openDog is back doing some mapping with ROS next week, Patrons and KZfaq Channel Members have it already!

It's 100% going to work, it's called an olds elevator thank you Tom Scott!

I remember seeing a grain farmer using this same method. If you didn't know, grain when it's powdered or freefloating is SUPER explosive and flammable. Turns out this design prevents air from building up in the screw, not only making the flammability problem go away, but also making the screw more efficient overall (Because the entire screw is filled with grain). There are pros and cons to the design, but it's interesting to do experiments like this and see what happens :) Edit: Just watched more of the video. That Tom scott one is the EXACT one I was talking about!

The tube turning is useful but the bottom feed turning is the most critical feature

"If you think you know, put your comment below" +1 to the list of viewers who've seen Tom Scott's episode. ;)

If I had a dollar for every time James says "lazy susan"

Totally should design the top part to feed back into the hopper and have yourself a good piece of kinetic art like a water fountain type thing

I'd seen the other video so I guess I'd cheated by knowing the answer? Very cool demonstration, and if you had the top chute eject back into the basin then you could leave it running continuously at a show or something.

That’s actually a great fluid dynamics demonstration! Notice how the elevator loses efficiency as the “fluid” (the bulk ping-pong balls) around the inlet starts to move along with the scooper. James uses his hands as baffles, but fixed baffles inside the sump would improve the efficiency by a great deal.

It does, Tom Scott did a video about it.

"What we need is more balls" Heh.

Now imagine the screw turns too, but in opposite direction. Wouldnt that be even faster?

Yes it does work, saw on Tom Scott's channel.

Just waiting for hasbro or fishersprice to steal this

This gives me a feling that You Have a new project in mind.

me in the beginning : What no of course not Me at the end: sir, it seems you've used DECEPTION

suggestion for a follow-up: the same screw and tube, but the “obvious” way with the screw turning instead. What would you have to do differently to get the balls to lifr at the same rate.

I would love to see the upper chute feed the balls back into the hopper at the bottom, making a self-feeding machine once you get it started.

I havne't seen anyone 3d print stuff so professionally looking and with such volume

I liked how you narrated and built it as if winging it as you go without a plan, and everything admirably just fitting and ending up working together. Literally build as you go. Well done!

It works with enough friction with the medium being transported or it’ll be highly inefficient. Edit: The sump added later in the video acts as the screw in this case, with less screw threads so to speak, which uses the other balls as the delivery

It's fascinating that in the thousands of years since Archimedes it took an Australian in 2009 to figure out you can spin the cylinder.

Great stuff. Was hilarious seeing your test apparatus keep getting more and more involved! :D Zero resale value, though :D Keep up the awesome content. Looking forward to seeing your 'great ball contraption'...

just add a thin vertical extrusion on the internal circumference of the tube and it will push the balls physically, preventing them from rolling back down

Was thinking the whole time that it is quite similar to a lego GBC, when you showed it at the end I was so happy! 😂 You will definitely enjoy making it, I personally build lego GBC modules and it is so enjoyable to try to solve the challenges involved with creating them.

Great project, just for the new year. Thanks for sharing you experience in this time🎆👍😀

Dear KZfaq, Why did you recommend this video for me? I'm fascinated and grateful for the recommendation

3d Fuel ROCKS. The pla-pro is insanely good.

You might have let the “catcher” at the top feed the balls into the reservoir and it would go and go and go and...

Reminds me of the german based rollercoaster "Euro Mir" with its special lifthill. Nice to Ride!

I love 3d printing because you can just make cool and random stuff like this

*pff* look at this guy... his videos are amazing! Thank you james bruton for making these educational, inspiring and fascinating videos! ❤👍

You should have had your "output" at the top feeding back into the tray at the bottom, that way you wouldn't have had to keep refilling it yourself!

Olds Elevator, made in what is now a museum(I believe) in the city I live in.

I'd forgotten I'd seen the Tom Scott video but my initial reaction was "well if the screw turns and it works, then yeah, turning the housing instead would also work. Because which one's moving is relative."

I'm pretty sure my grandma gave me a toy when I was a kid that did something similar to this. I remember being a little fascinated that the screw didn't move.

While it doesn't seem like it, this was invented so recently that Mr Olds still holds a patent, so if anybody's thinking of incorporating a mechanism like this into anything you sell watch out. With either this style or a conventional screw conveyor, when it's perfectly vertical it's hard to deal with free rolling material like ping pong balls or ball bearings, ideally you want something that would sit still if you placed it on a ramp the same angle as your screw. it's the introduction of new material under pressure at the bottom that's pushing everything up, the screw just supports the weight of the material already on its way up the tube, because otherwise you'd have to work against the weight of the entire column of material to keep those scoops moving.

im gonna say itll work just because everything functions relatively to each other and who cares if its the tube rotating or the screw

For a school project in grade 4??? 5??? I made an Archimedes screw with PVC pipes and some tubing to make the screw part, and it actually worked. I'm pretty sure I got an A+

*stares hungrily in hippo

Your gonna get much better results if you tilt the screw and tube even just a little.

