The AXIS 4D Coaster Model Construction Forum

[christianscoasters]

^It's not as easy as it sounds.

[Giovanolafan]

Meh It would be hard but it would be cool.

[Jack Rimer]

It would slow the train down too much.

[Ccron10]

I was going to post this up a couple days ago, but I never got around to it.

 

This is a view of the cars. There will be no side wheels because of space and the seats are going to hang down along the sides of the cars. That light blueish bar is the track, but it's not the actual color of the track.

 

Speaking of seats, that what we plan on designing tonight. Stay Tuned.

The front part of the car rotates from side to side.

[Vffreak07]

that's awesome. Any update on the actual thing?

[Jack Rimer]

You have to have some kind of guide wheels or it won't work. Do you mean it won't have side wheels or you just aren't showing them? Are the wheels running on axles? What are they made of?

[Ccron10]

We've actually changed our mind about the guide wheels and made some small modifications to the station to do this. There's going to be a bracket attached to each wheel assembly where a 3/8" plastic wheel will be attached. There will be pins running through each of the wheels attaching to the brackets.

 

We hope to start of donig the arms, and seats tomorrow night.

[Ccron10]

BIG NEWS!

The seats have been attached to the car! The seats are similar to Intamin's Accelarator coaster cars. The restraints are also going to be similar too, maybe with a black or red color. The cars kinda look like a floorless Euro-Fighter. The cars should be done soon. Stay tuned!

[Jack Rimer]

The model cars will be done soon? Or the computer rendering will be done soon?

[Ccron10]

The computer rendering for the cars will be done soon. I still need to add a chain dog, restraints, and a connector to the 2nd car which is going to be the same as the first car.

 

The project site has been updated.

[Jack Rimer]

I'm afraid this design may not be efficient enough to complete the course you have planned. Wheels running on axles will be more like Knex in terms of efficiency. You would need a HUGE lift hill to have it make it around. If you make a small "prototype" track it may be fine, but the whole ride is a bit too ambitious for these trains.

[Ccron10]

What if I made the lift a foot higher and had nothing on the ride higher than 2 feet? Would adding a little weight help?

 

If it means creating a shorter and (or) lower layout, I'll do it.

[kraken613]

Lookin good!

[Jack Rimer]

What if I made the lift a foot higher and had nothing on the ride higher than 2 feet? Would adding a little weight help?

 

If it means creating a shorter and (or) lower layout, I'll do it.

 

Everything on the model relies on the efficiency of the wheels. Adding weight will only slow it down more and require more supports. Making the lift one foot taller still won't allow it to complete the elaborate course you have planned. I would make a smaller, very simple design to showcase the engineering effort you put into it and don't get bogged down with a big layout. Once again, forget all the meaningless details like the color of the ride, the station, computer renderings, and such. All of that means NOTHING if it doesn't even work. Get it working first, then worry about all the details. You still have a long road ahead and you need to get it done in the timeframe set forth by your teacher.

[Ccron10]

I'll try to configure a new shorter and simpler layout, but I still want to try at making it unique and areobatic. To do this I'm thinking of keeping the existing lift, but making nothing on the newer layout above 1 ft and also keeping the ride short. I don't plan on adding any loops and tall hills, just a low zero-g-roll or two and a few small over banked turns similar to the ones on Maverick, but lower.

[TheBannedKid]

I don't think you understand. You don't just design something on the computer and build it and expect it to work. You need experience in physical testing. If you had some testing already done then maybe people would actually follow this model. But you haven't tested anything!

 

I mean build a U-shaped section of track and drop a test train down and let it valley. The more it goes back and forth the better. The CoasterDynamix system does so about 30 time from 3ft up and is very efficient. From there you can also judge how high the next element could be. Just build a series of hills to see basically what height each element in your final layout. Just remember that an inversion will take more energy/speed from the train than a hill.

 

Also, with these designs that you are making do you really expect to construct them with close tolerances? It gets hard to construct anything at this size. I'm assuming you will use bearings for wheels, well if the axles aren't a perfect fit, or if the wheels slide linearly, or if the axle isn't stable then you will lose a lot of efficiency. I suggest just modifying available products, like the Knex trains. That is unless you have access to precise tools, and I don't mean drills or saws I mean a mill or lathe.

