Ball Run

The Ball Run. 

The aim of this project was also to get used to working in teams. The target of this project was to get a golf ball from the top to the bottom of the run in the slowest time using cardboard and materials we had found around Bedford town.

To start, i was in a group of five- Charlotte, Alicia, Joe, Ryan and myself. We began by jotting down some design ideas for our run, we then compared ideas and discussed possible ideas with each other. The final design idea happened to be my idea, we then added things from the rest of the groups ideas to my layout design, which over all worked really well! When we had come up with our design idea, we decided to go into town and search for materials we could use. The first place we went to was a carpet shop down the road from college, and we kindly asked them if they had any carpet rolls that they wouldn't mind giving us. Thankfully they had lots! We then took a couple of these large rolls back to college to talk about what we would do with them and how we were going to start building our ball run. We began by taking our carpet tubes to the cutter which was an easier way of cutting them into a better shape and to cut them in half.




The start of our ball run looked like this funnel, this was really difficult to make as the cardboard was difficult to fold into the round shape we wanted, but when scoring it in multiple sections i found it so much easier to get it into the shape i wanted. Alicia and i then cut more cardboard into rectangles to put into small slits going down the funnel for the ball to run down. After much time and effort, we finally got it to work successfully!

We started by making all the little sections of our ball run and piecing them all together at the end. This was the next section i made for the run, it is a small fabric tube cut in half. Using a craft knife i then cut little slits down the sides which i then put small bits of card in which would slow the ball down as it rolled through. When this was on the final ball run, we had to have this on a slight angle so the ball could keep moving, as when we tried this the card sections kept stopping the ball which we didn't want!

During this project i ended up being the team leader as i the rest of my group where quiet and needed someone to tell them what to do next!
The next thing i did was start to build the main structure of our ball run. My design was to have the legs of the ball run looking like a rocket. so i cut 3 slits into the long carpet tube and into the edge of the big triangles i cut out of card board to slot them into one another as the photo shows, i then used gaffa tape to secure the structure into place.

This next section was really interesting, Charlotte had the idea of using cocktail sticks in a pinball like way, which was what we used as the last section of our ball run. This was really successful as it added an extra few seconds to our overall time as it slowed the ball down. The top of the sticks had been covered in masking tape to help the ball slow down as well as it would get stuck to it, but as its still rolling, it would carry on moving.

We used a tube of plastic cups to get the ball into this pinball section which worked really well as you were not sure which route the ball would take to get to the bottom of the pinball section.

This was the tube that Ryan made out of tin cans. He cut a hole in the tube that the funnel was on for the cans to go up so the ball falls down the funnel and into the cans. This took a lot of time to get to work as the ends of each can were different shapes so the ball kept stopping, so after lots of moving around, we managed to get everything to line up correctly! We also had to balance the cans on a stool as they were to floppy to hang on there own. this also helped the ball run through with out it stopping. 

This photo is of Ryan trying to get the cups and cans to fit into the tube, as the ball kept coming to a hault inside the tube. The section after this was another small tube with layered cardboard triangles  which were put in a zigzag layout to help slow the ball down. This was done by Alicia, and worked really well as it helped add a few seconds to our final time! It also looked really interesting.

This photo is of the first big section of our nearly finished final ball run! It took an awful lot of 'trail and error' to get this right, by the end we were not so fussed at getting our ball round in the slowest time, we wanted ours to look the most interesting and unique compared to the other groups.

As we had to take the top and bottom of the tin cans off, i decided to pierce a small hole into the top of the top and bottom sections to create a jingle noise as the ball runs through, the tin lids were also a similar size in width to the tube, which helped slow the ball down again. When the rest of the class was watching our ball run in action, this was one of the favorite sections as they liked how we added sound to our ball run using simple materials and my imagination.

This photo below is of our final piece. Overall it worked really well and the ball ran through it in a time of 13seconds which happened to be the quickest time, but we got more marks on the way it looked as we were the most imaginative. As this photo shows, we have added a cad board track at the beginning of the run for the ball to pick up speed as it goes into the funnel. We had tried making a track out of thick wire, but it didn't work very well and the ball picked up too much speed and kept falling off, so we decided to change the material to cardboard which in all work a lot better in the end!

This video is a quick shot of our ball run in action.