Wintergarten " I'm building a musical marble machine " James "hold my beer"

youtube subtitles: [applause] the video: balls moving up the screw

7:48 This is probably how an ice cream maker work. When it starts to harden only then it gets pushed up. Please make an ice cream maker video James :)

Whel yes it's simple physics turning the screw or tube is ultimately the same thing in perspective of the thing tour trying to lift up.

The LEGO Great Ball Contraption community has been using a similar mekanism for just shy of ten years; it has a stationary screw on the outside and a rotating column with vertical bars on it on the inside. It's known as a 'Spiral Lift module'.

The contact angle between the screw flank and the balls (relatively to the pipe surface) is important. I think it would raise the effectiveness if the tangent at the contact point tend to line up with the pipe axis (30° for example, instead of 70° here?). this way will the driving force at the contact point be higher.

Love the "simpler" videos James!

My answer to question at the begining: Definitely yes, it turns really fast.

I've seen the Tom Scott video on this so I'm going to go with yes

I leave this under every video I watched, it helps the algorithm.

My favorite. Please do more like these.

Thank you so so so so so so so so so so so so so so much for being one of the few people to realize that an STL on it's own isn't that useful.

Wow, you have some balls to do that!

Depends your tolerances and what you're moving on if it would work or not

This gives new meaning to, No screwing around.

I never knew that it would be possible for one to screw around with ones balls and be so productive about it.

This is a crude version of an Olds Elevator

Ball contraption plus engineering lessons. I like it!

“Will rotating the tube make it work?” rotating screw compressors: “Am I a joke to you?”

So the thing stopping this design from being extra efficient is that there's no groove on the tube for the balls to slot into. If the balls could only slide vertically upwards along the track, then the screw would provide the upwards force as it spun.

Aah thanks for finishing the video with the Tom Scott clip.. I had paused the video to search for it since I remembered seeing some video about it.. But I thought it was Smarter Every Day talking about grain bins.. But nope.

It would be cool if there was a larger tube on the outside, so they all fall back down and start over. And then use a way more ping pong balls.

Well, looking at it from the ball's perspective, all that would matter is the relative motion between the screw and the tube wall, so it's going to work just fine regardless of which one is moving from our reference frame.

You could have probably figured this out with a simulation or with basic math, but your construction efforts are quite impressive.

Well, this is half a screw drive and half an impeller drive. A significant part of the motive force is provided by the pressure caused by the impeller at the bottom drawing material into the screw. The screw provides a low-angle path which reduces gravitational influence on the material. The material is also aided by the wall to move around the screw. A pretty neat design in all.

"There's quite a few advantages," inserts main problem with silos. Yet is still not used in silos. :P I'm guessing the cost is prohibitive, and people prefer to risk the explosions. ;)

I'm not a rocket scientist, but here's my theory: The balls are spun and gain energy. They are moved IN and so as with the conservation of angular (something) they will move faster. Repeat as the next one comes in behind. Also, friction from the outside all and the ball will make the ball move "forward" and thus up. Oh, and I love your toys behind you.

It should take some effort to get the first ball in, and I don't know if one ball could easily make it up the screw. However, once the tube is seeded, turning the tube knocks the balls around in a way that simultaneously has them pushing against each other, pushing against the wall of the screw and the wall of the tube, and the floor of the screw. This means the balls will be pushed to roll between the screw wall and the tube wall, and the incline of the floor will cause this rolling to be uphill. This will be helped by the balls pushing from behind, or at least helping to prevent backsliding once a critical mass of balls within the tube is obtained. In short, relative to the frame of reference of the balls, it should be essentially identical for the screw to turn, or for the tube to turn because the same forces are exerted on the balls in either case.

You should put stripes on the screw to show its stationary, might puzzle some onlooker's who dont immediately see the tube spinning.

I would love to see you take some of the mechanisms from "507 mechanical movements" and 3D print them. There are several accounts that have animated the CAD but it would be great to see them in action. I would pay to have those especially if they were parametric or scalable

Now I am wondering if this could be made flexible, similarly to flexible shafts in sleeves, making "active pipelines" to transport small grain materials and fluids. Also, what if the design was reversed, so that inner core was smooth and cylindrical, and the spiral ridge (path) was attached to outer wall? For my former idea, that would mean using almost every part of existing flexible shafts, replacing only the sleeve and adding side ports for transported material at endpoints.

me: reads title also me: its the tube around it

You surely have balls for that design

awesome video James !

