This year's Scrapheap Challenge will be an engineering challenge, but a very easy one for everyone to have a go at. The challenge is to build a clockwork powered vehicle which will be set off from a start point, must travel around a ‘bollard’ 500mm away, and finish as close as possible to a target point. The start and target points will be on the same straight line, an equal distance from the bollard. The diagram shows what this layout actually is, which is basically a course with a single obstacle to negotiate around. The ‘finish line’ with the target point will be a piece of wood along the line for the vehicle to hit, and a pointer on the vehicle will be where the closeness to the target will be measured from.
To make it easy to see how close the pointer gets to the target at first contact, I suggest the pointer should be a felt tip pen or an HB pencil set 10mm up and parallel to the floor.
The full set of rules are:
- The vehicle must be all Meccano other than the pointer which may be something else
- Any single Meccano clockwork motor of any size can be used
- The vehicle can have as many wheels of any size as you like, or no wheels at all!
- The entire machine must be able to fit into the confines of a 400mm diameter circle
- There must be a pointer on the vehicle – 10mm above the floor, the tip of which will align with the start point, and the tip will also be what you need to get closest to the target point
- All of the vehicle apart from the pointer must start behind the start line
- The bollard will be a single Meccano part 216 (2.5 x 1.25dia cylinder) stood upright and centred on the mark in the diagram
- The vehicle must not touch the bollard
- The vehicle can take any locus (path) to get around the far side of the bollard, e.g. a single curve, or a reversing steering mechanism, or any other idea you have
- The vehicle cannot be remotely controlled by the entrant
- Once set in motion, it cannot be interfered with by the entrant
- No other parts/deflectors/guides can be placed around the course for the vehicle to use
- Each entrant has one try, with the nearest to the target point winning
- The pointer must hit the wood it to be considered for measuring
- Each entry has only one attempt
- Only the first point of contact with the wood will be considered
- Nothing must damage the floor
- In the event of a draw, those contestants will get a second attempt – closest wins