The Tinkering School had a crazy idea that was difficult to implement. They were planning a large team-building event for hundreds of Salesforce executives, and wanted participants to build large Chain Reactions (like Rube Goldberg machines) using metal balls and hundreds of towers constructed from simple items and tape.

The balls would need to navigate from the top of a tower to its bottom. The hundreds of towers would be built by the Salesforce participants. When the ball reached the bottom of one tower, it would release the ball located at the top of the next tower.

Confused? Watch the videos and it will all be clear.

They had everything they needed for this awesome event, except one thing they could not figure out. How do you get the ball at the top of tower A to be released when the ball on tower B gets to the bottom?

That’s where we came in. We designed a reliable, modular, inexpensive set of ball catch-and-release mechanisms. It took a few rounds of rapid prototyping to get the final design. Then we went into rapid production and produced hundreds of these custom mechanisms.

You can see the results in the video. The towers are awesome and the catch-and-releases work like a charm.