Concept Drawings - Gumdrop Garden

Pressurized Tank Solenoid+Gravity Solenoid+Pin Storyboard

Solenoid and Gravity

This is a fully electrically driven design. Using gravity, it attempts to simplify gumdrop and shaft geometry and reduce the number of components needed to achieve motion and locking. Let's take a more in-depth look at the parts of this concept drawing.

Here's a high level overview of the design. Again we have our housing with a shaft grid. Each shaft now contains a top lip with solenoid coils and each gumdrop has a bottom lip with a permanent magnet.

In its hidden state the gumdrop rests in its shaft, unperturbed by the rest of the world.

A current is applied in the coils of the shaft's top lip, drawing the permanent magnet in the gumdrop's bottom lip towards it.

The current is maintained and the magnetic attraction between the top and bottom lip bears the load of the gumdrop and jumping people. When it's time to disappear, the current is shut off and gravity pulls the gumdrop back into its shaft.

This design requires only a few features: two lips, solenoid coils, and permanent magnets!

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