Hey y’all! I’d like to share a project I put together in July with the help of Tarkin!
This year, I was invited to participate at a domino / chain reaction event known as Reactica in San Jose, California. This year, the theme was “think outside the box,” and our goal was to create a setup that mimicked an escape room. Each of the five sections would reveal a number, which would get entered into a giant combination lock leading to the grand finale.
About three days before I left Austin, we realized we didn’t really have any plans for how the combo lock would be built. I have been building Rube Goldberg Machines and uploading them to my YouTube channel for 11 years, but I had never built anything to the magnitude of what we were envisioning. With the help of the equipment at Asmbly, I chose to take a crack at it!
This project was quite ambitious, as I was up against a pretty limited schedule (I had only three days to complete the design work and get the parts cut before I had to leave Austin). Also, I somehow needed to fit everything through TSA, meaning the larger parts needed to be split into smaller pieces that I could assemble during build week. Even with these constraints, I’d say the project went pretty smoothly 
All of the pieces inside of my suitcase
Assembled wheels on mounts
Weight/pulley system pulls fishing line wrapped around wheels to rotate them
Release lever mechanisms and sequencing
Paint job
Finished appearance
If you are interested in a (very) detailed description of the design process, both before and during build week, you can find it on my website: https://carsonduffy.com/combo-lock
The full event topple (consisting of 4 machine sections and 50,000+ dominoes) can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyCzdbTEBnw
A detailed closeup of the combo lock itself, illustrating the different mechanisms in action, can be found on my channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrritMaZ9x8