Our machine works in 4 main steps:
1. The machine is placed at the top of the arena, with the arm inserted into the arena slot. The base of the machine is lined with velcro which adheres tightly to the arena, thus making it difficult for opponents to push or move our machine during operation.
2. The rack and pinion motor guiding the arm is switched on, lowering the arm to the bottom of the arena.
3. The two planetary gears and motors are rotated at the same time, tightening the kelvar strings attached to the arm and pulling the arm and the motor holder forward together in a swinging motion. This motion will sweep the balls up from the bottom of the slot towards the opponent's side.
4. The length of the arm is adjusted as it swings, finally coming to rest on the separation wall, blocking any attempt by the opponent to move balls over to our side. This serves as our defensive mechanism as well, which proved very useful against similar "arm" machines.
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We decided to use kelvar strings to pull our arms in the end because the strength of many strands of kelvar tied together is very strong and meet our requirements. Also, steel cable, which at one point was considered by us, was too large in diameter and also not easy to tie together. Given the limited space available to us in the box, we decided to use the more flexible kelvar strings.
We believe that the main strength of our machine is the speed at which it is able to sweep balls over. Also, our arm is able to effectively block all attempts at putting balls to our side of the arena.
However, the main draw back is that the rack and pinion motor holder is designed to fit exactly into the arena, with about 1mm of free space left. If the arena slot is narrower than that, our machine is probably not able to execute the full swinging motion, and as a result, fail in its intended purpose.
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