The scoops are the key addition, as they force the material into the system. The friction with the sidewall does also help, but it's mostly about the scoops.

James, what a load of balls mate!

It could work, but a couple of factors are can have a significant negative effect. 1) Obviously, nothing is going to happen unless the spin of the outer tube causes the ping pong balls to spin. Let's call the rotation of the tube (s1) and the induced spin that of a given ping ping ball (s2). The ratio c1 = s2/s1 is going to be between 0 and 1. 2) If the ping pong balls are induced to spin, and there is no slip between the balls and the ramp, the balls will climb up the ramp. But there is going to be slip between the two, so the efficiency c2 is again going to be somewhere between 0 and 1.

I was surprised that the "Olds Elevator" works, but since it seems to rely to some degree on friction, I can't imagine it is very energy efficient. You could elevate grain by any number of inefficient means, but I'm not sure why you wouldn't choose a more efficient one.

Great to hear more engineering concept stuff on the way. My most recent project has been on trying to get as many different actuators going off a single motor. Been a really fun design challenge just to get the motion down. Still going on the design though to turn it into something that is actually printable/assemblable

I think that if there are no more balls in the reservoir, the "pump" will stop pumping. I also think this does not count as an Archimedes screw. But this is a very nice feature for something like a marble machine that uses ping-pong balls. In an Archimedes screw pump, the medium is pumped up due to the fact that is is trapped in a small pocket where the medium cannot flow back down again because the screw is angled. This system uses a combination of balls being pushed up because of the force of the balls entering the scoops combined with a bit of friction from the tube on the balls. This only works while the balls are light enough and have enough friction. This will not work with tennis balls or glass marbles.

All these years on and you still have the trusty old Taz 3d printer 👍 keep up the great work buddy 👌

The only reason I knew this before the video is because it's a surprisingly recent innovation in moving grain around without causing explosions. It's also great because driving the outside is mechanically more simple than driving the shaft. Just put some gear-teeth on it.

Begining video: I think it can work if the walls are pressed up enough to touch the balls. End video: I knew it would work.

Well, the catcher part at the bottom pushes the balls in and the balls push each other up. So the usefulness is limited it wouldn't work with water, or grains. Also I'm not sure if it counts as an Archimedes screw, which is always at an angle and carries water/grains up in pockets. (Water just flows away, and the grains friction would be too much beyond some point) It's a helix on which balls are pushed up.

Really nice build. Since it's demonstrative, a clear catch and channel/tube that returns the balls to the feed would've been a nice touch, saving you the hassle of reloading.

James meets GBC? I thought Christmas came only once a year!

you should 3D print a final slide so the ping pong balls drop back into the base - for fun make it look like a helter skelter :)

Awesome project

This behaviour is well known. Many applications already exists - elicoidal pump to pump up water (just replace the small balls with water) -continuous flow turbocharged engines (ex Mercedes Kompressor)

I’ve seen something like this made in LEGO ball contraptions where they would go up the screw being pushing by sticks

As an individual piece you could just attach a slide to the top catcher to feed the bottom but if it is going to be part of a larger system than that works to. Can't wait to see what you come up with.

I think it'd be neat to have a desk toy of a miniaturized version of this that fed the balls back into the resevoir.

For the final slide part I would have made it to where it loops back around to the bucket with the balls and make it like a infinite loop

It’s like an automated paintball hopper.

Some vertical stripes on the yellow screw would make the illusion far more effective.

Had a feeling this type of screw was already in use in either farming or tunnel digging, looking at other comments it turns out my guess was correct! Slight confidence boost: gotten.

With the ball feed in scoop and the weight of the ball supply, you don't even need the screw in the tube. A simple tube fed from the scoops would do the same thing if it had a sloping entrance to reduce the entry resistance.

Couldn’t you make the ping pong balls fall back into the area feeding the balls like an endless loop kinda thing

13:30 It works because they spin isn't explaining anything. The reason they spin (relative to the screw) is because of mostly 3 forces: 1. The opening at the bottom which are inclined and especially with the pressure if all the balls in the basket, actually strongly push all the other balls up. If instead you had a flat opening, the whole thing wouldn't work. 2. Friction of balls against acrylic cylinder, helping a lot to makes them spin 3. Pressure equilibrium: It'd work with water as well and there it's easier to understand that you'd get the balls in the basket and in the tube to be at the same level (supposing there are no frictions or you just make the whole thing shape to achieve the same) Note that the Archimedes' screw that you referenced in the beginning only works because it's inclined. This mean that due to gravity even stopping it would keep most of the water in the tube. It'd only work vertically with a LOT more speed. This is important because turning an inclined tube isn't the same here. In you turn the tube of an Archimedes screw, without turning the gravity vector (Earth), then you only have the friction of the cylinder. Supposing a perfect screw and cylinder, it would actually not work anymore.