Got working on flip flop switches today and stripped the casing off more chocolate blocks for Edrian today. Now that we have ping pong balls of differing weights we made a really simple prototype of our flip flop switches. We sorted out the counterweights as well.
1 doesn't need any counterweights because it's the completely empty ping pong ball and needs to stay on the original track.
2. 5g counterweights
3. 15g counterweights
4. 25g counterweights
Will need to see if these are enough because they're only a 5g difference from the weights of their respective ping pong balls.
The switches must be sensitive though, which is the main obstacle we'll hit for the switches.
Another thing is how the rails will shape around the switches. Since it's a rail, there needs to be a dip somewhere to let the ping pong balls fall when they need to. Thus, an option would be to have a dip in the rails with some additional side rails spreading out to allow for the fall while keeping the balls that don't need to fall yet on the path. The rails dipping down are also necessary to hold the switches in place.
So far, things are falling into place and happening as planned according to schedule. I'm still waiting for everything to go horribly wrong though so that we can all be prepared when it happens. I know it sounds pessimistic and maybe a little bit irrational given that there is no evidence at present of things going wrong, but I don't want to celebrate until we've given our absolute best shot at this right till hand in.
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