 

All in all you just seem way too ambitious. You seem to be focused way too much on design and not enough on construction. This is not No Limits, Knex, Lego, or CoasterDynamix...its much more difficult. You need to work on analysis of every part of this project, and test everything many times before even assuming it will work. You have a lot of work ahead of you and I have no idea if you can finish. I don't want to sound mean but so far you haven't proven that you can do it.

[Mr.Six]

TJ is right. ^

For the 8th grade science fair I built a working model of Superman- The Escape. Ran off of two car batterys and a lot of electro-magnets. In the beginning I wanted to animate it out...pointless really as time went on. There are SO many factors that you can't think of until they happen, and the process of trial and error , correctness is best when its applied physically. Trust me, I know its cool to do layouts, blueprints and everything. Although to be quite honest, I'd advice you work backwards in this project. Do some physical testing first, wheel to track comparison, weight, etc. Then go onto the computer if you really want to and animate it out using CAD, No Limits, what have you. I hope you don't think that I'm trying to damper your project, I'm just giving you some advice from someone who's 'been there' before.

 

And after you do everything right, its going to go wrong.

My project constantly broke down, and wasn't operational for the science fair...it wasn't until a year or so after that I decided to go back to work on it and finally fixed it to the point of reducing explosions!

 

_six

[Eric_Smith]

^Can you post some pics of that please, it sounds really cool!!!

[kraken613]

Yeah post pictures it does sound cool!

[DATman]

My project constantly broke down, and wasn't operational for the science fair...it wasn't until a year or so after that I decided to go back to work on it and finally fixed it to the point of reducing explosions!

 

Then it was perfect!

[Ccron10]

I understand what you guys are trying to tell me. But the answer is that I DON'T have the layout fully designed (rendered yet). I do, however, have the cars fully designed and are ready to be physically built. Here's a few numbers to throw out there to you guys.

 

Overall train length: 8.18 inches

 

Length of one car (consists of 2 rows): 3.55 inches

 

Height of one car (from lower wheel to the top of the seat): 3.09 inches

 

Total car width (2 seats per row): 3.50 inches

 

Wheel statistics:

 

Top: .50 inch radius .13 wide

 

Side wheel: .38 inch radius .13 wide

 

Bottom: .25 inch radius .13 wide

 

(these are rounded answers)

 

The wheels are going to be made out of steel rod and each wheel will have a .06 diameter hole for pins.

 

Last night I did drawings of the whole car and some of the individual parts of the car. Tonight I hope to finish drafting the parts and to start work on building them.

 

For the prototype track, I need to create saddles to connect the spine of the track to connect to the supports, add color to the spine and then create the crossmembers. Following that is attaching them to the prototype, then painting and attaching the track.

[Ccron10]

All computer rendering for the coaster trains is completed. The only thing that needs to be rendered is the layout which will be rendered when the prototype testing is completed.

 

Also, just make things clear, an official layout has NOT been designed yet and when it is it will be SHORT, 3 ft in height, and will be unique as in layout and loop wise; the height will not be anywhere near the height of the lift. I do have to admit that I did make the mistake of designing the layout and not concentraiting on the prototype, which costed me a lot of time, but I will catch up and plan of finishing the official layout even if it isn't done by my Fall 2008 deadline.

[jamjar]

i've been following this since last year and all i can say is wow

I really hope this works out for you

[Ccron10]

It's been awhile since I last posted a new picture update, so here are is the latest.

 

The trains are slowly, but surely taking their shape. I had to make a few small measurement changes to the diameter of the frame. The bracket to attach the top wheels has been made. We've also created the saddles to attach the track to the supports tonight and we could have the spine attached by at least Friday.

 

On to the pictures!

Front or back view of the car. More soon.

AN overall view of one of the train cars so far.

The seat and restraint blueprints.

Page one of the measurements for the parts on the train.

The train blueprints.

These are going to be the arms that are going to hold the seats.I will need to make an angled cut to do this.

The frames for the train. A pin will be drilled into the centers so they will be able to pivot.

[coasterguy4]

Finally, the trains! Lookin' good!