daverob]

I'm with Drunkenclam on the electronics side of the ball lifter design. Keep it simple, a geared DC motor with a microswitch or two inline with it is all you really need. If you use a stepper motor, then you need electronics to drive it, and that's just unnecessary complexity.

I had a go myself with a laser cut acrylic design. The lifting part isn't that difficult to design, getting the balls to the lifter without jamming is significantly harder. And if you end up with a design where the ball could jam in the motorised part of the lifter, then make sure there's something flexible that will give way or your 2.5kg motor force will make short work of destroying your plastic lift mechanism. I got through several gears before deciding that laser cut acrylic is way too brittle for this part of the design.

Tips for getting balls to line up, include a small drop/ledge in the channel (about half a ball width) or a change of direction. That tends to stop balls from sitting on top of each other.

[browne92]

I got through several gears before deciding that laser cut acrylic is way too brittle for this part of the design.

The problem might not be the acrylic, but the laser cutting. Heat from the laser causes stress to form in the acrylic and makes it brittle. You can relieve the stress by annealing, but that requires heating in a controlled oven and slowly bring back to room temperature.

You'd might have more success machining instead of laser cutting, but then there are probably more suitable plastics anyway.