Help figuring out my Pattern and Loft useage

shane_richardson795

https://cad.onshape.com/documents/f01a58bbd9bc57552505845d/w/b88d51aec4e03cba4cebab1d/e/1b5f7e08c84dacc4e5c257cb?renderMode=0&uiState=658f22060af0de3b844250fa

My goal is to get marbles dropped into the top via funnel to then be split 5 ways into the corresponding pipes.
So i want the Sweep to be patterned, but I cant get it to resolve. I have tried both part and feature patterns. I could do so earlier resolving as 5 different parts, then combining using Boolean, but this seemed not to work when I would try and Loft to connect the tube to the raceway; the red tube for example in my bottom photo wouldn't resolve.
Additionally, I'm not sure then how to most easily make the whole tube assembly hollow to give the marbles a way to roll. Shell seems like the way to go, but again it didnt like the geometry on the Sweep part...

robert_scott_jr_

Hell Shane. I played with your document and as I originally suspected the turns you desired would be too 'tight'. The walls of the pipes could not keep their shapes following the paths. I gave the sweeps more room to succeed by raising plane 2 which raised your original 6 faced part (part 2). Except for that, everything above the Shell feature is the same. Take a look at the document linked below to follow along.

- Scotty

https://cad.onshape.com/documents/72b1537612e7b32ae3941e1c/w/cfd841351844bc48d1ecb690/e/2d216f51ac9baba865895586

martin_kopplow

I made one sweep for only the center tube, cut it to 360/5° and patterned the resulting part. Also, I took care each end of the 5-star part was perpendicular to the centerline to facilitate sweeping a cirular tube (yours would have been elliptical). Then I told Onshape to take the long way home for the outmost tubes by sketching out at least part of the path, to make the curvature of the 3D fit spline used as the path less tight, and then sweeped the tube walls.

https://cad.onshape.com/documents/31ac225fbc094786c1d899da/w/fefc2f47aae72aba609428c8/e/386cee9c5d3d0159bb17aa03?renderMode=0&uiState=65919f8055fa733061d91b5e

(Only then I discovered the upper face of the 5 channels wasn't parallel with the channel's centerline. That's why the tubes don't perfectly hit the center of the channels.)

shane_richardson795

Thank you both! Both look like great solutions and are exactly what i was going for. This is resolved