88 Balls of Steel Part Two
As it said above, the theme this year is “Back to the Future.” We, of course, chose to make our machine based on the movie series. None of us have massive workshops or do a lot of handyman work, but we’re not a total loss. Still, we had no idea where to start. The other teams included engineers, robotics competitors, and electronics clubs, so we figured from the start that creativity would have to be our meat and theme our drink.
Our first step was to go around as a group to hardware and hobby stores and get ideas. We did that, and the day proved fruitful. I believe our first idea was that we should somehow reverse the flow of the machine so that when we finally went the right way it would be like a return, “back” to the other side. The only other thing we knew is that we wanted a Delorean. Specifically, a radio-controlled Delorian that would somehow race across the table and pull the next string. Anyone familiar with the end of the first movie can predict how we wanted that to happen.
The guy that had invited me, known on the team as the Time Lord, said casually that he had found an RC Delorean on Ebay for $40, which was about 5x-10x cheaper than the RC cars we were seeing in hobby shops. It was also the right scale for our table, so we had him order it. When it showed up, imagine my surprise when it looked like this:
It wasn’t just a Delorean, it was *the* Delorean, complete with Flux Capacitor and “OUTTATIME” license plate. Totally sweet, because it even had a built-in hook just like in the movie.
Next thing we decided was to use ball bearings as our primary means of energy transference. One of us got the crazy idea to use 88 bearings in the machine, since 88mph was the speed the Delorean needed to reach in the movie in order to time travel. They needed to know our team name as the time approached, and so we settled on:
88 Balls of Steel.
We took great pride in making sure that our machine always ran with 88 ball bearings, and people liked that flourish. Of course, building a machine using that many balls presented its own challenges…like, when something went wrong and 70 or so of them went flying across the hardwood dining room floor.
More in a bit...
Our first step was to go around as a group to hardware and hobby stores and get ideas. We did that, and the day proved fruitful. I believe our first idea was that we should somehow reverse the flow of the machine so that when we finally went the right way it would be like a return, “back” to the other side. The only other thing we knew is that we wanted a Delorean. Specifically, a radio-controlled Delorian that would somehow race across the table and pull the next string. Anyone familiar with the end of the first movie can predict how we wanted that to happen.
The guy that had invited me, known on the team as the Time Lord, said casually that he had found an RC Delorean on Ebay for $40, which was about 5x-10x cheaper than the RC cars we were seeing in hobby shops. It was also the right scale for our table, so we had him order it. When it showed up, imagine my surprise when it looked like this:
It wasn’t just a Delorean, it was *the* Delorean, complete with Flux Capacitor and “OUTTATIME” license plate. Totally sweet, because it even had a built-in hook just like in the movie.
Next thing we decided was to use ball bearings as our primary means of energy transference. One of us got the crazy idea to use 88 bearings in the machine, since 88mph was the speed the Delorean needed to reach in the movie in order to time travel. They needed to know our team name as the time approached, and so we settled on:
88 Balls of Steel.
We took great pride in making sure that our machine always ran with 88 ball bearings, and people liked that flourish. Of course, building a machine using that many balls presented its own challenges…like, when something went wrong and 70 or so of them went flying across the hardwood dining room floor.
More in a bit...