I was scanning Google images and came across some rolling ball sculpture (RBS) pictures that show a very interesting track design. It is the track itself that interests me because of its mechanical/industrial look.

This is not my work…

 

image

Flat Aluminum Track

The track in these pictures appears to be aluminum. It would be very easy to bend and it is held together with nuts and bolts.

Here’s the Chester Family website where I got the pictures. Thanks to Mark for letting me copy a few of them.

Mark did a nice job on this sculpture. It is certainly larger than any that I’ve made, and the drilling and bolting looks like it would have been as much work as brazing a steel sculpture. Since nothing is heated, it maintains its original color, which is a nice benefit from this type of work. Again, this is not my work.

image

Beautiful Curviness

I may incorporate this type of track, using 16GA steel sheet metal, at the bottom of my current work-in-progress. The piece that I’m building now will have a motorized lift, seen here as a mechanical simulation, and this industrial look might be interesting for the bottom half of it. At a minimum, the final section of track that holds the balls for the lift would be made of sheet metal that is also part of the lift mechanism frame.

I have one part partially made for the lift mechanism. There are a total of nine links, four of which have three connectors. I’ll post some pictures when I get some more parts made, but as usual, my two computer programming jobs make it hard to have time for garage work.