News + Trends

Do you know Rube Goldberg machines? I have built one!

20.12.2018

Translation: machine translated

I'm building my own Rube Goldberg machine. This is a device that converts something simple into something extremely complicated. At least that's the theory.

The term goes back to a cartoonist of the same name from the USA. At the beginning of the last century, he drew a comic strip centred around the fictional character "Professor Lucifer Gorgonzola Butts". A man who constructed unnecessarily complicated machines that were used to perform the simplest of tasks. The term Rube Goldberg machine first appeared in 1931.

I have often stumbled across such constructions on YouTube and have always been fascinated by them (for example here, here or here). I had realised for some time that I wanted to build something like this myself at some point. But what exactly should it be able to do and what materials should I use for it?

The products were just lying around

Why don't I just use products from our range for this project? We have quite a few samples lying around in our office that were needed for reviews or similar. It's like a gold mine. There are all kinds of things to choose from: from hoovers and frying pans to handbags, everything is available. But not everything is equally suitable. I focus on products that move or can trigger something through a mechanism.

LEGO

EUR129,50

LEGO Porg

75230, LEGO Star Wars

Massagers

Trigger Point Wellness Collection

Games of skill

Spin Master Rock me Archimedes

German

LEGO

EUR129,50

LEGO Porg

75230, LEGO Star Wars

Massagers

Trigger Point Wellness Collection

Games of skill

Spin Master Rock me Archimedes

German

The proof of the pudding is in the eating

Which product could trigger which action? I try out all sorts of things. Some promising, some unsuccessful. If a pairing makes sense and works, I write it down on a notepad and try out other things. After a short time, I have a small collection of possible combinations. I now have to put them in a sensible order so that the chain reaction is not interrupted anywhere.

After just under an hour, I have a working concept. The sequences make sense and work. The only question now is how the machine ends. Or rather, what the point of my unnecessarily complicated construction should be. Again, I test various things. Finally, I come to the conclusion: it will be a cube machine. The final reaction should be that a dice throws itself into the air and rolls a random number of dice for me. Thanks to packing material lying around in the corner of the office, this problem is also solved. The cube should lie on the air cushion. If something falls on it, it flings the cube away. This works in most cases. So it should work.

Quite OK for the first attempt

The concept makes sense, the construction is complete and the first attempt is a success. Now take a quick look with the camera and capture everything for eternity. DONE!

For my first attempt at building a Rube Goldberg machine, I think the result is quite satisfactory. But there's still a lot of room for improvement, because unfortunately it wasn't really exciting yet. I will definitely tackle another project like this. But then it should be bigger and more spectacular. However, I will need more than just half a working day for that.

7 people like this article