I decided to take on the challenge of creating my own track system to create animation. You will note that this uses the concepts used by the Magnorail system referred to in Part 1 but is not an attempt to replicate the Magnorail system. As I don't have access to any Magnorail parts I designed my own parts, several of which appear to be quite different. I also don't know the dimensions of any of the Magnorail parts so I came up with my own dimensions.
I ordered a high-torque 12 volt DC motor from Amazon. The output shaft turns at 5 RPM. I then designed and 3D printed a drive mechanism to sit on top of the motor. Here are pictures of the drive mechanism:
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| motor mounted to underside of drive mechanism |
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| top side view |
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| with drive gears mounted (note hole the closest gear fits over the "D" gear shaft so it doesn't slip) |
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| same as above but with retainers pressed into holes |
Next I created 3D printed chain components which connect to each other and which have holes to fit round rare-earth magnets in a couple of places to move boats:
The track components look like this - each track piece is screwed to a sub-floor which which will reside underneath the styrene sheet "pond":
Here is a picture of the completed track, with the drive mechanism in place:
Here is a picture of the subfloor mounted underneath the pond cutout in the Free-mo module:
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| The subfloor is mounted with wingnuts to make it easy to remove the subfloor with the track in case adjustments or repairs are ever needed in the future. The motor is wired to a bridge rectifier which takes DCC current from the accessory buss running under the Free-mo module. |
Here is a top-side view of the styrene sheet. The beaver dam will be built to disguise the front edge:
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Here is a short video showing the boat moving (the rough brown circle painted on the surface is where the beaver lodge will be built):
I will not be sharing the design details or the STL 3D printer files, either for no cost or for a price
Next up......doing the scenery.