very detailed shot of all necessary steps. Thank you yery much!

min 8.28 noooooooooooooo ...good video thanks to share..im going make one to me

Nice video. I had seen another video on this site that did practically the same thing as what you are doing. I want to critic a bit as today I went out and bought the materials and attempted to do this myself. While I was somewhat successful there are a few things that didn't go well and I'll explain what they were. My questions are inter-dispersed. First off, the wire is 1/8" or 14 gauge steel. You can find it in your home improvement store in their picture hanging department. Do NOT by a wire rope. Straightening the wire requires a lot of force on the wire. You really need to fasten one end down and pull hard to do this. I used an Eye-Hook clamped to my table at the other end so That I could pull hard enough. Just be aware that you have to pull very hard, and that the wire gets HOT! When bending your rails and making your setup don't think that everything is going to look perfect. There will be waves in your track but so long as you use the correct measurements for you marble and trusses you should be good. I mentioned that I used a marble. They are 1/2" in diameter. For MOST of my track there will be a 1/4" gap between the two rails. At some points I might widen that gap for places where the marble will be moving very fast and turning. Probably only 1/8" at most. This will let the marble roll deeper in the track and reduce the chance of the marble flying off of a fast turn. Also, angling your turn will do pretty much the same thing. The next is making the trusses. The other video showed using a drill and a 1/2" bolt which did work for me but with problems. If you can do this by hand all the better. If you want to use a drill or electric screw driver you need to have a chuck that fits more than 1/2" bolt. I had an old drill that allowed me to insert the bolt and wire into the chuck. BUT, the drill spun too fast and made a mess out of about of foot of wire. So, I'll go with out using a drill. As for creating curves, I used PVC as well as what is shown here. A 2" and a 1 3/4" PVC joiner piece worked for the proper spacing. But here is a gotcha. My wire would not retain the shape. Just as coiled wire won't stay straight by simply pulling on it with your hands, it had a tendency to unwind. I'm not sure what I'm going to do here with this but I'll figure it out. Probably simply getting my wire close to the specs. that I want and soldering them will be just fine. Creating the trusses was harder than I thought it would be. I'm going to get some nice new wire cutters as mine are quite dull over 30-40 years of usage. Also, you want to make sure the cuts are nice and straight. If the wire is pointed it will have less surface to make contact with. Since the solder is what's holding this together that remark probably doesn't really matter. For my tests I just cut straight pieces and laid them across the track and soldered them. A lot easy but not as aesthetically pleasing. Before creating the trusses and soldering your track, use sand paper on your wire to clean it. Soldering: Use a flat-head iron. I used a pointed head at first and it made things just a bit more difficult. Using a pointed heating point doesn't allow you as much help smoothing out solder joints. Try not to get too much solder or your end up with a bead of solder that looks really bad. My soldering was a nightmare as I didn't have a nice system like he does. I had to hold the piece with one hand and solder with the other. A real no-no for good work but I was in a hurry to test every aspect of this out. Also, the type of solder that you use may play a very important piece of this. I used my old but true Archer( Think Radio Shack) that is close to 30 years old which was a "60/40" resin core solder. The other video recommended using a 95/5 Tin and Copper mixture. Even though I cleaned and fluxed the parts I had trouble getting a good contact. But eventual I did get a good solid connection. It may have been caused by too much resin as I used additional resin besides what was in the solder or because of the wrong type of solder. I'll be buying some 95/5 soon and try it out next week. Overall, this is a doable project that I'll continue to work on in the coming weeks. I've wanted to make one these since I was a kid some 50 years ago when I had a small one but never got around to it. I have been thinking about this for the past year with various ways of making one that was 1) easy, 2) Inexpensive, 3) Aesthetically pleasing to the eye. While I'm not keen on the amount of wobble in the track, this might be because of a different metal used. That would explain also why it was so easy to make curves without the wire to revert back to it's former pattern. Or that the posts weren't firmly planted. Nice job!! Edited for spelling and type-o's

@dmitche3

3 жыл бұрын

I mentioned that I had been thinking of doing this in other materials. I thought that I'd mention what they were and why they didn't work out. The first was bamboo. You can get 24 36" bamboo skewers at Walmart for $0.99! I thought that I would bend the bamboo. Well, my wife didn't like the idea of me setting up the equipment to steam the wood to bend it. Scratch #1. Ideas #2 and #3 (which I kept the wife in the dark on) was to us epoxy. The first was actually to buy 1/4" rubber tubing and fill the tubing the epoxy thus giving it strength and make the track that way. While doing this I thought, why use the tubing, just make clay molds and pour the epoxy into track molds. While others I'm sure will be good at this my epoxy days are behind me for now. When working with epoxies you need to be working in the proper temperatures. At 80-90 degrees F. the epoxy mixed well, hardened, and looked great. But since winter is coming and I'm restricted to the garage I poured my next batch at around 62-64F. I knew mixing the epoxy I was in trouble as it was cloudy with air bubbles. It never hardened. While it became a hard substance it bent quite easily. Since the epoxy was more mess than I wanted I decided to stop and that's when I found these videos using wire. And that's my story and I'm sticking to it!

