Hardlug GBC Coppertop Factory Recent Pictures page

Welcome into the rabbit hole!! This page shows in more detail just what the Copertop Factory is.

Below are links to several stages of development. Check back periodically for further updates as they come.

The Coppertop Factory has been a yearlong project to remake the scene from the Matrix where Neo first awakes after Morpheus finds him. To render it as a Great Ball Contraption, lego soccer balls are 'inserted' into the factory and flushed out once the spider sees them. This is analogous to when Neo awoke and the Spider machine flushed him out! It has been undergoing constant improvements and fixes on and off since Brickfest 2005. The theme for Brickfest 2006 is Hollywood, so this will fit in nicely.

Here is the current status (6/16/06):

Coppertop Factory v1.0 June 2006

With a completely new spider (v1.1) in the works after the demise of v1.0 (shown above), efforts are underway to get moving! Brickfest is only two months away! I finally got the three new motors I needed to get he new spider/truck functional. Now all that remains are a complete rewrite of the programs, minor tweaks to the limit switch interfaces, and other minor alignment adjustments. The programming part is almost done as of this writing.

Major Setback! (May 15th or so)

The spider's main drive motor has died under its own hanging weight. Now I have two options: 1) swap out the motor and risk burning another one just as easily, or 2) redesign the spider in a more motor-friendly way with a new motor. I like 2 more, but it will take a bit of time. Probably another month of assembly, testing and redesign. Oh well, it's not like anybody actually reads this stuf anyway. I'll go to BF this year and everyone will be like "hey I never saw that before!" Click here to see what not to do.

Spring 2006

Factory v0.1, Spider/car v0.9, Assembly (both together) - v0.9

As of March's LUG meeting, the integrated testing with both RCX's began with a demo. The flow rate of the balls through the machine has a couple issues I won't get into here. At last count, I have two RCX's, six motors, well over 2000 pieces, one light sensor, three touch sensors, two programs and tons of time and money invested so far. I have had a bit of help from a couple other LUG members that I am grateful for!

Recently, I have been undergoing integrated testing and reliability runs to reduce the amount of labor involved in running this monstrosity! The spider/truck assembly needs quite a bit of programming and limit switch testing/tweaks.

Fall 2005

For the next version, 0.4, the spider had to be significantly improved in order to accomodate the stresses put upon it once the rubber bands were installed into the pods. The truck needed its base wider and the three floors needed better spacing on the upramp. Overall, there will be a future outrigger that extends from the upramp back over to the pods to improve stability as the spider arm/plunger assembly actuates each pod. This was needed in order to prevent the spider/truck assembly from knocking itself over every time it needed to flush some balls!

The links below show some pictures as we progressed. The pods had to be constructed in such a way as to allow the 16 tooth gears to be actuated by the spider arm/plunger assembly. There is a touch sensor integrated into the three floors as well as a light sensor for the truck. Paul helped out a lot with assembling version 0.4 on 10/9/05. Plans call for two conveyor belts to move the balls up and down the module at the exit and entry points.

assembly as of 10/9/05	assembly as of 11/5	assembly 11/5 rear view
paul helping	assembly 11/5 input view	assembly 11/5 exit view
truck closeup	truck/spider rising	assembly video 3/14/06

Copper Top Factory v0.1 (August 2005)

After the end of Brickfest 2005, I was filled up with so many ideas, I just had to get something going! Joel from HardLUG and I came up with a whole slew of ideas for the club to work on over the next year. The Coppertop Factory woud be my baby. I realized even then that it would be an ambitious undertaking. This thing will be more complex (and expensive) than the vast manjority of all other modules I'd seen to date.

The early video here shows a simple programming sequence I set up the week of 8/21/05 to perform some integrated testing of the assembly as it currently was. The assembly simply moves the truck forward, moves the spider carriage up a "level", and then actuates the arm to let out the soccer balls contained in the pod. No sensors were used in this early version.

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