Shake Table V5

Tweaked 2/10/19 - Clarified dwgs, added customized supports to drive shaft - better than standard supports. Lay triangular support flat on table. These supports can be snapped off afterwards with pliers. Also please note: this is really tough little table but the drive shaft is prone to fatigue where the hex meets the round shaft - I have printed this in Bridge Nylon in my latest iteration - which although it is more flexible is probably also tougher.

Mark V upgrade 3/9/18.

The application: Students build towers from spaghetti and marshmallows then see if they can take the seismic forces from this little table. Upper table oscillates on 4 parallelogram arms, two of which are driven by a cranks. Cranks in turn are attached to a drive shaft with a 1/4" hexagon allowing it to be rotated by an electric screwdriver or cordless drill.

This upgrade adds proper bearings as plastic on plastic galls at high speed; replaces pivot pins with brass ones removing failures of locking pins and improves the rotating lock pins that hold the platen in place without the need for binder clips. I have added an exploded diagram to explain the layout and ease assembly. Bearings are readily available on line and not too expensive. Also dwgs of the brass parts are included. if you don't have a lathe to make these on you can use the dwgs to make the parts in plastic, just make plenty of spares for when they break.

You will probably have to run a 17/64" drill through most of the holes to open them up for the pivot pins - especially where the part lies on the 3D printer table.
You will need to superglue the brass parts together once assembled, making sure you don't get any on the plastic parts. Also superglue the boss and lock tabs together once fitted taking care not to get any between the boss and the top plate. After you have assembled the needle bearings, inner drive arms and drive shaft you can fit them onto the baseplate and fix them in place with the plumber blocks, again by carefully applying some superglue on the upward projections on the baseplate.

Parts list on exploded diagram says how many parts you need for each shaker table, however you need to add extra platens - suggest # of students /6 - this allows towers to be built off the shake table and loaded on for testing

I also downloaded the monkey at http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1185699/#files to add to the fun - the kids have to make a tower that keeps the monkey from falling off it when shaken. Monkey can be scaled to about 50-60% for this application.

Video of demonstration on an older variant of the design at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szCDBG8XrE0&spfreload=10