The Kraken Fairground Ride
Built by Santiago Plicio in January 2008
The Kraken (a legendary giant sea monster, many armed cephalopod looking like an octopus or squid) is the name that I have given to my latest Meccano model of my own design, built in November 2007.
It is based on the well-known Octopus ride. So popular in funfairs for many years, this ride is fixed in a permanent 45-degree angle and rotates while the eight arms move in an upward/downward fashion and each of the eight cars spin freely with the rides movements.
The eight rotating arms and structure rest on top of a tower, built in a large and heavy bridge that can tilt up and down to bring the ride to a 45-degree angle as in the original Octopus. A low-voltage motor and gearing system located at the end of the platform runs at a very low speed to provide the power for this movement.
A second motor powers the arms so that they swing up and down and rotate in the opposite direction. This was my greatest challenge, and I built many systems which all failed. I was frustrated and almost gave up, but at last devised a totally new design that could be accommodated inside the tower and be powerful enough to provide the power for this movement.
A third motor fixed on the bridge will drive the large quadrant pinion to rotate the ride.
I did encounter more problems in the building of this model (mainly with designing the driving motors, gears, pinions etc.) than I did in the building of the Spider Rider or Rotovator models.