Week 8

Goals for Week 8:

• Testing the Rube Goldberg machine with it integrated into the class-wide machine and see where the machine fails during each run.
• Work on transition to group 5 (toggling power switch on power strip)

Tasks Performed:

This week was very similar to last week in terms of testing the machine. A period of time for the machine's setup was given at the beginning of the lab and slowly, group by group, the class-wide Rube Goldberg machine was formed with every machine connected to its adjacent groups. A picture of the our individual machine in the overall machine can be seen below.

Like last week, the machine was run through and each group took account of where their machine failed. For the first run, most everything worked in portion of the machine but the final transition event where we transfer the energy of the machine to group 5's machine. We made a note of this and during the setup for the second run of the machine, we carefully positioned the ramp so that it toggles the power strip so that it would click the switch and make the hand-off. On the second run, however, we ran into a number of issues. The robot did not knock the keychain on the wire enough to get it to move down, the balloon did not pop, and the transition yet again did not work as planned. 

The first two event failures could have been easily avoided as the balloon was admittingly positioned too close to the robot causing it to stop too soon. The reason the balloon did not pop is because it was not inflated enough for the push pins on the pendulum to puncture it. It was evident however that the transition to group 5's machine needed to be worked on outside of the lab. 

Group 5 graciously gave us the power strip used in their machine so we could work on the transition on our on time. On Friday, we all met and worked on this transition event. The problem was that there was not enough glue on the K'NEX piece attached to the switch, causing it to bend rather than toggle the switch towards the on position. To remedy this, we added more hot glue to help secure the K'NEX piece to the switch and prevent it from bending. After the glue cooled, we tested this event numerous times and got the ramp to consistently toggle the switch of the power strip. We are now confident that our whole machine will be ready for week 9's testing of the machine and that each event will be operational.