Sad News Alert

Im tempted to adjust the sleepers and reprint them, It would be a bitch and take forever, but where the lower brace connects the 2 sleepers, i decided to use pushfit after trying an failing with magnets, But when i did the push fit, altho it works, it could be better, im thinking of making the hole a hole instead of an indent, so the brace can be pushed all the way though.

Its hard to explain really, the braces dont do anything except make sure the sleepers and gates are the correct distance apart, but, thats also accomplished by the posts, walkways and tracks.

I only really bothered with them because they are on a real waltzer, they are kinda useless at this scale lol.

This is the brace disconnected.

This is it in place.

It holds well, but is easily knocked off.

I wonder if vegans worry about killing bugs, like when driving or walking, or do they not count?

Here is the waltzer as it currently stands.

I have decided to modify the gates instead of the walkways. its more effort in terms of tearing the ride down and building it up again, but its easier and quicker than modifying the walkways when including the print time.

I can print a new set of gates in less than 5 hours, and it wont take me 9 hours of work to reconstruct the ride.

Thats my reasoning anyway

Oh im gonna reprint the top braces, they are lose on the pins, the pin is 2mm, and i set the hole in the braces to 2.5mm... i have no idea what i was thinking, ive reduces it to 2.2mm, so fingers crossed.

Ill be honest, quite early in the development of this, i thought i fucked up the gate height. On the original ride, they have these braces that go between the tops of each gate, to keep them an equal distance from each other and for the middle of the walkways to rest on. But i have no information to go on for the dimensions of those braces. so i just kinda guessed. It was pretty close, but not close enough 😒

Anyway, when i was designing the walkways, i originally thought, well they can all be a single walkways, just printed multiple times, but then i realized very quickly when fitting them, they wont ever be planar, unless im mistaken, you cant have undulations like we have on the waltzer, that go in a circle, and have something rest on 4 points on the gate without it twisting some way. Which is how the real waltzer works, they are wooden or metal, but they have some level of twist to the walkways, so they kinda naturally twist to the correct shape, but with 3d printing, especially at this scale, that natural twist doesnt exist, so i had to essentially bake the twist into the printed parts, which makes it impossible to print them flat against the print bed without a raft, and thus increases the print time.

I started to erect the posts and what not, and im now realizing, despite me adjusting the walkways and the gates, there still isn't enough of a gap between the top of the walkway and the bottom of the moving platforms, its way better than it was, but its still touching in some areas.

Now i have to decide, do i adjust the gates to raise the track a little, and then reprint the gates, or do i adjust the walkways and reprint them.

If i reprint the gates, i have to tear the ride down again, add the pins, redrill the holes and rebuild it from the start, then reattach the tracks, BUT i can make a couple of adjustments, one for the tracks / walkway, and one for the posts , the posts are just a little to close to the gates in some places, they fit, but tightly, so i could knock half a mm off the end of each gate and give the posts more room. Gates print fairly fast.

If i adjust the walkway, it would be quicker to adjust and i wouldn't have to tear the ride down again, but, the walkways are a bitch to adjust because they arnt planar and they take FOREVER to print. I have no idea why they take so long to print, no matter how much i try to reduce the printing time, i cannot get it down to less than 14 hours for all 24 walkways.

😭😭😭😭😭

I really should start building the rest of the waltzer up, so i can continue on the roof and such, i just feel so lethargic with this damn heat😭

I did put the pins in the end of each rafter today, so they hook into the roof of the paybox and onto the posts.

This waltzer has A LOT of pins, they are all 2mmx10m steel dowels, they are fairly cheap on amazon, probably even cheaper on ebay.

Im gonna try and work out roughly there are.

There is 4 for the frame, but they might be 3mm pins, i forget.
24 for each connection for the sleeper to the frame,
48 for the gates, 2 for each,
120 for the posts, 5 on each post (1 for the top brace, 1 for each end of the post, and 2 for the handrails),
48 for the rafters, 2 for each rafter,
18 for each wheel axle
18 for each hinge bar support
18 for each hinge bar connection to the pin wheel
8 for the front steps,
8 ish for the front truss, but i haven't finished designing it yet.

So 320ish min would say, i thought it would be more tbh🤷‍♂️

The temp today is as hot as it was last night, but doesnt feel anywhere near as hot, weird 🤷‍♂️

Anyway, i have soldered up 3 rafters.

This is the stencil setup i have, very high tech😂

Flip the stencil over and make sure the holes line up.

Apply the paste, then scrape the excess off

Flip the stencil back over and check the to make sure no solder is missing.

Stick it on the hot plate and wait for the solder to melt, it happens quite fast for small boards.

Check the joints, make sure there isnt anything weird happening (to much solder can cause tombstoning)

Solder on the wires (i forgot to take pictures of that)
Here it is, finished.

Despite the fact it appears to be working great, there is one issue.

When multiple rafters are connected to the distribution board, everything after the first rafter goes haywire.

It could be for multiple reasons, one which is easy to rule out, and thats making sure all the rafters work individually, which they do, so that rules out a soldering or led issue.

I am using a cheap ws2812b led controller that came with some led strips, so it could be that as im not using ws2812b leds, im using ws2812c leds, so there might be some weird timing issue or something 🤷‍♂️

The most likely cause could be that i was powering them though my PC's usb port. The controller is running them at full brightness, which can pull a decent chunk of current with almost 150 leds. So im going to ignore the issue until i have it connected to a proper power supply and ive wrote the pico pi code to control them 😂

Oh another reason i think its power related, All three rafters work fine when its showing only red with 50% of the leds powered on, and red is the color that pulls the least current for the same brightness (i think).

