Mission Possible/Hydraulics

Description

Common component of a hydraulic system

Hydraulics is the transmission of force via fluid pressure from one place to another. If two syringes are connected by a tube and are filled with a liquid, the position of one plunger affects that of the other and it is an example of hydraulics.

Closed System Hydraulics

Windshield Fluid Pump

This is basically what was used in Dark Sabre's 2005 MPC. The end results will probably look something like this:

As you can see, there is a pump, a small reservoir, a syringe, and a switch.

Build It Day 2009 Example

This is literally what you would be pulling out of your car if you grabbed the tube you pour your washer fluid down and pulled really hard. It comes with either one or two pumps, depending on whether the car had a rear window washer or just the front.	One of the pumps that was removed from the original resevouir, a syringe, and the tubing I had on-hand. When you get around to hooking the tubes up to the pump, run it in the same direction as it did in a car, as that is how it was designed to operate. In this case the inlet was the large diameter hole and the outlet was much smaller. On some pumps they will be the same size.	I forgot to bring any plastic resevouirs for this, but they gave us a free lunch with Sprite cans.
I would not recommend actually submerging the pump as I am/will be here. This one looked pretty well sealed, but that's not what it was deisgned for. Find a tube that you can run from the pump to the resevouir. Though I ran it with the inlet submerged, I didn't cover the contacts, which would be poor form.	The final product after its test run. You see it here hooked up to a 12V battery, but I tested it off of ~10V from AA's and it worked too, just a little slower. To reset it, you can either just push the syringe in with your hand or switch the polarity on the pump and run it in reverse. The system has enough power to push switches, knock objects down, or whatever is called for.

Double Ended Syringe

This is one of the really simple options and was used in a number of the top ten devices at the 2010 nationals. You simply connect two syringes together and the force applied to one plunger pushes the other out. It is less complex than using a pump, but it necessitates another mechanical step, which is more likely to be a point of failure, so test thoroughly.