Define a problem
Generating Concepts
Develop a Solution
Construct and test a prototype
Evaluate the solution
Our simple machine resembles the mechanism of a draw bridge, and i had a very good vex lab experience. Both of my teammates worked a lot on the project and both contributed their part to the machine. Both were also very understanding of each others idea. For testing our mechanism we tested different types of gears to use and different ideas to make our own crank. There weren't too many mistakes that we had made in our machine except one side of the string was longer then the other side. Some skills that i learned were combining 3 different mechanisms and calculating the MA of each one. Some Modifications that we had to do were we couldn't find two different pulley parts, so we had to improvise and just use one tying the string on both sides.
Present a solution
Connecting the gears to the mechanism that will turn the pulley
platform that the ping pong ball will roll down
Final stage of compound machine
Conclusion
The mechanism that was easiest to determine the Mechanical Advantage was the pulley because the way you find mechanical advantage of a pulley is the number of the strings going in opposite direction of the resistance force so the MA of our pulley was 1. The gear mechanism was the hardest because for this we had to measure the ramp from the effort force distance, and the resistance force distance. Some modifications that we could make is making a gear ratio instead of having all three gears the same and making the pulley work a bit better