Ball Whirling Device Drum Mixing and Maintenance
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing ball whirling devices for recreational games suffer from poor ball mixing due to a central rotating shaft, which obstructs mixing and affects winning probabilities, and require complex disassembly for maintenance when mechanical issues arise.
Innovation Solution
The device eliminates the central shaft, using outer shafts for drive and position sensing, with blades attached to the drum's inner face for radial mixing and allows direct access for pin replacement, ensuring equal ball mixing chances and simplified maintenance.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If a central rotating shaft is used to drive the drum, then the drum can be driven and positioned, but the central shaft obstructs ball mixing and creates mechanical complexity requiring disassembly for maintenance
Solution Approach 1:
The patent removes the central rotating shaft from the drum structure entirely. The drive system is extracted and relocated to external components: a drive pin engaged with a slot in the drum's peripheral wall, and position detection via a separate sensor reading from the drum's external surface. This extraction eliminates the mixing obstruction while maintaining drum drive and position sensing functions.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces an intermediary drive mechanism where a drive pin on the shaft engages with a slot in the drum's peripheral wall rather than direct central connection. This intermediary slot engagement allows power transmission while permitting the drum to rotate freely without central obstruction, and enables simple external access for pin replacement.
2Loss of information
If the basket is positioned at the uppermost point for display, then balls are visible to players, but balls on the sides have very few chances of falling into the basket, creating unfair winning probabilities
Solution Approach 1:
The patent makes the ball mixing blades dynamically adjustable in angle relative to the drum's rotational direction. The blades can be positioned at different angles to optimize mixing effectiveness at various drum positions, ensuring that balls from all locations (including side positions) have equal probability of entering the basket regardless of basket position. This dynamic adjustment compensates for the geometric disadvantage when the basket is at the uppermost display position.
3Device complexity
If pins linking the main shaft with the drive system are used for power transmission, then the drive system can be compact, but when pins break the drum must be disassembled for replacement, making maintenance difficult and time-consuming
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts the drive pin from an internal configuration where it would require drum disassembly for replacement. The drive pin is positioned in the drum's peripheral wall, accessible from the external surface. This allows the drive pin to remain compact and functional while enabling simple maintenance where the pin can be replaced by external access without disassembling the drum structure.
Data Source
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Figure 3~4
AI summary
The invention consists of eliminating the inner central shaft of the drum in order to allow a more homogenous mixing of the balls such that the chances of the balls being winning balls are not dependent on the position that they may occupy before the drum is rotated. To that end, the ball mixing blades (9) are integrally attached to the inner face of the structure of the drum. Not only does this structure allow mixing the balls better, but it also simplifies maintenance work on the device, in that it includes respective outer shafts (3) that are easily accessible without having to disassemble the drum in the event that the pin that links it with the mechanism for driving the rotation of the drum breaks.