The objective of the PLTW Marble Sorter project was to apply POE engineering concepts to design and build an efficient VEX marble sorter. The marble sorter design was constrained to a maximum of four base plates and the sorter was required to sort a total of 50 equally sized marbles (aluminum, steel, glass, plastic, and wood) into 5 separately labeled containers within 60 seconds. 

 

The design my partner and I implemented used only one of the four base plates. We decided to build the marble sorted vertically instead of horizontally as most other teams did. The primary method used to sort the marbles was through light sensor technology. By determining the amount of light each marble material reflects, we could program a servo (holding four containers) to rotate accordingly. Prior to the light sensor phase of the sorter, steel marbles were separated from the original group through a magnetized plate. This design allowed us to sort all 50 marbles within the 60 second time constraint with only 4 marble errors. The marble sorter also scored well in terms of efficiency in respect to other designs. The design we employed was the only design to use one base plate as opposed to four base plate. In addition, our marble sorter performed the best, not only in terms of time constraints, but also in terms of marble sorting errors. 

 

Take a look at a prototype, test run of the marble sorter below