Overview

The goal of this project was to build a color sorter that can sort balls into 4 separate colors. Inspiration for the ramp color sorter was drawn from magnetic marble toys. The ramp was set to a 5-degree angle to overcome the friction from the wood without causing the marbles to slip off the track. A servo was placed in the middle of the track to allow the color sensor time to scan each ball. Three variations of the box were created, with one to house a servo to only allow one ball to travel to the color sensor at a time, one to give the overall ramp additional space to line up the balls, and one to house a funnel to place the starting balls in. The boxes were originally designed to be modular, so more can easily be created to expand on the color sensor.

Challenges

• The main boxes were designed and built before the base, so the base had to be constructed considering the placement of each box in relation to each other

•  Timing the first servo proved to be difficult, as the balls would either travel to the sorter two at a time, which impacted calibration, or not have the speed to get past the servo.

•  The stepper motor did not have enough torque to move the slide to the right angle, so a new slide had to be constructed to minimize the weight on the motor.

• Due to the boxes not being fully locked into their locations in the base, motion from the servo motors would move the boxes, causing the ramp to become misaligned.