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[TC-10] Useless Box
GroundskeeperWillie posted a topic in LEGO Technic, Mindstorms, Model Team and Scale Modeling
My TC-10 entry will be a Useless Box or Useless Machine. The sole purpose of such a contraption is to expose an ON/OFF switch, and whenever it is turned on, it mechanically pushes the switch to turn itself back off. There are various LEGO incantations, most notably an , but no pneumatic versions I could find.I'm thinking a simple mechanical design with two pneumatic cylinders and a switch. The bottom cylinder slides a compartment up through the roof of the box. The compartment contains the second cylinder, which can then push the switch back to its OFF position. Something like this: The mechanics are very simple but not so with controlling the cylinders. I have yet to come up with a working design, but here the things I've worked on so far. Basically the controller is a state machine. With a switch and two cylinders that makes 8 possible states, where 4-6 of them are relevant, depending of the implementation (like whether the switch is a pneumatic value or some mechanical input) Functionally, the states are: 1. Switch ON 2. Bottom cylinder extracts 3. Top cylinder extracts 4. Switch OFF 5. Top cylinder retracts 6. Bottom cylinder retracts States 3 and 4 may coincide as the cylinder pushes the switch and 1 and 6 may also coincide. My next few posts will discuss the designs I've tried (and failed) so far. Seems this project will be a risky - and learning one