Week 7

Goals of Week 7:

• Test all machines working at the same time

Tasks Performed:

This week's lab consisted entirely of the setup of machines and a run through of all the machines.  Many problems that weren't considered were faced during this lab.  The most notable one was set up time.  The time it took to set up all the machines took around an hour.  Some problems were certain groups machines not fitting and/or going over their boundaries.  One group had to saw through their wood in order to receive a marble from the previous group.  Another flaw was choosing to set up the Rube Goldberg machine over an outlet, so a different outlet had to be used, and no extension cords were available.  A problem we faced was that the group before us, group 3, had their last event go too far into another group's territory.  They then had to readjust the ramp of their last event which in turn took the ball that would roll down off course and so during the test the ball did not hit correctly into our robot and it didn't work.  

Another problem we faced was connecting our last event to group 5's first event.  When testing this transition it was inconsistent, and the problem was our robot did not way enough to set off the other group's power strip.  To fix this problem we put small weights on the edge of our robot that will give it slightly more weight, just enough to cause our last event to work correctly.

Pictured is our Rube Goldberg machine in place along with the other machines during the setup.