We participated in this second edition of SteamOhmContest.

This is a competition organized by Mosa-rt, a school in Maaseik  Belgium. Students from the ages 10 – 18 can all participate in this event. You and your team can make a project in 1 of the 6 categories. This project will have to be presented at Mosa-rt for the finale.

Project 1 : Pathways

Our group was made up of 3 student (Antonius, Nathan and Lucas).  We decided we wanted to be nominated for the category ”Upcycling” and decided to use old stuff from the attic. Wood and plastic were our best option to get stability and also stay in our budget.

To present our project, the organizers of the event asked all the teams to make a poster about their projects, which we tried to make as detailed as possible.

Pictured here is the poster (in Dutch)

 

 

 

 

After our poster was completed we could start working on the project itself.

We centered our project around wheelchair accessible infrastructure which blends in with its environment.

After some prototyping we eventually landed on a staircase which could be transformed into a ramp at the press of a button, keeping in mind the theme of ‘upcycling’ the plan was to make it out of wood.

The staircase was to have see-through steps, for which we used acryllic glass. This was done not only to save on weight, but also to show the inner workings of the contraption. By using an arm attached to the steps and adding a servo motor, we kept operation simple.

Whilst at the event, showcasing our state-of-the-art device, we noticed the transformation process slowing down, aswell as the steps not reaching full height when ‘opened’ into its staircase configuration. Unfortunately by the time the jurors came by, operation of the staircase was almost non-existant, thus meaning we were not able to win any prizes.

After returning to school we analyzed what went wrong and found that the motor used was not able to handle long, heavy use like opening and closing a staircase. This meant that it burned up throughout the demonstrations early in the day.

We learn from the experience and move on, congratulating our other team who had a succesful run and ended up winning a prize.

See you next year!