Rube Goldberg Machine

5 min readApr 30, 2021

For the last assignment of my design module, I was challanged to create a rube goldberg machine, where the Elegoo Tumbller robot plays a starring role. The budget I had to work with for this assignment was a whopping €2 and I decided to buy a blueberry muffin…. yes this is totally unrelated to the assignment but blewbs are my favourite snack.

The Rube Goldberg machine is named after the American cartoonist Rube Goldberg. This machine is a chain reaction-type machine intentionally designed to perform a simple task in an indirect and overly complicated way. The task I wanted the machine to preform was to deliver my daily vitamins in the form of an effervescent tablet. The machine would lower the tablet via a completely obscure and convoluted way into a glass of water…. BOOM!! Vitamins acquired❤

Link to a video of my Rube Goldberg machine in action:

https://www.instagram.com/p/COS9eQpgTDb/

Design and Materials Used:

To kickstart this assignment I went around my house and collected various materials and objects which would later have to be modified to perform the task required. I wanted my machine to consist of a range of simple unrelated sequences of events where each event would kickstart the next, eventually resulting in achieving the goal of obtaining my daily vitamins.

Materials Used:

Cardboard from a cereal box
Selotape
Dyson Hairdryer (stolen from my momma)
Clothes Pegs
Ping Pong balls
Triminoes ( 3 sides dominoes )
Thread and Fishing Line
Elegoo Tumbller Robot
Shoe Lace
House broom handle
Skateboard Wheels
PVC pipe (various lengths)
Books
Screwdriver (acting as heavy weight)
Red Plastic Cups
Toilet Roll Tube
Glass of water and Vitamin Tablet

Design:

As seen in the pictures above of the various components for the machines system, it is evident that I used materials found around my house. I also had only half of my kitchen table to work with as my family would still have to eat their meals. This led to me also utilising the space on the wall beside the table.

To kick off this machine I wanted to use a button/switch to activate the machine….when the hairdryer was switched on, it would fire a ping pong ball up onto the wall where it would be caught and roll through a sytem of ramps made from cardboard. After the ping pong ball has completed this section it would fall onto a platform and roll through a pvc pipe. At the opening of the pipe there is a triminoe that would be knocked over by the force from the ping pong ball hitting it. This would set off a chain reaction of triminoes toppling over. The last triminoe knocks a weight (close pegs tied together) off a chair which is attached to the red cups as seen in the photo. Resting on the red cups was a skateboard wheel which was attached and wrapped around a sweeping brush handle via a shoestring. When the red cup falls off the table the shoelace with skateboard wheel attached at the end for weight begins to swing around in an arc. Once the arcs swing of the wheel is big enough it will hit into a book. This book knocks over a few other books, followed by falling onto a pvc pipe which swings around and at the far end of the pvc pipe rests more triminoes and other objects that knock one another over. This toppling over of objects end with knocking a screwdriver off the table. The screwdriver is attached via a string to a toilet roll tube and when the screwdriver falls off the table, the roll will come along with it. The toilet roll is sitting in front of the robots sensors and I have programmed the robots motors to move when the toilet roll tube is moved. I did this by telling the robots motors to turn on when there is nothing within 30mm from its sensors. A fishing line is slung over a curtain pole and attached at one end is the vitamin tablet, the other end is wrapped around the robots wheel so when the motor turns on…the vitamin tablet is lowered into the glass of water held by myself while I look out to my beautiful back garden!!!

This is easily said and planned out, however…. in practice this proved much more difficult. I found myself having to do out real calculations and carefully re-design parts so they would work every time. This took many hours and was a pain but it was 100% worth it in the end.