The Build
The Extinguishers
Unusually for Scrapheap Challenge, the team and expert were in perfect agreement about what to build. A simple screw-type augur mounted on the back of a truck. An augur is basically an archimedes screw that funnels material along its length with a spiral action. The firemen planned to mount this in a rigid fashion on the back of their truck and simply reverse into the mound of soil for ultimate simplicity.
The team’s scavengers were on fire, as they quickly brought a truck back to the build bay, followed by a van engine to power their screw and plenty of steel for fabrication. This initial burst of activity made them the early favourite but their pace quickly slowed as they realised just how difficult it is to build the giant screw from scratch.
Another complication arose when their engine proved too bulky to mount on their truck roof as originally planned and they had more work to do in fabricating a custom frame to mount it on.
Expert Ken invented a new system of screw fabrication which saved the team a ton of time and with a late burst of energy the team were even able to test their augur. It all boded well for a successful muck moving test day.
The Beach Bums
In contrast to their opponents, the Beach Bums' scavengers took a more relaxed approach, much to the chagrin of their idle captain and expert. The team had quickly settled on expert Mark’s idea for a rotary bucket combined with a conveyor belt, but it left them with an epic scavenge to find all the suitable parts in time.
As usual, the scrap gods were smiling on the Bums; after a very slow start they found an ideal conveyor belt and a large diameter steel disc on which to mount their buckets. A handy (but immensely heavy) crane gearbox proved to have an ideal 50:1 reduction for spinning that big heavy disc.
Uncharacteristically, the Bums then fell on bad times and the afternoon passed with lots of jokes but not much work. A stern talking to from expert Mark got things back on track and the Bums managed to turn things around in time to get their machine together before the end of the 10 hours.
However, with a hastily constructed and untested machine going into the test day, the Bums needed all their good luck to move the Everest of earth in the morning.
