Model in the museum Amber Chamber, Kaliningrad Amber Combine
If you’re ever in Yantarny village in Kaliningrad region, I strongly recommend you to visit the Amber Chamber museum which is located next to the checkpoint of the amber plant. There are two halls and in one of them you can see this scale model which I was doing mechanisms for. While I was making the models, I stopped updating my channel for a bit as I was fully immersed into work and I didn’t have any time to make videos so I want to correct my mistakes. 0:00 - 0:29 Unfortunately I don’t have as many video files as I would like to have but anyway I’ll try to combine them all together so you could see the outcome of all this work. The scale model itself was made by the Gosmaket company for the amber plant. All the mechanisms that you can see here turning and moving were made by me, including the models themselves. 0:30 - 0:52 The models were made from scratch. Of course there are some imperfections on this scale model as it’s my first experience making mechanisms for such big scale models. I struggled with a couple of mechanisms and even now one of them - a train - still requires some attention and fixing. 0:52 - 1:13 Now you can see the process of mining and transportation of rock by trucks. Dump trucks move on magnetic leashes. This is what it looked like at the moment of creation. In fact such mechanisms require rather complicated adjustment. I adjust the distance from the magnet of the circuit itself to the magnet in the car. 1:13 - 1:37 And what is not less important, when the car is being placed on the scale model, the distance changes due to the fact that there’s a layer in the form of sand imitation. You have to do adjustment once again almost anew. 1:37 - 1:51 A bulldozer is also on a magnetic leash. Unlike dump trucks, it moves in a straight line, back and forth. Bulldozer tracks are made of plexiglass cut on a CNC machine. Sleeves are made of fishing line painted with acrylic paint. As you can see, dump truck bodies rise while unloading. One dump truck is loading, another one is unloading at the same moment and then they move according to their route and change their places. 1:52 - 2:22 And this is so-called “night mode” on the scale model. After the whole script is played, when all the machines and pipelines are on, all the lights in the houses turn on which also imitate life so they turn on and off chaotically. Lighting on all equipment is on as well as on quarries. It looks quite beautiful! But it’s only for testing as probably lights won’t be turned off in the hall. 2:22 - 2:53 And this is a multi-bucket mining excavator at Volter quarry. These excavators worked under the Germans. There are two multi-bucket excavators, a stacker which makes a rock dump, and electric locomotives with trolleys. The excavator is working, loading rock into the trolley and then the locomotive moves the next trolley, then another one and returns to its starting position. 2:58 - 3:26 The mechanisms on the scale model can be turned on separately or you can play the scenario where all the mechanisms turn on sequentially according to the guide’s narrative. Now the mining and transportation process is on. There’s a hydraulic excavator, two Volvo quarry dump trucks and a bulldozer. And those flashing lights you see are the pipeline imitation. Water flows to the quarry through them or is pumped out, also rock is transported to the place where amber can be mined from it. 3:26 - 4:01 And those big blue things with spinning reels are pumps which pump water and slurry. Slurry is a mixture of denser solids suspended in liquid which contains amber. 4:02 - 4:13 I haven’t fully shown you the process of construction of a walking excavator. This is what it looked like before it was placed onto the scale model. Here the bucket can be moved on a plane. Unfortunately the bucket can’t be moved on the surface of the scale model itself as it would have to get round some unevenness so the most natural movement was like that. 4:14 - 4:35 The bucket was printed on a 3D printer therefore it’s pretty light. We had to make it a bit heavier by adding a brass shackle. I think that the bucket movements turned out to be quite realistic. There are two similar excavators on the scale model. Each of them moves along its own trajectory according to its own algorithm. But as the booms of two excavators intersect, I had to take this into account on the quarry. So when the second excavator turns on, they start to give way to each other from time to time. 4:37 - 5:11 When the excavator is filling the bucket and at the same moment the second excavator is going along the arc in the zone where they can meet, the excavator is waiting for another one to finish its trajectory and only after that it starts turning its tower. 5:11 - 5:25
