They created an elaborate 156-step hamburger-making machine, which seemed to be the star of the Saturday annual Rube Goldberg Machine Contest, a competition in which engineering students from across the country create devices performing simple tasks.

The $1000 victory was Purdue’s third such win in the past four years in the contest, known for rewarding machines that most effectively combine creativity with inefficiency and complexity.

“We put 4,000 to 5,000 man-hours into this machine since September, and all the hard work has been well worth it,” captain Drew Wischer, a senior in aviation technology from Cedarburg, Wis. said quoted by the Associated Press.

The machine successfully accomplished this year’s task to assembly a burger consisting of no less than one precooked meat patty, two vegetables and two condiments, sandwiched between two bun halves.

Each machine in the competition had to use at least 20 steps in making the hamburger. Purdue’s machine took 156 steps. Texas A&M finished second, while the University of Buffalo came in third.

The competition, sponsored by Phi Chapter of Theta Tau fraternity, included seven participants including Indiana’s Purdue University, Ferris State University in Michigan, Michigan Technological University, Penn State University Brandywine, the University of Texas at Austin, Texas A & M and the University of Buffalo.