The Peg Board Machine

The Toy:

The Peg board machine is a toy for all ages. Its for those kids who are bored with their immovable marble track toys and have the imagination to build their own, they just need the parts.
The idea of the toy is a big pegboard and lots of movable pieces that can be configured an infinite ways to make a track for marbles to roll on.

Materials used:

• Wood: Used for make pieces of the track
• Cardboard: Used to make the peg board (off the shelf)
• Steel: Pegs used to fix pieces to the board
• Deposited Starch: To make the rapid prototype parts manufactured on the Z. Corp machine.

Process:

• We used 2x4s of wood to mark and cut out the pieces of wood that we would need. These pieces would form the basic track pieces for the marbles. To add a track to the pieces of wood we used an end mill bit on the mill to make a channel of .300" depth. We drilled 5/8" holes in the wooden pieces to make place for the pegs. This ensured that the marbles had a deep and smooth enough channel to roll through. We hand sanded the pieces to add a more polished look.
• The Rapid Prototyping parts (not fully manufactured) were printed on the Z Corp machine since they are too complex to model out of wood. Parts like the carousel wheel used to change the direction of the marble is done with this process. The final goal is to have either all the parts 3D printed or plastic molded.
• Pegs were cut out of a rod of steel.

Problems:

• We were faced early on with the challenge that we had to create a lot of parts to make the toy worked. So for purposes of cost saving we wouldnt be able to use rapid prototyping processes for all our parts and had to spend time working with wood.
• The Z Corp Machine broke down and prevented us from having parts ready on time
• Due to lack of printed parts we didn't have track that lined up very well and had to resort to allowing the marble to jump around