Helical lift
for your rolling ball sculpture.


What makes your Kinematic sculpture, kinematic? A motor of course. Kinetic art is
art that moves. Kinematic art - is art that moves with the use of a motor. On rolling ball
sculptures, well, mine at least, I only use the motor for lifting the marbles back to 
the top, automatically. RBS is very cool to watch, but it gets tiresome to always
have to lift the marbles yourself. And besides, what do you look at? Your hand
returning the marbles back to the top, or the marbles on the track and elements?
It gets confusing...the motor and lift eliminates this problem so you can
sit back and just enjoy from wherever you want.  


Making the lift is a different story...
I am not going to give you step by step instructions,
but photos are worth a thousand words and I can at least
point you in the right direction. I am working on a chain lift
and I will have photos of the sprockets and ladder chain
tonight or tomorrow. (11-3) 
In these following 6 pictures I will show how I assemble
my helical lift to the motor, and the bearing I use at the
top of the lift shaft.





Show here is the DC motor I am
The thrust bearing is the blue disk
between the two silver washers.
The piece of aluminum you see
standing to the right of the
mounted motor is what connects
the motor to the shaft. There is a
slot in the top, and the black dot
at the bottom is a set screw that
connects to the flat on the motor
shaft.

 





The thrust bearing goes around the
bottom of the connector. The bearing
is what holds the weight of the spiral lift
and marbles; combined it can add up
especially if you use steel balls.
If you do not use some kind of bearing
to take the weight, then all of it will be
on the motor, which is not usually
designed for that type of stress and
pressure.





 Here is the connecting piece
with a better view of the slot.
If the slot looks really sloppy
and ground down, well, it is.
It didn't start out that way.
I had cut this lift in half already,
this is half of that half. Because
of that, I had to trim the connector
so it would fit. You can see how
it works though. The pin inside
the tube fits inside the groove,
transferring power from the
motor to the lift. 

 




The aluminum tubing used for
the center shaft fits over the
connector piece and sits on the
thrust bearing. The really tricky
part about what you see here, it
getting the motor mounted to
the aluminum 1/4" plate. The
screw heads must be flush so
the thrust bearing will lay flat.




This is the top of the same lift.
I get these bearings at my local
hardware store. It's a flanged
bearing. The flange is nice because
it is easy to install like this:
I welded rods of 1/4" and 1/8"
stainless steel  to make a square
that the bearing will fit into.
It's very snug.






The tape is used to make up the
slight difference in size. The bearing
is 3/4" but the tubing is slightly less.
The tape is an easy way to get it just
right for testing and building.
The open tube in the back was covered
later with little pieces of 1/8" wire.


 



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