Thread: How to make a skeleton on a track?

Tweet

If you're looking for a smooth, easy, strong & cheap rail assembly, try garage door tracks and wheels. Your prop could be above or below the tracks. They're great.

I have looked for garage door track. Can you provide a source?

Here's what you were looking for Spinman. Hope that helps

Track: http://www.prodoorsupply.com/Vertica..._76_p/A185.htm

Rollers: http://www.amazon.com/10-2-Inch-Nylo.../dp/B004HIXBMK

I've always used Home Depot, Lowe's, etc.

I did something similar using a 7' rodless bimba cylinder. One of my home haunt videos on my personal (non-evilusions) youtube channel shows it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBs89...8&feature=plcp

what about a motor and a pulley mech.. almost like a converbelt (thats not spelt right)

^ That's pretty well how Scary Terry did his, more or less.

I remember seeing a project where someone built a scissor mechanism attached to drawer rollers. The scissor mechanism ran horizontally. The propulsion they used was with a door closer cylinder (a pneumatic cylinder would do a much better job.) The cylinder was placed on the lower part of the scissor mechanisms lower arm, which was attached to a drawer roller. Cylinder is activated, causing it to push the lower arm which rolls up towards the top scissor arm causing it to extend outward horizontally. There was video to this project and it is very fast. I wish I could find the link.

I did this with a linear slide. This one only goes about 2 feet but I do have some that go around 4/5 feet. Setup is simple by mounting the prop to the slide base, then add air. Super smooth and zero noise. If you use a heavy prop you may need to place 2 side by side then build a base that attaches to each slide. Movement can be slow or fast, add flow controls on either the rear or front of the slide depending on speed, most slides are double acting.

Sorry it took so long to get back to this. I got my butler-on-a-track prop out of the attic and put it all back together. The controller for the moving base was originally was one I made myself using a PIC but I just bought a motor control shield for an Arduino a few weeks ago and this was the perfect project to use that so I wrote the code for the Arduino and that shield.

You can download a .zip file with the Arduino code, library files for the motor controller and a list of all the major parts I used here.

I didn't want to hijack your thread so I created a new post in the "Tutorials" section here that shows a video of how I created the moving base:
Butler-on-a-track prop