Rubegoldberg zipline
Im a 9th grade student in an engineering class building a rube goldberg machine and i need to launch a marble from a ski lift/zipline type kinex machine onto a carboard track to knock over a trail of dominoes but we can't get the marble to launch off the cart accurately or even at all sometimes
Answers ( 1 )
It is difficult to advise you in a specific way without a link to multiple photos or video, but I'll try.
With these purposely complex devices, objects moved by other objects can have trouble triggering the next item in the sequence. In addition to practicing problem solving and troubleshooting skills, part of what these projects teach you is how vital the iterative design process is, and how important practicality is. Real world devices often start out as ugly, cobbled together contraptions that just barely work which are held together with pieces of duct tape and wire. The general public often looks at a new invention that has an elegant design and declares, “Well that’s easy to come up with, it’s simple!” They haven’t seen the many variations required to get to that point.
Simplification is often the best path to reliability, but this not an option for you. Your task is to embrace the complexity purposely without trying to combine or remove parts but just to concentrate on increasing the reliability of their operation.
If a transport isn’t delivering enough energy you may have to increase the speed that it is traveling at. This means you reduce friction somewhere or use a zip line that is higher at the launch end.
If a marble won’t leave a surface, whatever sort of lip, ridge or edge that is keeping it from dislodging early may be doing its job too well. If reducing this allows the marble to be dislodged too easily (early) then the surface that it sits on might have to be hinged so that it tilts down when its forward motion stops, helping to dump the marble into the next spot.
Deciding what mechanical operation to use for each stage isn’t the hard part, getting them to work together reliably is.