Sometime Failure is Funny



Disolving Material Switch

 Today I decided to take a break from my combination lock to design an element that should be much easier.  Basically, the device "spits out" various objects combined with sound effects.  My original idea was to use a stack of blocks made out of the special disolving material (DM).  This stuff is cool in that it vaporizes when you activate it, usually with a magnetic switch (squares on the left in the picture).  I thought I would place an iron block on top of that stack, with a magnetic key attached to it.  The key would activate the magnetic switch which, in turn, would activate the block of disolving material just below it.  This would cause the iron block to drop onto the next block of DM which would trigger a magnetic switch to "spit out" an object (circles on the right in the picture), play a sound effect, and activate the block of DM just below it.  This cycle was supposed to happen 5 times.  Well, to paraphrase Thomas Edison; I didn't have a failure, I just figured out how not to accomplish this.  The DM blocks disolved so fast, my iron block pretty much just dropped straight to the bottom without any hesitation.  I got a good laught out of that and went back to the drawing board.  I ended up attaching a piston to the iron block with the key.  This piston slowly lowers the block, activating each switch with a slight delay in between each one.  Now to fine tune the "spitting" and sound effects and all will be good with this device.  Maybe I can get back to designing that combination lock later in the week.