I completly forgot to check and see if the rafter pcb actually fit into the rafter

Im gonna be honest, its tight, the width is fine, but the length is tight.
I think its a mix of slightly too long pcb, and over extrusion on the print. All i needed to do was trim inside of the rafter a little with an xacto knife, and besides, most of the rafters will be using cut down pcbs anyway, so the length shouldn't be an issue.

If i hadnt glued the bulbs into the rafters already, i would have just modified the rafters and print new ones.

I cant wait to see how they look, it will either be crap or ok😂
I have little dividers in the rafter which are sized to give each led there own little walled off section, im hoping that will prevent bleed from the adjacent leds.

It is cooling down a little now, so i might be able to make one up tonight, i havent decided yet.

Oh and if you want to see bigger pictures, just right click the picture and "Open image in a new tab" and it will be a bit bigger.

urgggh there is so much shit i wanna work on right now, but its so damn hot.

I want continue building up the waltzer, i want solder up a few rafters to make sure they are functional & i want to print some more parts for the waltzer but noooo the weather says no 😒

I cant even watch any tv shows cause my headset just makes me hot and sweaty😭

Distribution board all soldered up

I fucked up the pinout for the headers, so i had to rotate the connector 180 degrees, i was high when designing it, so it could have gone way worse lol

I could have left it as it was, but the cable colors are reversed. I could rearrange all the wires in the connectors, but thats way to much work, especially considering im probably the only person who will ever use one of these pcbs 😂

I have no idea why my phone appears to have such a shallow depth of field, its pretty annoying, especially when something like this board should fairly easily fit, in focus, in a single image.

They have arrived😈

The rafter pcbs

I haven't got any bananas, so heres a pencil for scale

G for Ground
5 for 5V
I for data input
O for data output.

I ordered 100, received 107

The distribution board

The distribution board sits recessed into the paybox roof, I was originally going to have a hole in the paybox roof for the data and power wires to go though, but i realized i could just solder them to the underside of the board.

This is the distribution board PCB, The markings for the connectors are, P# for paybox, and R# for the rafters.

The pins for 5v, gnd, pdi and rdi wont actually be pins, ill probably directly solder them as i cant see a reason for the distribution board to be removed.

This is the rafter led board, cant really get a good image of it cause its so long.
Its 228mm long by 3mm wide... which will be fun to solder lmao.

This pcb is made to fit all the rafters, I have some marks on the back to indicate the place to cut it for the shorter rafters.

When you cut the board to length for the shorter rafters, there is some pads on the back of the pcb to join it to the data input/output for the next rafter. I was laying the board out when i was high, so im not 100% sure i put the pads in the right place 😂

At the paybox end of the rafter pcb, it has solder pads for data in, data out, 5v and gnd.

The distribution board is basically 2 massive copper pours, one side for 5v and one for gnd, that way there shouldn't be any issue with voltage drop like on those led strips you can buy.

I know your probably thinking, "why didn't he just buy some led strips instead of making his own", well, those led strips, the thinnest i could find was 4mm and they were EXPENSIVE, also they had slightly larger leds (im using ws2812c-2020 leds (2mm x 2mm)), oh and they didnt have the right spacing between the leds. Im using 4.5mm spacing on centers and in the end, it was cheaper to make my own 🤷‍♂️

I worked out the spacing by using countless pictures and videos of waltzer rides, and then buying some Cabochon and using those dimensions to figure out the spacing.

Thats a Cabochon btw, not the actual gemstones they are (presumably) named after.

That was much longer post than expected😂

THEY ARE COMING!!!

just woke up cause of the heat, the pcbs are now 40.7 miles away🤞

The rafter pcbs are on the way, its in the DHL facility 50 miles away, lets see how long it takes to arrive

I forgot the picture of them all finished

The stringing between bulbs is easily resolved with a lighter.
I wanna get one of those mini blowtorches that chefs use, but it feels wrong to pay 30 for something a lighter can do just as well.

Ive been gluing the "bulbs" into the rafters, It seems to be going rather well.

I tried 2 different ways of glueing them in, one by putting the glue on the bulbs, and one by putting the glue on the rafter and then inserting the bulbs. I would say the glue on the rafters worked way better, but does use a but more glue.

Oh, and if u end up doing this... yeah, do it outside. I did it whilst watching Bargain Hunt and my nose and eyes are irritated, which is unsurprising considering its almost 1000 drops of super glue 😂

Here are some pictures of the process. I cant be bothered to annotate them, they should be pretty self explanatory.

The bulbs are 3mm diameter, So i dont think these turned out to bad for an FDM printer🤷‍♂️

I have kinda worked out how to keep the steps in place.
Its a bit janky, and needs another hole in the front posts (might weaken them?), but it might work ok🤷‍♂️

Just realized i have to re-print the front 2 posts, The handrail holes are in the wrong place 😭

Thankfully, its cooled down a bit now.

Im trying to work out the best way to handle the front steps of the waltzer.

This is what i currently have.

I dont know if i should print them as they exist in the real world, i.e each step its own separate object, or if i should just print them as a 4 objects.

This is the underside, they have a frame support for the ends of each steps, i cant decide if i want to add something else to help prevent the steps from slipping off.

At the moment i have the frame support "booled" into the steps, so there is a little notch for the frame to sit in, which should help prevent side to side movement.

I get the feeling that it wont be enough and that i should have something to stop them from sliding forward and coming loose, But i cant work out how to do it, the steps are too thin to reliably hold a steel dowel, so i dont think that would work.

If i print the steps in 4 parts (most likely), it would be less likely to slip... maybe?🤷‍♂️