Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, March 18, 1991 TAG: 9103180057
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WEST LAFAYETTE, IND. LENGTH: Medium
Teams from Purdue University, the University of Arkansas, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Oakland University in Michigan competed Saturday in the ninth annual national Rube Goldberg Machine Contest.
The contest honors the spirit of the late cartoonist who specialized in drawing whimsically complicated machines to perform the simplest of tasks. In this year's competition, contestants had to use at least 20 steps and toast the bread within five minutes.
The "Toast Masters," Purdue's entry by the Society of Manufacturing Engineers, successfully defended the school's championship.
Among other things in the machine's sequence of events, a mousetrap was triggered, knocking over a smokestack, triggering the train to chug along its track carrying the bread.
Overhead, yellow-and-black race cars crisscrossed on strings and crashed into an oak bucket, which released an arm and, in turn, a pink bunny wearing dark sunglasses that traveled along a trail and tripped a trap.
Also moving around in the complex process were marbles, a fountain, a barrel and the robot arm, which grabbed the toast when it popped out of the toaster.
It all cost more than $100 to assemble.
"I'm really pleased with how it worked," said Steve Weinrich, a senior from Pennington, N.J., studying computer-integrated manufacturing technology. "The only damper we had was the mousetrap. It's never failed until today. It was misaligned and didn't hit the target right."
The rules allow teams a second attempt if their machine has a glitch on the first run.
Arkansas' entry, by the Tau Hogs, featured a figure of Saddam Hussein, a balloon, a blow-dryer and a mousetrap.
But the $10 contraption didn't quite survive the 680-mile trip from Fayetteville.
"Our machine was working great when we left but when you break it down and cram it into a Suburban, it's kind of hard," said team member David Gross of Fort Smith, Ark. "We had a lot of delicate parts that got damaged."
Gross and teammate Craig Deaton of Conway, Ark., admired Purdue's neatly painted machine, but preferred their amateur-looking effort.
Wisconsin-Milwaukee's entry finished second with the contest's smallest machine.
A plastic male figure rambled through his morning routine while a comb dragged across his head and cereal poured into a bowl before his car tumbled out of a garage, eventually triggering the toaster into action.
by CNB