A question for Towers team B

[Scipp3r]

I am competeing tommorow for Towers and I am in Team B. The last few times I competed I did it fine, but I was wondering if there is a certain speed you should shovel sand into the bucket during the event? Hope you can answer before early tommorow morning. Thanks for reading.

[Balsa Man]

I am competeing tommorow for Towers and I am in Team B. The last few times I competed I did it fine, but I was wondering if there is a certain speed you should shovel sand into the bucket during the event? Hope you can answer before early tommorow morning. Thanks for reading.

The usual note, "read through first to see if your question has already been asked and answered." It has.
The less time the tower has to carry load, the better it will do, so you want it to go as fast as you can. With an autoloader (sand flows from container, you control the feed rate)- slowly for a bit to settle things, then ease it up to full blast. If you have to shovel in, its more important to not bump the bucket; as fast as you can without bumping; the closer to full load, the more important to get on with it. Many beginners think you need to distribute the sand to keep the bucket straight/level - like using a sheet of paper to direct flow from the scoop. That is a waste of time, and time is your enemy once load is building up. the bucket hangs from a single point; the force is straight down, regardless if the sand's stacked up on one side ant the bucket is tipped,
Good Luck

[dholdgreve]

I am competeing tommorow for Towers and I am in Team B. The last few times I competed I did it fine, but I was wondering if there is a certain speed you should shovel sand into the bucket during the event? Hope you can answer before early tommorow morning. Thanks for reading.

The usual note, "read through first to see if your question has already been asked and answered." It has.
The less time the tower has to carry load, the better it will do, so you want it to go as fast as you can. With an autoloader (sand flows from container, you control the feed rate)- slowly for a bit to settle things, then ease it up to full blast. If you have to shovel in, its more important to not bump the bucket; as fast as you can without bumping; the closer to full load, the more important to get on with it. Many beginners think you need to distribute the sand to keep the bucket straight/level - like using a sheet of paper to direct flow from the scoop. That is a waste of time, and time is your enemy once load is building up. the bucket hangs from a single point; the force is straight down, regardless if the sand's stacked up on one side ant the bucket is tipped,
Good Luck

I totally agree with Len... get it in there as quickly an smoothly as possible! I was running a competition a few weeks ago, using an automatic sand dispenser, and one team actually sat under the the table and moved the bucket side to side to place to get the sand evenly placed across the bucket! That is the WORST thing you can do! This turns a vertical load into a multi-directional nightmare, placing much heavier loads on each corner! One person should get the sand in the bucket as smoothly and quickly as possible, while the other should hold the bucket as still as possible and not allow it to sway at all. If the bucket tips a little to one side, that is fine, as Len pointed out, as long as there is just a single point of connection (i.e. the chain) it doesn't matter if all the sand is on one side of the bucket... what's it going to do? Pull harder on one side of the chain than the other? I don't think so!

Good Luck tomorrow!

[jma]

We went to the regional tournament last Saturday. The judge didn't allow any team to hold the bucket. 10 minutes ,starting from loading the loading block and chain, is a little short. After 5 minutes we still had more than 2/3 of the sand to load. The shovel was very small. Then we decided one of us would stay on one side of the bucket and the other person would stay on the oppisite side, and both would load in the sand as fast as we could. We got 46 seconds left.
Our score was 83, and we got a gold medal. We will compete at the state tournament in April . Our tower didn't break, and that was our 1st tower. I think we overbuilt it. We did build a 2nd tower with smaller chimney legs and lower density base legs. 1 leg of that chimney broke at 12.4 kg. We had to work on another building event so we didn't build another one since. We spent a lot of time reading through this forum and it all paid off. Thanks to everyone for sharing your experiences and knowlege. Special thanks to Balsa Man, who has been a great help.