@bitmachines

3 жыл бұрын

These are great comments. One of the parts that was trickier than expected were all of the connections between the rails. Soldering itself took some practice and then getting them held in the right place. I would also like a better solution for the support structure. With the wires firmly attached to the base it worked ok, but it seems like there could be better approaches there as well.

@dmitche3

3 жыл бұрын

@@bitmachines Thank you. I've been giving this some thought. I've been trying simply to use a horizontal bar across the tracks but again the soldering wasn't easy. I ordered some 26 gauge copper sheeting the other day. At first I wanted to make an "I" frame but I couldn't think of an easy way of making it. I needed to create some type of stamp in order to stamp the metal sheet. I gave up on that for the moment. I'm now just going to try using a square piece of copper to connect the two rails. I'll probably create another jib and tap down the center of the sheet so as not to interfere with the marble. On the ends, I am going to raise it up 1/8" so that there are sides on the rail. This will make a contact on both the sides and bottom of the wire and the copper sheet providing strength. As for m soldering, the resin core solder is causing me too many problems as the flux spreads all over the wire. I end up with a giant ball forming on the sides of the rail. I've tried apply flux to the area where I want the solder to flow but with the resin core it just made things worse. So, if my copper sheets give me a problem I'll stop my masochism and get the proper solder. :)

If you have access to a table saw. Instead of clamping the rail down, I used my table saw to put two 1/8" wide x 1/16" deep cuts the length of a board. My board is 30 inches long. Make sure the cuts are the proper width apart. The cuts hold the rail securely freeing your hands to solder and hold the piece being soldered.

@bitmachines

3 жыл бұрын

A board with a grove is a great idea and very simple! One of my other videos I 3d printed a form to help with the wire bending. And have toyed with the idea of making a wire bender, but that will take some doing. So simple solutions are good to know about.

@dmitche3

3 жыл бұрын

@@bitmachines I used my Dremmell to create a jib. My first attempt I didn't think and made the channels to hold the wire too deep. I couldn't use it to solder the wires together so I created a second one. Other things I've done is use my Dremmel as a grinder to not only remove the galvanization from the wire but to flatten the wires on the bottom and truss in order to make a better connection by having a bit more surface area. I've since stopped using my Dremmel as I was going through the cheap grinding discs about every 3 feet. I've gone to my drill and an aluminium-oxide grinding tool. Also, a friend suggested rather than the galvanized steel wire to use piano wire. I looked it up and it comes in 1/8th " and it can be very inexpensive.

Most people who make these, (including me) use specialized track clamps, two pieces of something, could be wood, or metal with two groves a tracks width apart, then you have a bolt in the middle and tighten a wing nut to clamp it

@bitmachines

3 жыл бұрын

That sounds very useful! I have another video where I am experimenting with 3d printed forms to create the bends, but it doesn't (yet!) have provisions for clamping or space to solder in the connections between rails.

Nice video, I'm trying this myself. And props to actually giving credit to Daniel de Bruin.

@bitmachines

3 жыл бұрын

Did it work?

Great video thx for sharing. What size ball are you using also, what's the wire thickness. I'd like to take up a hobby like that. Thx . Keep up the good work. Also what type of soldering iron are you using, or if would recommend another one. Thx.

@bitmachines

3 жыл бұрын

Thanks! There are links in the description with the specifics that I used here.

@garyshirinian

3 жыл бұрын

@@bitmachines thx for replying.

perfect video!! i'm "eating" all about... your's are the best. i'm trying using 14 gauge wire. what do you think about that wire... isn't it easier? greatings from Santa Fe city, Argentina.

@bitmachines

2 жыл бұрын

There's a tradeoff between wire thickness and rigidity. The other factor would be marble size. I'm sure you could make one work with 14 gauge wire.

@santafefolklorica

2 жыл бұрын

@@bitmachines thanks for your attention

Has anyone had this problem, or am I doing something wrong? I'm using galvanized 14ga wire. I straighten it out fine using a vise at one and my drill at the other end. Comes out nice and straight. Problem is, I can't bend it as it gets brittle, it'll just break, not bend. Anyone else? Everything works and bends if I use 12ga, but then again soldering is a chore.

@bitmachines

3 жыл бұрын

I had mine snap where it was chucked into the drill a few times, but never had it get brittle anywhere else. Have you tried twisting it less? I think there's a balance between getting it straight and maybe over twisting it which would weaken the metal in the wire.

@RETired-oc9xq

3 жыл бұрын

@@bitmachines Yea, mine snaps at the chuck sometime. I have tried less twisting it leaves the wire a little wavy, but bendable.

@bitmachines

3 жыл бұрын

That sounds similar to mine. I had to hand straighten a few. But very few of my runs really needed it perfectly straight.

Con que tipo de Halambre se usa para serlo

@bitmachines

3 жыл бұрын

It is 16 gauge steel wire. The link is in the description above.