Engineering Fundamentals 151
Team Project
Team 6:FunkCity 2065
Members: Lauren Ballard,
Todd Dewberry,
Austin Soplata
Project Title: The Personal Beverage-Pong Machine
Overview:
Through meeting numerous times, TeamFunkCity 2065 decided to build a device that functions in a manner similar to that of a game of ping-pong involving personal beverages. The entire project was thought up in brainstorming sessions independent of outside resources. Utilizing rubber band tension, gravity, the spring force of a mouse trap, string tension, and air pressure from a paintball gun, the device launches a preset ping-pong ball into a beverage cup.
Design Process:
We began the design process by meeting to brainstorm and look on the Internets for ideas. While we discovered many interesting ideas on the Interweb that we could use in the device, we came up with our central design idea and all the subsequent steps independently. We had no real criteria as we used our ingenuity to build a machine that fit the bill of a Rube-Goldberg device. As we continued to modify our original design for the purpose of increasing efficiency, we did away with many steps and put in new, usually simpler, steps. Ideas we discarded included using only the spring of the paintball gun to fire a projectile, using a home-made fan pulled by a falling ball to propel a boat across water to knock down the ping-pong ball, and using the air pressure of the paintball gun’s shot on the sail of a boat to propel to boat to knock down the ping-pong ball.
Machine Description:
To start off, our entire project is located on a single piece of pressboard except for the cardboard decline of the ping-pong ball into the beverage cup and the beverage cup, with its guard, itself.
The first step of our machine involves a door latch pulled back by rubber bands. The back of the latch is 21.7 inches high and aimed at 19.03 degrees down from the horizontal. The latch, pulled back by hand, is shot forth by the rubber band tension and knocks a marble into PVC pipe that is taped to the door latch’s support.
The marble travels through the pipe via its original acceleration from the door latch and gravity. It lands on a set mousetrap that is glued to the pressboard and activates it, pulling on a nylon string that runs across the paintball gun’s trigger and is wrapped around a nail in a two-by-four that also functions as a support for the paintball gun. The paintball gun has another two-by-four support, cut in a V-shape at the top, at the beginning of the barrel that steadies the gun.
The paintball gun is aimed at as close to horizontally as our team is able to make it and shoots air to cause a ping-pong ball, located at 9.5 inches high up from the platform, to roll down the cardboard decline and into the beverage cup.
Calculations:
Materials:
Approximately 42 inches of two-by-four – owned by Todd Dewberry
Approximately 18 inches of PVC pipe – owned by Todd
Door Latch – $3
Nylon String – $2.50
Pressboard – owned by Todd
Duct Tape – owned by Lauren Ballard
Marble – owned by Todd
Ping-pong – owned by Austin Soplata
Paintball gun – owned by Todd
Mousetrap – owned by Todd
Nails/Screws – owned by Todd
Cardboard – Salvaged from a sinking battleship (owned by Todd)
Cups – owned by Lauren
Conclusion:
Eventually, we were successful in producing a mechanism that, once initiated and set up correctly, resulted in putting a ping-pong ball into a cup, regardless of the personal beverage contained therein. We learned that simplicity is often the best policy; that, and that it is nearly impossible to find one single plastic boat that floats ANYWHERE around here. We also learned much in the way of patience and understanding other people due to disagreements that were eventually resolved about both general and specific steps of development. Problems we encountered included figuring out exactly what were the steps we were going to implement, making the project more efficient, correcting the process when one of our steps failed, and making sure our project is dependable since it can be done in multiple times without breaking or malfunctioning. What we would do differently, given the same circumstances, includes having a more concrete design, brainstorming more, not procrastinating, thinking more realistically when in the design process, not getting bogged down in unnecessary improvements when in the construction phase, not being forced to guide the ping-pong ball into the beverage cup, and finding a miniature boat that had a sturdy enough sail and could float.
References: