Hear is an idea the teams could build a printing press. All through recent history there have been thousands of types of printing presses that just use ink and carved or metal letters. The challenge would be to build a printing press that would be both fast and accurate enough to print the wining stack of printed paper. The presses could be easily built; the teams of course would be supplied with the letters so they will not have to carve them. Also the message would be whatever the team wanted it to be and the pages would only have to be printed on one side.

I know this wouldn't be the most exiting of the challenges, done on TV or otherwise just subjected, but their are a whole range of ways to pull it off not to mention that it is somewhat educational. It is also it is not impossible to make a working press in 10 hours.

-- Andrew Churchill (gremlin_guy@hotmail.com), January 31, 2001

Answers

I like it! How about if they are 'tasked' with generating a playbill poster for "Junkyard Wars: the Play starring..." you get the idea. To make it interesting, add the need to put on at least one spot color. As far as whether it would be interesting or not... I would think that the printing contraption would be very cool (big turn screws, rotating drums, etc) to watch and to make it a bit more interesting in the end, maybe add the drama of plastering the resulting posters all over a pair of plywood walls (ala construction site walls with tens of duplicate posters pasted side-by-side). This would no doubt result in frenzied activity as the poor overworked 4 team members had to print one color, let it dry, print the spot color, let it dry, apply paste then plaster it on the wall. Sure sounds colorful to me!

BTW, doing a traditional press versus a crude offset printing press would satisfy the need for competing fundamental design solutions.

--fjc

-- Frank Conforti (frank.conforti@bentley.com), January 31, 2001.

This is a possibility, two colors or more aren't a major problem, They would just make it a little more interesting. Unlike screen printing, or simple letterpress, the additional colors aren't a problem for lithography.

JustJay

-- JustJay-Captain-Three Rusty Juveniles (justjay@neo.rr.com), January 31, 2001.

The plastering of the wall with Junkyard Wars posters , hot off the press makes the challenge fun to watch when the teams scramble. Bright colors, one color representing the team, makes it more visual. With out the color and the scramble it might be a little slow. Nice twist on the idea tho.

-- June Moxon/ Ken Beidleman/Art Attack (june-ken@humboldt1.com), January 31, 2001.

...and to _really_ make it interesting, the following week's challenge would be to develop a cleaning machine to remove all those darned posters off the junkyard walls! I see a mondo large steam cleaner versus a street cleaner on steroids in the works... Lemme at em!

--fjc

-- Frank Conforti (frank.conforti@bentley.com), January 31, 2001.

If this challenge works out to be filmed, the posters would become "Junkyard Wars Junkie" collector items, the beginning of the concession stand for JYW!

-- Waddy Thompson (cthomp3851@aol.com), February 01, 2001.