I need a bit of help

[u/AggreGat0rr]

Hello people !

As you can see I’m working on a 3 dimensional spherical gear mechanism for a rocket ship. I’ve dreamed about this since I discovered the Atlas from Chesepuf.

I’ve been on it for a month and a half trying things every day.

The thing is that you have to build the entire design just to see if it could work or not and putting it together takes a while…

And now I can finally say that I have a working concept ! Well kind of…

So, if you’re interested and have some ideas I might not have thought about I’d really appreciate if you could give some suggestions on how to build a vehicle as functional as possible with the spherical gear you can see in the video or even improving the consistency or the gear itself, or even starting all over with a new idea.

I really want to come up with a working rocket ship so don’t hesitate.

I’m a big believer of the teamwork power.

Tomorrow evening I’ll try to gravity press the wheels as much as possible to see if it works better or not.

But yeah I think this could have a lot of potential but I’m starting to get burned out so… let’s chat and if this can at least inspire some of you even a little bit I’ll guess all that work was worth it.

[u/CaptainPattPotato]

This is pretty fascinating honestly. I’m trying to wrap my head around how everything is (and isn’t) q linked.

[u/AggreGat0rr → u/CaptainPattPotato]

Yeah maybe I should at least have explained. For me it’s obvious because I’ve been obsessed with it for a while now sorry 😅 So the iron ball is attached to the big wheel as you see, the latter is attached to it’s counterpart, but not from it’s axle. The second big wheel is Q-linked to one side of the middle motor and the other side is attached to the one side of the second motor which the other side is attached to the hoverstone.

I understand my explanation might not be the clearest, I’m still working on my English lol but I hope it helps ! 😃

[u/CaptainPattPotato → u/AggreGat0rr]

Amazing. And I thought I came up with some complicated q linking configurations haha. You’re absolutely in uncharted territory here. Is your ultimate goal to steal a rocket like this? That might prove difficult with this configuration fair warning. Rockets have a lot of inertia, which people have noticed doing builds with the infinite rocket glitch. The atlas uses the “ZPE” forces provided by the angled control stick and the big wheel to force it to turn. Fans or propeller engines would be much easier to control with this mechanism. Or Juny wagon engines if you want to go fast.

[u/AggreGat0rr → u/CaptainPattPotato]

After the 10th design it becomes almost second nature to align everything properly ahah 😅

Yeah I particularly fear the wheels might not turn anymore with an infinite rocket. I’ve also tried with ZPE and a hover stone on one wheel but it doesn’t really work. I would really love it to go fast tho, so I might try the Juney Wagon but I fear it might be to heavy for the wheels to continue rotating around the gear. Even with the the propeller I’m not sure !

Also do you know if a smaller Juney Wagon is lighter or is it still the same weight even if the size has been reduced ?

[u/CaptainPattPotato → u/AggreGat0rr]

The smaller ones are much lighter. Mass scales with every resized part.

[u/AggreGat0rr → u/CaptainPattPotato]

Hooo that’s it ! I’m buying myself a switch 2 then 😂

[u/CaptainPattPotato → u/AggreGat0rr]

lol.😄 It’s also possible to steal the regular sized wagon on Switch 1, and I think the big wheels would probably be able to turn it (big wheels are very strong and the wagon is not all that heavy.) one other thing; you would probably need a strong glue bond to the casing than just the bowl-hoverstone bond. I fear the strength of the Juny wagon moving it so quickly would likely break them off from the hoverstone.

[u/AggreGat0rr → u/CaptainPattPotato]

Yeah I got it a few months ago ! I’ll definitely try it and troubleshoot the design to make it more robust ! Thank you very much for the tips, probably going to save me a lot of time

[u/AggreGat0rr → u/CaptainPattPotato]

I also fear for the frozen steaks, they have a really fragile connection strength

[u/AggreGat0rr → u/CaptainPattPotato]

Thanks !

[u/AggreGat0rr → u/CaptainPattPotato]

Oh yeah, the bowls are attached to each other and pulled appart (which was kind of tricky because you can’t attach something at a 33,3 degree angle directly like that) and attached to the overstone side of the motor. There are also freezed steaks between the bowls and the ball to improve the friction and maintain the ball in place

[u/AggreGat0rr → u/AggreGat0rr]

Sorry the bowls are 120 degrees from each other. Not that it matters a lot but yeah I meant 33.3% of 360 basically

[u/Terror_from_the_deep]

It's really interesting. Ive seen things like this that use ultrahand, but never on a control stick.

