Mouse trap capture the flag
The idea of this competition was to make a mouse trap powered car that would go 50 feet and capture a flag but you were also awarded points based on how many golf balls you can carry. We chose to ignore trying to capture the flag because with 10 pounds of golf balls it was the same amount of points as capturing the flag, so we built something that could carry as many golf balls as we needed. I’m not sure how much it can hold but it could carry at least 175 pounds. The caveat was that also you were allowed to use any spring you wanted as long as it was under 6 inches.
These 3d printed double bevel gear designed in Fusion 360 were used to translate linear motion into a slower rotational motion to spin wheels to carry the vehicle forward. They were printed using regular PLA on a Bambu X1C and A1 and provided a 1-9 gear ratio at this point.
Double bevel gears
We made an aluminum frame to support the weight of all the golf balls and this was a prototype of how we were going to mount the bearings for the axles to the frame and provide clearance for the wheels.
Axel mounts
Everyone on the team contributed to this project and thus we were able to place first in this competition beating all 11 other teams. we used a tow strap stapled to a piece of wood that was attached to the springs which were attached to the frame. The strap was wrapped around the axel originally with just electrical tape but was slipping so we used one of the small gears we didn’t need and I drilled a hole in and used that so that the strap didn’t slip. The gears were not fitting around the axel they were loose so I ran to Whole Foods and got baking soda and superglue and that allowed me to strongly attach the gears to the axel.
