Second in the series of brick sorters is this machine, which sorts black, grey and white bricks and seperates big from small bricks. Bricks are thrown into the brick store, go down to the conveyor belt one by one, and are put into one out of six bins on a rotating platform.
Each time I create a brick sorter, I try to tackle at least one additional design challenge. In this case, I wanted to further expand on #1 by enabling sorter #2 to also sort bricks by size. Also, I tried to add a mechanism that would automatically align bricks before they get inserted into the brick chute. The color and size sorting worked quite reliable, but the brick alignment wasn’t a great success. The robot was programmed in the original RIS 2.0 software, and it was designed in December 2006.
Other brick sorters in this series:
Every time I created a new brick sorter, I tried to tackle a new design challenge. This improvement would make the robot more functional, more reliable, or both. Follow the links below, and read the pages in order to learn about my findings in the design process.
- Brick sorter #1: July 2006 (original design; 3 colors, 1 size)
- Brick sorter #2: December 2006 (3 colors, 2 sizes)
- Brick sorter 8527 (#3): March 2007 (NXT 1.0 only, 3 colors, 1 size)
- Brick sorter #4: July 2007 (5 colors, 2 size)
- Brick sorter #5: May 2008 (Custom color sensor, 6 colors, 1 size)
- Hybrid Brick Sorter (#6): June 2009 (NXT 2.0 Only, up to 6 colors, 1 size)
