The Sorcerer’s Apprentice’s lucky day

Why lucky?! Because the machine is not alive.
But this does not mean the work was unsuccessful. The trigger to save and release the energy of the snail-spring would actually work (in theory :). Due to the crudeness of the construction the whole mechanics jammed easily (which means a chance of jamming of 100%).
Additionally I was surprised that I did not have to scrap my whole construction and start all over again with a new blueprint anytime during the workshop. The construction just grew and added up and still remained “functional”.

Below are several photos to show the stage of construction i reached:

I took the mechanism home for now, to analyse it a bit more. I’m planing to build not only the mechanism but the outer shell – which I couldn’t get even near to think about during the workshop – with the help of a 3D printer.
I will probably scrap the mechanism afterwards, unless I can find a generous buyer who’s interested in crude 2D mechanics to hang up his/her wall 😉

btw: I uploaded some pictures of the workshop to an album. Go have a look. Unfortunately I couldn’t capture all the projects because my card space was running out very quickly.

Album: RoboWorkshop 2010