Project 3.3.

1
Marble Sorter
Principles of Engineering
Westwood High School
3/29/16
Team 14: Jugal Amodwala, Rama Hassabelnabi, Michael Friedmann, and
Michael Diaz
Report by: Jugal Amodwala

Design Problem
Problem:
The problem our project is attempting to solve is that the National Recreation Park
Association (NRPA) needs a device to sort recyclable material collected from their
various parks.

Design Statement:
For this project my team and I are tasked to design, model, and test a device that
automatically separates recyclable materials.

Constraints:
The machines separation process must be fully automated. Only the materials in one
VEX kit and approved by the instructor (Mr. Landers) may be used. Must successfully
separate mixed up recyclable materials into separate holding bins. Marbles must be
fully controlled through the entire sorting process. Recyclable materials are four different

half inch material spheres totaling sixteen marbles. If five materials are sorted
successfully extra credit will be awarded. The marble types are steel, aluminum, wood,
opaque plastic, and clear plastic. The sorting must complete in less than two minutes.

Brainstorming Idea:

This design will use the steel, clear, wooden, and aluminum marbles. First a
funnel groups the marbles so that they roll down the ramp in a single line. This hits a
gate that opens and closes so that only one marble passes at once. Next, a light sensor
detects if the marble is clear, if it is, a motor will move so that the ramp is open then
immediately close, and the rest of the marbles will go down another ramp.
The non clear marbles then roll to a magnet which grabs the steel one and the
rest fall through a hole, after ten seconds a motor pushes the marble off of the magnet
to its cup.
The last two marbles are sorted by hitting an arm attached to an encoder which
records how far the arm rotates and depending on the degrees another motor opens
and the lighter marble falls into its box.

Decision Matrix
We decided these criteria because we felt that each one of them were vital to the
building and project. The project had to be simple so it was easy to understand, usable
so that operation was easy, aesthetic so that it was visually pleasing for NRPA, feasible
because it was important that the project would work effectively, and build time was vital
to our decisionmaking process due to the hard deadline we had.
We each decided on a number for each section for all of the designs and then
totalled them. The ratings were determined as a group because it was the simplest
process. Each of us discussed how many points we thought each project should get for
each of the criteria by hypothesizing how hard it would be to build and design based on
the various drawings. Based on the one that had the most points we picked which one
was the final design. Ramas design won with twenty one points.

Final Design Solution

We selected this design as our final design solution because it took the core of
Ramas design (which was the best based on our decision matrix) and then we
improved it. We added Michael Diazs caterpillar track system because it would put the
marbles in line so that they could be released one at a time and the system could
process them
effectively.

Explanation: The funnel forces the marbles to fall in a row onto the caterpillar treads that
make it so that the marbles go through our system one at a time. A magnet next to the
ramp attracts the steel marbles off of the main ramp so that a motor can hit them off into
a bucket. The rest of the marbles are then scanned by the light sensor and depending
on the value the second set of treads move to the appropriate bucket, the gate opens,
and one by one the marbles fall into their designated bucket.

Design Modifications
Our first modification was to change the original magnet placement, on the side of the
machine, onto a rotating axle designed to grab all of the steel marbles. We made this change
because the magnets we had werent strong enough to pull the steel marbles off of the track. In
order to catch the marbles the axle grabbed we attached a green flower pot to the end of our
caterpillar track frame. After we shortened the track the magnet axle no longer reached the

