Rube Goldburg engineering challange.

[Jason Roehl]

Now that funny right there, I don't care who y'are.

[Belinda Barfield]

I am so not mechanically inclined, but I think it would be really fun if you could connect it to an old hand pump like you would use for water, or some kind of crank handle. That's all I got, no idea how to make either work.

[David Peterson MN]

I highly recommend these guys. One of them works at the Acme School Bell Company

http://youtu.be/5FNBuO6eDYc

[Kenneth Speed]

I have to admit I really like the electric garage door opener idea. I'd have to actually SEE things to figure it out but I can imagine the garage door opener turning the wheel the bell is attached to and releasing it so that the bell would ring a few times in descending volume.

If you have neighbors you don't like you could hook up your alarm clock to it too!

Ken

[Larry Edgerton]

If you want to make it interesting, put 2 ropes at the front door. One rings the bell. The other opens the valve to a shower head over the door. Do not label but put a sign at the door "Pull rope to ring bell."

Excellent! I like it. I would even go so far as to put a sign on the second rope that says "Do not under any circumstances pull this rope."

I am putting in an outside shower, so what is one more?

Larry

[Larry Edgerton]

I was a bit confused by the garage door opener suggestion, but I can see the possibilities now. I happen to have a opener in the attic at the shop. The problem is that it is too slow, but maybe you use the opener to lift the bell and then release it to do its bell thing?

Many very good and fun suggestions. I'll ponder them while I eat my dinner.

Thanks, Larry

[David Weaver]

Yeah, however you'd want to do it, whether you'd want to rig up a makeshift clapper to it and let it clang it inside (or outside) the bell, or affix a sprocket to something that will move the bell itself back and forth.

It looked in the picture in another link like the one professional system wasn't a whole lot more than an electric motor doing the same thing as the latter (moving the bell).

You could rig up the other parts from scrap, and the garage door openers are practically free compared to purpose built stuff. No wiring, either.

[Jerome Stanek]

How much room do you have to work with. If you have a lot you could mount an arm on the door opener and when it is activated it would push the bell one way to it falls off the arm and swing back and forth then when you hit the button again it would push it the other way and do the same thing

[Jay Maiers]

http://www.surpluscenter.com/
For all of your Rube Goldburg needs.

They have a couple of garage door motors available, some regular gear motors, and all kinds of power transfer stuff (chains, sprockets, etc.).

[Rich Engelhardt]

In the middle is an Archimedes screws. At the top is a fast spinning disk with vanes. When you hit the button, the screw and disk take off, dropping bearings onto the disk, and flinging them into the bell. DING DING DING DING DING....

Quite a few people have tried that approach...
http://www.google.com/patents?vid=USPAT6520169

[Ryan Mooney]

Quite a few people have tried that approach...
http://www.google.com/patents?vid=USPAT6520169

Hah, I read an account of that when I was a kid and felt compelled to (try and) make one. I used a tuna fish can for the outside cylinder, a small piece of pipe for the pickup tube and barrel, and a (very) small motor I got from I don't recall where. Actually got it to work; sort of; getting it balanced so it didn't pull itself apart was interesting but it would throw bb's across the room when I was done (best shot knocked a nice dent in a soda can). I think I got maybe 5-10 shots between rebuilds though as it had a bad habit of ripping itself apart if anything was the slightest bit off, accuracy was non existent and well it was fun to make anyway .

Mine didn't use vanes though, it was center feed to a rotating tube that had a slot in it matching a pickup rod carefully soldered (mine) / welded (anything bigger than a bb ) to the back/underside of the barrel so you have pretty good directionality except when it goes south and then it goes in all directions.

Mythbusters also made one kind of similar to what I made (different principals on the discharge end, I reckon my idea wouldn't have worked for very large/heavy projectiles at all): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Er9Hhl9-bGY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-K2g...feature=relmfu and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GULQu...feature=relmfu Theirs was a LOT more ambitiously sized than the table top model I built but suffered a similar fate.

[Larry Edgerton]

Jay, Thanks for that link. They do have a lot of cool stuff to make cool stuff with!

Larry

[Larry Edgerton]

I'm on one of my imsomnia kicks again so last night about something in the morning it came to me how to disconnect the drive. Scrap the garage door opener and use a flex plate and starter from a car. The bendix will disengage when the power is cut, so controling the length of time the power is applied will be the key. See, the garage door suggestion led me to the logical outcome, a car starter. See the logic?

Now this could also lead to some interesting conversation.....


"Starter went out of my car this week."

"Ya, I had to replace the starter in my house last month. Crazy what they get for a house starter!"

Larry

[Todd Burch]

I don't think so. A car starter might pull 100+ amps @ 12 volts. Rotsa ruck finding a 110 VAC to 12 VDC that'll support 100 amps. But if we're still suggesting "any fun idea", then it's a great idea! The torque is certainly there to swing a bell, or clapper!

For that matter, weld a flywheel to the bell pivot! ha!

[Jason Roehl]

I don't think so. A car starter might pull 100+ amps @ 12 volts. Rotsa ruck finding a 110 VAC to 12 VDC that'll support 100 amps. But if we're still suggesting "any fun idea", then it's a great idea! The torque is certainly there to swing a bell, or clapper!

For that matter, weld a flywheel to the bell pivot! ha!

No problem. He can just use a smaller power supply. There will be bells from the fire trucks...