Today the MarBlam! team worked late into the night, but in the end we prevailed. The prototype successfully guided the marble through the maze! The first video is a successful operation of the toy. The second video is of a failed attempt, but nicely illustrates how the toy is operated.

Week 9 The Machine

 This is the Machine. The Machine is the part of the toy that will not be seen when the 3D top is put on it but it is the most important part of the project. It puts the pulleys, motors, and lego supports together to create one machine that works the entire toy.

Week 8 Lathed Pulleys

The actuation of the maze surface is being performed by stepper motors. The stepper motors are themselves connected to levers that will physically manipulate the maze surface. These levers are connected to each other and to the stepper motors in a cable driven fashion. This allows the motors to be placed anywhere in the machine, which accommodates feasible packaging constraints. Another benefit of the cable driven system, especially in the prototyping phase, is the adjustability the system provides. The levers can be adjusted along the motors range of actuation against zero, or either maximum. The levers can also be positional adjusted against each other.

       To allow the stepper motors to manipulate the cable system, custom pulleys had to be machined. The pulleys retain the cable, and provide sufficient friction and moment action between the motor shaft and the cable. The pulleys were machined from available material to adequate specifications. As little thought was given to the material and non-driving dimensions of the pulleys, it is possible that future testing may reveal a need to adjust these attributes.

Week 7 New 3D Surface

We designed a new 3D surface for the top, board, section of our game. This new 3D surface was created with the idea in mind that the marble should not be able to move too fast. The surface is only going to be tilted a small amount at a time therefore this new surface should work permanently on the board. We are printing 4 pieces that we will glue onto a base to create one large board.