If you’re ever in Yantarny village in Kaliningrad region, I strongly recommend you to visit the Amber Chamber museum which is located next to the checkpoint of the amber plant. There are two halls and in one of them you can see this scale model which I was doing mechanisms for. While I was making the models, I stopped updating my channel for a bit as I was fully immersed into work and I didn’t have any time to make videos so I want to correct my mistakes. 0:00 - 0:29 Unfortunately I don’t have as many video files as I would like to have but anyway I’ll try to combine them all together so you could see the outcome of all this work. The scale model itself was made by the Gosmaket company for the amber plant. All the mechanisms that you can see here turning and moving were made by me, including the models themselves. 0:30 - 0:52 The models were made from scratch. Of course there are some imperfections on this scale model as it’s my first experience making mechanisms for such big scale models. I struggled with a couple of mechanisms and even now one of them - a train - still requires some attention and fixing. 0:52 - 1:13 Now you can see the process of mining and transportation of rock by trucks. Dump trucks move on magnetic leashes. This is what it looked like at the moment of creation. In fact such mechanisms require rather complicated adjustment. I adjust the distance from the magnet of the circuit itself to the magnet in the car. 1:13 - 1:37 And what is not less important, when the car is being placed on the scale model, the distance changes due to the fact that there’s a layer in the form of sand imitation. You have to do adjustment once again almost anew. 1:37 - 1:51 A bulldozer is also on a magnetic leash. Unlike dump trucks, it moves in a straight line, back and forth. Bulldozer tracks are made of plexiglass cut on a CNC machine. Sleeves are made of fishing line painted with acrylic paint. As you can see, dump truck bodies rise while unloading. One dump truck is loading, another one is unloading at the same moment and then they move according to their route and change their places. 1:52 - 2:22 And this is so-called “night mode” on the scale model. After the whole script is played, when all the machines and pipelines are on, all the lights in the houses turn on which also imitate life so they turn on and off chaotically. Lighting on all equipment is on as well as on quarries. It looks quite beautiful! But it’s only for testing as probably lights won’t be turned off in the hall. 2:22 - 2:53 And this is a multi-bucket mining excavator at Volter quarry. These excavators worked under the Germans. There are two multi-bucket excavators, a stacker which makes a rock dump, and electric locomotives with trolleys. The excavator is working, loading rock into the trolley and then the locomotive moves the next trolley, then another one and returns to its starting position. 2:58 - 3:26 The mechanisms on the scale model can be turned on separately or you can play the scenario where all the mechanisms turn on sequentially according to the guide’s narrative. Now the mining and transportation process is on. There’s a hydraulic excavator, two Volvo quarry dump trucks and a bulldozer. And those flashing lights you see are the pipeline imitation. Water flows to the quarry through them or is pumped out, also rock is transported to the place where amber can be mined from it. 3:26 - 4:01 And those big blue things with spinning reels are pumps which pump water and slurry. Slurry is a mixture of denser solids suspended in liquid which contains amber. 4:02 - 4:13 I haven’t fully shown you the process of construction of a walking excavator. This is what it looked like before it was placed onto the scale model. Here the bucket can be moved on a plane. Unfortunately the bucket can’t be moved on the surface of the scale model itself as it would have to get round some unevenness so the most natural movement was like that. 4:14 - 4:35 The bucket was printed on a 3D printer therefore it’s pretty light. We had to make it a bit heavier by adding a brass shackle. I think that the bucket movements turned out to be quite realistic. There are two similar excavators on the scale model. Each of them moves along its own trajectory according to its own algorithm. But as the booms of two excavators intersect, I had to take this into account on the quarry. So when the second excavator turns on, they start to give way to each other from time to time. 4:37 - 5:11 When the excavator is filling the bucket and at the same moment the second excavator is going along the arc in the zone where they can meet, the excavator is waiting for another one to finish its trajectory and only after that it starts turning its tower. 5:11 - 5:25