Shake it! Shake it!

[Leverettrailfan]

Okay, okay, let me clarify on my title for this post.
As oft happens, I made another visit to the town dump. Those already in the know, are well aware that unlike your average consumer who brings things to the dump, and leaves empty handed, I tend to do the opposite.

Today was fairly slim pickings in the realm of 'I could use this/this is too interesting for me to leave behind', but as luck would have it, something rather useful(?) appeared. A person came by with a bag of what they described as 'electronics' which was just going to be dumped. I decided that I wanted to peek through the bag before it was pitched.
There were two broken video game controllers- at least, one very obviously broken one and one that was intact but looking rather long in the tooth. Inside the broken one I found two motors with counterweights on the armature shaft- from experience visiting friends and cousins, and being invited to play video games with them, I realized I knew exactly what these were for- I guess some games have gameplay trigger your controller to vibrate. Anyhow, I instantly hatched a plan...

You see, I just recently put my 456 coal ramp back into one piece, and sorted out a working 3456 hopper (out of a shell I picked up years ago, and some trucks and a 'parts' car I had bought this summer). But I found that (unsurprisingly) the loads I would put in the hopper just didn't like to unload very well. The centre of the load would dump quite promptly, but the ends just didn't want to budge. And the vibrations from the electromagnet only helped so much- trying to get a hopper to fully unload was ending up with mediocre results and a rather hot electromagnet. 

I needed some way of creating the needed vibration to help shake loose that remaining load in the hopper car. 
That's where these motors come in. My plan is to attempt to mount them to my ramp somehow, and wire them up so that when you press the button to unload the car, the motor(s) kick into action as well. And in theory, the rest of the load will shake loose- I'm not exactly expecting a perfect unloading in 5 seconds flat, but it should at least get more of the load out of the car before I need to give the ramp some time to cool down.
These are what the motors look like:

(not my picture).
It looks like you can buy these seperately, so if it turns out they're a good solution, you won't have to go tearing into a perfectly good controller to get one! Note there's a smaller and a larger weight- I'm curious to see which is most effective with various applications I may have for them.

Stay tuned for more developments (though they may be slow in coming, with how busy my weeks have been lately).

-Ellie

[Flintlock76]

With those half-weights on the armatures I can see where the vibration comes from.

Good luck!

[Leverettrailfan]

Thanks Flintlock! I may need it!

Haven't been at my best today, but I just tested the motors out to see what they could do. I'm feeling way more confident in their abilities now, they're pretty potent. I tried 'test-fitting' the motor in a few spots on the ramp. I just kinda held it in a few possible positions to see what looked like a good possibility. This is the position I'm currently favoring:

It's just past the uncoupling magnet, between it and the unloading magnet. My idea is to make some shims that will clamp the motor between the rails, and at a suitable height so that the rollingstock won't collide with it.
I'll have to check to see what kinds of materials I might have that I can use. This one isn't going to happen overnight, but so far it doesn't seem impossible to get it done.