How to make a ball bearing rollercoaster

Step 4: Track making basics

 Now you have a jig and plenty of straight wire you can start making some track.

It is best to start out with a few straights as prototypes before thinking about layout.

Place two straight sections of wire in the jig and cut some short 'sleepers' that you will need solder on to the tracks.

You will need to apply quite a lot of heat to this thick copper so we modified the end of our soldering iron for maximum heat transfer. 

You will need to make sure that you don't get any solder onto the surface of the tracks that will touch the ball bearing as it rolls. Again, practice here will help.

Once you have soldered your first track sleeper, slide the track up and solder your next sleeper on. Distances between each sleeper can be experimented with, a gap of ~5-8cm worked for us.

Once you have mastered the art of making track pieces, you can move on to corners and tricks!

Comments

[boudreau-inventor2]

What would you suggest using instead of the wire you used?

[sfong]

I have tried to solder the wires, and have had no luck.  My soldering iron is electric.  Do I need to use a gas like butane?  Can you give more detail on your equipment and methods?

[sfong]

Thanks for the responses.  BTW:  I love the method for straightening the 12 gauge copper.  It works amazingly well.  It also seems to stiffen the copper.  I just used a vice to clamp one end in, then mounted the drill to the other end.

[JamJarCollective]

 HI there, a good hot iron is the key - 40w recommended for an electric type. The modified (filed down) tip makes quite a difference as there is more surface area of hot iron touching the copper. 

Also try to apply quite a bit of pressure with the soldering iron - pressing hard should help to transfer the heat.

As maxwelltub says flux can also help although we didn't use any - just flux cored solder.

Good luck and stick with it! Let us know how you get on.

[maxwelltub]

There needs to be a lot of heat for this to work well, the author used a modified soldering iron to distribute the heat over the track spacer. Its possible that your soldering iron is too low of a wattage. Im just about finished with mine and i can tell you that a butane hobby torch and alligator clips is the way to go. Use a little soldering flux to paint the joint before you apply heat. It will help wick the solder in between the wires. It takes practice. i almost gave up on mine as being a lost cause but after i was able to walk away from it for little while i was able to finish it off and its looking really excellent. just finishing the ball lifter. Also i used a piece of shrink tubing to connect the rod to the motor, i found it easier for me then rapping the wire around the motors axial. stick with it.  

[JamJarCollective]

 Great tips, thanks for helping others out.

Also well done for sticking it out, always nice to have a few half done things lying about to be able to crack on with!

Nice idea for the shrink tube / motor connection. it would be cool to see some pictures of your ball run, post them up or send them over if you're up for it.

[karnold70]

Putting a daub of resin on the spesific site of the solder joint would help the solder stay in place (not go onto the top of the rail) This is awesome, and I'm looking forward to working on it.

[backlash]

 if you get solder on the topside if you have a dremel tool you can slowly grind some of it off, it will peel off some of the solder quickly before it grinds into the stiffer copper.