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I'm trying to build a device that holds a rather heavy ball and I want to be able to control it's "movement" in the X and Y directions (they are horizontal as well as orthogonal).

My current configuration: enter image description here

The two black cylinders (X and Y) aren't floating, but I forgot to draw their support pillars. They are wrapped into a rubber band each, which both are attached to two differrent motors in order to make them rotate.

The support is just an attempt to not drop the ball and is placed "behind" it from our point of view.

I have 2 questions:

1) If only the X-motor runs, will there be such a great friction between the ball and the Y-rubber that this configuration won't work?

2) Do you have any other ideas where the motion will come from external motors and rubber bans?

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I'm afraid that this is an engineering problem---or even just a tinkering task---rather than a physics problem which probably accounts for the limited interest and the downvote. In any case I am at a loss to say what you actual mean to achieve. Do you desire to translate the ball? To get it to rotate in place? Both? If translation how far do you have to be able to more it? In either case, how heavy is heavy? What tools are materials do you have access to? And so on... – dmckee♦ Jul 29 '12 at 3:27

closed as off topic by Qmechanic♦, Kostya, David Zaslavsky♦ Sep 3 '12 at 18:33

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