Overview
This was a team project for one of Northeastern's required first-year engineering courses. Our entire class built a single Rube Goldberg Machine, split into sections between teams, with the goal of accomplishing a simple task through wonderfully extravagant means. The class voted on an Office theme to tie the whole thing together.
Our part of the machine
Our team built the very beginning of the machine, so we were responsible for starting the chain and handing it off cleanly to Team B. Our sequence ended by releasing a wheel and axle that rolled down a binder — triggering the next team's motion sensor and passing the run along.
How it worked
Our section ran through six triggered steps, each one setting off the next and ending on the goal: turning on a motion sensor. A servo popped open a trash-can lid and launched a rubber-band ball; the ball dropped through a pencil holder onto a drafting-triangle ramp; rolled across a flat surface past a hinge and tilt switch; fell onto a lever read by a motion sensor; which opened a servo arm to release the wheel and axle down the binder ramp — detected by the next sensor to start Team B.
At the Exposition
Our whole class presented the finished machine at the Engineering Exposition. Across three runs, it got steadily more reliable — by the end, it ran completely on its own.
By our final run, we didn't have to touch it once.