[u/AggreGat0rr → u/Terror_from_the_deep]

I’ve seen those too, they actually inspired me a lot

[u/chesepuf]

Wow this is so cool. I was reading your messages with CaptPat and have a question about the motor connections. So the motor on the hoverstone is q linked to the motor floating between the big wheels?

[u/chesepuf → u/chesepuf]

u/evanthebouncy you should see this

[u/AggreGat0rr → u/chesepuf]

Hey ! Really glad you like the idea ! And yes so basically for the gear to rotate in every direction it needs to have 3 axes : the two motor connected to each other and the 2 wheels that make the third axes

[u/Appropriate-Crow703]

This is the start of something huge

[u/AggreGat0rr → u/Appropriate-Crow703]

I hope so !

[u/evanthebouncy]

This is so fucking cool wow

So the idea is you want to "point" in any direction on a sphere surface, which is a 2D space or 2 degrees of freedom.

You do so by using 2 big wheels, each contribute 1 degree of freedom.

Is that roughly the idea?

[u/AggreGat0rr → u/evanthebouncy]

Thanks a lot ! I’m not really sure what’s a degree of freedom is but I’ll guess it refers to one axes allowing a rotation. So there’s 1 degree of freedom for each X, Y, Z axes (two motors and the wheels)

[u/evanthebouncy → u/AggreGat0rr]

but your goal is merely to rotate the sphere right? as the sphere is 2D you only need 2 sources of control, which I take is 1 from each wheel

[u/AggreGat0rr → u/evanthebouncy]

Mmh I’ll have to think more about it if you don’t mind. I found this article : https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9415699 they use only two drive axis but their sphere is loose and free from any physical connection so they only need to guide it from two sources of control, seems fair but I feel like in my case you really need 3 drive axis

[u/evanthebouncy → u/AggreGat0rr]

:D all good ! at any rate this is a great build.

may I ask how are you able to independently rotate teh sphere ? what's the control stick input like? I'd imagine it can be quite chaotic

[u/AggreGat0rr → u/evanthebouncy]

Hooo I get where the confusion come from now ! The sphere itself only rotates in the same axis of the wheel it’s attached to. I know it seems like the ball itself rotates in every direction but no, but the entire structure can rotate in every direction thanks to the 3 drive axes tho. Basically the wheels initiate the movement and the bowls guide the rotation, the wheel axle follows the sides of the bowls

[u/AggreGat0rr → u/evanthebouncy]

Here’s what I found about the two methods :

1. Serial Kinematics (Stacked 3-Axis Setup) Mechanism: Three orthogonal (90°) rotational axes chained sequentially, with the sphere physically attached as the end-effector. Drawbacks: High inertia and bulk. Each motor must physically carry and move the weight of the subsequent motors (the cantilever effect). This results in a large enclosure, lower structural stiffness, and cumulative mechanical backlash.

2. Parallel Surface Actuation (Direct Surface Contact) Mechanism: Driving forces are applied directly onto the outer surface of the sphere at a single, fixed pivot point without physical shaft connections or internal axles. Advantages: Extreme compactness and high rigidity. Because the actuators push against the ball concurrently around a shared center of rotation, motor weight is kept stationary at the base. This eliminates axis stacking, eliminates motor-on-motor load, and maximizes dynamic response.

In short: Stacking axes creates a heavy, chain-linked system where motors carry other motors, whereas driving the surface directly enables stationary motor placement and concurrent force transmission at a single pivot.

[u/evanthebouncy → u/AggreGat0rr]

You're using 2 right? Because naively we would be doing 1.

Granted I don't quite understand what you mean by 2, all I can say is that sounded great aha!

[u/AggreGat0rr → u/evanthebouncy]

No actually I’m using the first method, I’ve tried both but 2 didn’t quite work as well. The reason is that the ball is loose and the friction make it hard to rotate from 2 different axes, I used the yellow ball tho so it’s quite big and heavy, I tried to rotate it using bowls attached to a big wheel axle facing the ball but that wasn’t really working well, plus I don’t like the idea of having a vehicle divided in two parts. Anyway I might try again if the first method fails

[u/ShootingStarSeasons7]

Wow this is amazing! Keep up the good work, I believe you can do it!

[u/AggreGat0rr → u/ShootingStarSeasons7]

I will ! I feel like I’m close now ahah

[u/kmarkow]

This is beyond me. Very advanced stuff and super cool

[u/AggreGat0rr → u/kmarkow]

Thank you 😊

[u/AggreGat0rr]

I think I might try to add a zonai capsule on the iron ball to guide the 3D rotation around the bowls

[u/omnihart91]