Lego ball shooter

[wautd]

Too awesome for testing and engineering is applied science so hopefully it's OK to post it here

Link

I the sounds of those bouncing balls

[Lord of the Abyss]

Seriously cool. Rather hypnotic actually.

[Hawkwings]

The alternating stair-stepping contraption to lift balls up is ingenious. I wonder what happens to balls that go into the hole in the plinko board? The grabber claw at the beginning and the end is probably the coolest thing though. However, I am infuriated that he dumps all the balls into the same bin after they are sorted by type!

I wonder what the loss rate is like?

[Coalition]

The alternating stair-stepping contraption to lift balls up is ingenious. I wonder what happens to balls that go into the hole in the plinko board? The grabber claw at the beginning and the end is probably the coolest thing though. However, I am infuriated that he dumps all the balls into the same bin after they are sorted by type!

The plinko board entrance looks like it exits to the two smaller holes to the lower left and right. 5:10-5:20 are the times to look for.

[Garlak]

This is very neat and cool and awesome, and thanks for sharing this!


But, uh.. why call it a "shooter"? It's more of a lego-ball moving rube goldberg contraption?

[Molyneux]

That is quite impressive.

It does seem to be a rather lossy system, though - there were quite a few places where I could see or hear balls falling out. I wonder if the designer's still making tweaks to try to keep it more efficient?

[Deathstalker]

It looks like a a bunch of GBCs at a convention.

For more info http://greatballcontraption.com/

[andrewgpaul]

That is quite impressive.

It does seem to be a rather lossy system, though - there were quite a few places where I could see or hear balls falling out. I wonder if the designer's still making tweaks to try to keep it more efficient?

I was wondering that myself - I wonder how long it can run before it runs out of balls? There's a few timing issues too - at one point, a scoop comes down and away again just before a new batch of balls arrives.

Which raises another question - a lot of the processes are 'batched' - the scoop at the beginning, for one. If you were to seed the entire system evenly with balls, how quickly would it settle into is 'periodic' operation?

I'd like to see a zoomed out picture of the whole contraption, too.