My initial plan didn’t work out so well. The video below showed my first idea, with some heavy adjustments. While the initial stage worked, it didn’t sync very well with the rest of my plan.
Stage 1 (Original) Success ^^
After several failed retries, on the third class (February 23), I decided to change it up a bit and replaced the pieces of cloth with dominoes. While the ultimate goal of my machine was to press the button to light the lightbulb, I already figured out the stage leading to that. Therefore, I simplified my goal when modifying the first stage to “push the stick off the ledge”, which set off the second stage. In the end, I just went with dominoes. The videos below show my successes (and failures) in it!
Front View ^^
Side View ^^
Time-Lapse of building the domino tower ^^
Slow-Motion video of the dominos falling ^^
Stage 1-2 (Modified) Success ^^
This video shows one of the more successful trials in my new plan with the dominoes. After the tower collapsed, I had to construct it again, and because of its fragile state, be very careful not to knock it over. It’s not very long, but as long as it works, it works. If I have time, I’ll add another stage if I can think of one.
Stage 1 (Modified) Fail ^^
In this video, we can see that sometimes, the end of the domino chain doesn’t exactly hit the stick, even if it’s at the very edge. I had to test and mark out very carefully where that last domino would be positioned to push. It can’t be too close, or it’ll just fall right over the stick, and it can’t be too far, or it’ll miss the stick entirely. This is one of the times where I miscalculated.
Stage 1-2 (Modified) Fail ^^
Another problem is that, once the second stage is set into effect, the metal marble sometimes doesn’t gain enough momentum, and causes the weighted stick at the end to fall forward instead of backward. The purpose of that is to fall onto the button that will turn on the lightbulb that will illuminate the prism, so I need to fall backward. I also added a weighted ball to the top of the stick to make it easier to tip, but I had to counter it with a lighter ball, or the weighing of the tube that carries the rolling ball, so it can stand upright.
Once I have the working lightbulb, I should be able to test it with the full chain!
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