Scrapstore Materials

Today I went to Scrapstore to collect all the materials I need for my machine. I collected a good selection of materials, including long tubes, books and tapes to act as dominoes and little objects like corks and bottle tops to use as weights. Whilst we were there we arranged a date for a final meeting with John, the 5th November. When we got back I began experimenting with the new materials. One thing I got was a plastic container with valves on the lid, and I noticed that if I dropped a heavy object on it, it could fire a bottle top quite far, although it was very hit and miss. I also created a rolling object from two vinyl records, and I rigged up a system to get it rolling, but as you can see it's not very accurate.

Today I made a sequence of five or six devices, using some techniques I have already experimented with. As you can see it works well, and was pretty consistent each time, although the jar that falls through the pipe got stuck a couple of times. I particularly like the device at the end with the rolling bottle.

Today I wanted to make a more impressive see-saw for my machine. The problem with my last attempt was that the card was too floppy, so I found some stronger pieces and glued them to two jars to create my see-saw. I attached a piece of fabric to the one end. The idea would be that the fabric unfurled releasing the rolling jar inside. It worked well and also stopped the jar from rolling in the wrong direction. I stacked up some larger bottle-tops which would fall through a pipe when they were toppled. This worked, although later I was able to find a way of balancing them so they would all fall through, and this made it easier to manage the weights needed to trigger the next part of the machine.

I then started to set up a few devices in sequence to create a small Rube Goldberg machine. When the bottle-tops fell came through the pipe they would fall into a pot, and using the system that I created on Wednesday, the extra weight would pull another pot up, which in turn would knock another see-saw. In theory it worked but the weight needed to pull the pot was quite hit and miss, and it wasn't heavy enough to push the final see-saw upwards. I could counteract this problem by either using heavier objects instead of bottletops, or using lighter materials for the see-saw.

Today I did some more complex experiments. Firstly I made a way to topple an object inspired by a part of OK Go's machine. It worked although the bottle I used was probably not heavy enough to work in the way I wanted.



I wanted to make a see-saw so I glued two jars to a piece of card, with another jar acting as a pivot. When I poured water into one jar the see-saw toppled, but the card was a bit floppy, especially when it got wet.



I wanted to take the idea of using water a bit further, so I rigged some paint pots up to a basic pulley system, using easels as supports. This worked well with the water, but in the context of a whole machine I thought a solid weight would look better, so I placed another easel to feed a jar into one of the pots.



I found some sections of pipe in the classroom and I wanted to find a way to make them roll. I set up the tables at slants so the pipe would speed up and slow down at certain points. I used a swinging jar to start it going as I could use this in the final machine.




I saw a technique on a few videos where a swinging weight uncoils around a pole. I tried it with a poster tube I found, as this is definitely the kind of thing I could find in the Scrapstore. I used a wooden board as an example of how the machine could be carried on.