Velodrum - update 002
finally had some time to update on the 'thing'. velodrum has become a bit overwhelming nowadays. After designing and building the base for the tracks to be layd on I found myself literally having nightmares with the friction of its rotating axis and other transmission problems. Also the interface side has already showing its difficulties, only technical so far.
Nevertheless progress is being made.
I've already bought the rubber strip for the transmission belt system, I've cut half of its width and now fits perfectly the bicycle's wheel frame. Unfortunately the glue suggested by the shop seller isn't as efficient as it was referred and the two ends of the rubber strip get loose when stretching and pushing the belts resistance. solution 01? to do: build a flat piece of metal with some kind of teeth around the two connected rubber ends..
By building all the track base parts with wood I've ease my life a lot but i realized it as also brought some issues:
- rotating axis friction with its support. even sanding the ends of the axis and making then round didn't work that well. I realized it will need some bearings to ease and smooth its rotation..
It also crossed my mind that its metal balls noise might be a nice add to the sound captured as (hopefully) it will produce a constant sliding rhythm.
Thursday I managed to spend a couple of hours browsing car parts shops and mechanic shops and got 4 broken bearings but still functional (sort of..). I've also searched in some bike shops for used parts (which seems to be impossible in manhattan) and bought two cheap and smaller bearings for $1.5 each.
The broken bearings from the taxis seem to big and to hard to keep their parts together (thats what u get from trash?!), the bicycle ones have a good size and can fit the axis wood bar with some sanding and corner rounding. I bought a drill bit to cut out circles in the base supports and they fit perfectly.
-need to build some counter weight to the force of the rubber belt to keep it stretched from the bike's rear wheel to the track base. (no problems on this.. just time.)
- time.. of course it has become a problem already.. countdown!