flower pot so we added a small pipe to the bottom of it that the axle would hit the steel marbles
into and would divert them off of our project into a cup on the side.
We then changed the original funnel into a water bottle because the normal plastic
funnel would release all of the marbles at once and there would be several marbles on the
caterpillar track at once. By using a water bottle we had a better controlled stream of marbles.
However, this was later changed into a large and wide inclined plane that slowly narrowed into
one point. The second version of our funnel allowed for all of the marbles to exit in one straight
line in a more orderly manner. Later, this proved to still have too much randomness so a small
servo powered gate was attached to the end of the funnel to ensure that only one marble
exited at once in a controlled fashion.
We changed the light sensor into a line follower because of the massive differences we
got in the light sensor values from day to do day. The line follower was much easier to program
as there was less of a margin of error than the light sensor. This later proved to be still too
inaccurate so we added a cardstock box around it to try and mitigate environmental changes on
the line follower.
We replaced the conveyor belt cup system with a turntable attached to an encoder. The
conveyor belt proved to be far too complex and extremely difficult to program so we switched to
a turntable design. Since simply moving the motor values was far too inaccurate we added an
encoder to track the degrees of rotation and make programming the turntable easier. Since we
didnt have space to attach the motor to the base, it was fixed to the top of the axle in the air and
attached to the ramp using a steel plate to minimize the shaking while the motor was active.
The original ramp we had made was far too shallow to allow the marbles to stop at the
line follower and then restart only due to the force of gravity. To fix this we shortened the track
since it was easier than raising the funnel and there was no way to lower the cups.
The caterpillar tracks originally didnt have walls on the sides, so, marbles would often
fall off the sides rather than stay on the track. To fix this we added walls but because of the
awkward width of the tracks the walls were still too far away. The group later decided to add
paper to both walls to add extra width and keep the marbles from falling off of the caterpillar
track.

Final Design
Our final project did not function well at all. We did not sort any of the marbles
successfully and only three marbles made it through the entire process. The failed attempt
lasted 2 minutes before the program was aborted because time ran out.

ROBOTC Program

Design Process
In the first step of the design process, Define a Problem, we were assigned a problem to
solve, which was a marble sorting machine. The problem was justified as it was a project grade
and it served as a model for an actual recycling sorting machine.
During the Generating Concepts phase my team and I developed our own designs
based off of a brainstorm. During this step we also looked through the VEX kits to determine
what parts we had available to us to better our various brainstorms.
For the Develop a Solution step of the Design Process my team and I used a decision
matrix to decide whose brainstorm we thought was the best. Despite Ramas brainstorm being
unanimously considered the best design we still incorporated various aspects of the other
designs to create a better machine design.
In step four we constructed and tested our design as well as started the initial programs.
This was by far the longest phase as we had numerous changes to our machines design and
several different programs that would ideally work for each variation of our machine. While
constructing our machine we attempted to solve the issues that arose such as the ramp length
and sensor difficulties.
We were constantly evaluating our solution as we made changes to our machine design
in order to make it better. Another part of step five was adjusting our program so that it actually
solved the problem which was to effectively sort the marbles.
Part six was to present our solution which we did on the final day of the project. My team
and I formally presented our machine and ran it as it intended, but it failed due to several
problems with our code. Technically we shouldnt have reached step six yet because our
machine was unfinished but we were forced ahead by the due date.

Reflection
My team would would make our design solution much simpler mechanically. Due to our
long and complex physical design we had to spend a vast majority of our work time building our
machine rather than testing the program. If we had built a simpler machine than our final design
we might have been able to finish building earlier and had more time to refine our code.
The most challenging aspect of this design problem was having to use the parts we were
assigned. The line follower was a major hindrance to our group because we had to constantly
adjust values due to the random changes we saw every day. Another huge problem was the
motor shifts that we experienced on our turntable that made it so that the cups would end up in
different positions after it had been running for a while.
One of the things I learned was to be more flexible. With this project our team was
constantly changing our design and previous ideas and and parts of the project I created had to
be scrapped. Due to the incessant changing of our machine I was forced to be flexible with the
group and let some people have their way as well as see some of my work getting dismantled to
help the team as a whole.
One of the largest challenges in working with a design team were the disagreements we
had on various approaches. It was incredibly difficult to get the entire group to decide on one
thing. Because of our teams indecisiveness we probably ended up wasting more time than we
should have which was eventually one of the main reasons why we didnt finish. Another major

conflict was that as we changed designs some peoples work was scrapped for a new design.
Michael Diaz had the idea to use treads for the movement of our cups but as this proved
ineffective and complicated we had to scrap his idea and all of the work he had put into making
the tread system. This caused some conflict in our team for some time but it was resolved. A
smaller issue that arose when working with a team was trying to coordinate everyones
schedules. Only certain members of our team were available during our extra meetings so there
were often team members missing. If we had worked with everyones schedules better we
couldve had more time to work as a team and maybe made more progress on our machine.