We will Design, Build, and test a machine that will pour marbles from one cup to another cup. There will be five marbles in which need to be transported from one cup to another and has to have at least three different simple machines. There is limited resources to make our project, because of the other projects being made. This will result in there to be limited resources and encourages us to think outside the box when trying to build our machine. Now a constraint that cannot be worked around is that we have to have at least three different simple machines(plus gears/sprockets). Now we can have as many machines you imagine as long as you have three different ones.
Generate Concepts.
Our first machine that was thought of, is a machine that has a inclined plane, pulley, and a second class lever. The pulley would pull the second class lever to a angle to which it would pour the marbles down the incline plane. Although we eventually went with this design but had to recap, because it was the force of gravity with the incline plane not that the machine was in use. Then our second design is a wheel axle with a pulley attached to a second class lever. The wheel would spin the pulley to which it tipped the second-class lever, but we eventually went with a sturdy design... our third choice. Our third choice, which ended being our final decision, which consisted of a wheel and axle which attached to a pulley pulled the cup up the inclined plane. Once reached the top it would fall backwards dropping the cup into the other cup. This design showed us what we needed in constraints and what we needed to accomplish in this project.
Develop a Solution.
Construct and Test Prototype.
Evaluate Solution.
This experience was a overall compiling project. It was a lengthy project for us because we had to eventually back track ourselves. Doing this caused us to overall have a downfall, but within seconds we picked ourselves back up again and started figuring it out again. Our first machine worked great and was overall great, but then we figured out our problem, in doing this we backtracked and our testing results for the new one were promising. We eventually got it to where we needed it and eventually the machine was working properly with a overall ideal mechanical advantage of 24. In this process I learned that working together to collaborate and fix what went wrong was a compromising issue. When you bounce of each other the more you can accomplish. I saw that we worked much faster with our brains working together rather then separate. Our first machines incline plane wasn't in working just the fact that gravity was in motion. So in order to fix this we kinda had the machine work backwards. We added a wheel and axle, instead of a second-class lever and then we had the pulley pulling the machine up the incline plane. In our machine there is some efficiency being lost but not much because the pulley was at an angle and that the wheel and axle with the fishing line would like to tangle so some more is lost there although there isn't much because it would only have 1-5 times. The overall IMA is 24 which is above the requested over 1 in step 4.
Present Solution.
In this first picture we are establishing our incline plan to make sure it's at the angle we want it before we put the other two sides on it. Which the inclined plane is wider at the end it will fall off but smaller at the other end so it doesn't fall off the back.
In this picture we have established the angle in which we want, but the proceed to picture where we want our pulley and then our wheel and axle system to be set up.
We have established where we want our poles for the wheel and axle then the pulley system just need to put the wheel, axle, and pulley into place.
Conclusion.
The pulley was the easiest to determine because, the # of strands is the IMA and that is the easiest to pick up on being that it's a fixed pulley and fixed pulleys always have one strand. They were all pretty easy, but the hardest was probably the wheel and axle because the axle was difficult to measure since our axle had borders around the axle sticking up farther then the axle itself. We needed to measure the actual axle but we had to look closer then we would with the other ones. We could probably use panels on either side of the incline machine and the polls for the pulley and wheel and axle. This being so that the marbles could tunnel into the cup and not have the other cup bang the one collecting the marbles and fall over.