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[4533josh]

Share your mechanisms of doom!
I recently made my first (and really simple) death machine, and the test firing barred access to my fortress and they all starved to death/got killed lava. FUN!!!
I fully expect and know that 99% of what is posted will be far better than the simple obsidian floodgate I made...
Looking forward to seeing everything
Post images please!
 

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[Urist McGyver]

I'm at work hardly working, so all I can give you is the memory of my first Pit'o'Doom.

Such love was it that I gave it that I actually upraded it. First just plain old 50-Z Pit, then spikes at the end, then expanding the bottom to 5x5 with spikes all over, then changing the traps into magma-proof serrated disks and, finally, flooding the room with magma periodically.

The fun we had...

[Jimmy T. Malice]

The closest I've got to a death machine is a series of non-functioning weapon traps in my fortress entrance. My dwarves refuse to load them with menacing spikes even though I've made dozens. Apart from that I only use mechanisms for the drawbridge that seals off my fortress entrance, since I haven't worked out how to make anything overcomplicated and useless (i.e. dorfy) enough.

[ledgekindred]

I built a goblin abattoir once, mainly to see if it would work.  It was very complicated and I don't have pics but I'll try to explain.

I had two entrances into the fort.  One main entrance that could be sealed off with a drawbridge with a moat in front.  The other led through the abattoir.  I used hatches and pressure plates to make it a one-way entrance.  (See the goblin grinder: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=62798.0)  Then I added some spike traps and drawbridges that opened above a long fall with pointy spikes underneath to prevent the hatches/mechanisms from being wrecked by building destroyers.  After the one-way entrance was a long, winding hallway leading into the abattoir proper.  This was designed so that the entire siege would have a chance to enter before hitting the traps and panicking the rest of the siege.  The abattoir itself was nothing more than a large room filled wall-to-wall with weapon and cage traps.

A nice thing about gobbo sieges is that once enough of them are killed, the rest panic and try to bug out.  After enough gobbos got trapped/ground into chunks, the abattoir would be full of panicking gobbos.  That's when I'd open the side door and the military went in to mop up.  The gobbos are too panicked to fight back, but still armored, making it some slight challenge for the military to kill them, getting a leetle bit more xp in fighting skills than they would against stripped opponents.  Very quickly they became legendary.  Once everything was dead, the civvies went in to collect the goblinite.

Once a siege entered, nothing ever escaped.

I eventually stopped building goblin grinder-style abattoirs because it was just too easy. 

[Vharuck]

I tried to build an automatic goblin dropper once.  The fort was on a volcano, and across a shallow valley was another hill which reached the map edge.  So I sealed off the volcano's slopes and built a draw bridge to the other hill as an entrance.  Then I flanked the main drawbridge with two narrower retracting bridges.  When a siege came, I raised the middle bridge and lowered one of the side bridges.  At the end of each side bridge was a pressure plate that was rigged to both of the side bridges.  I had hoped that a goblin stepping on it would cause the system to drop his buddies (it did) and extend the other bridge to repeat the process (it did not).  I guess it was because of the delayed response of pressure plates to bridges allowing multiple triggerings before the first completes its goal.

[Aspgren]

I usually don't make death machines, I prefer to rely on dwarven muscle and dwarven steel to fend off invaders.

 I do build things to punish my dwarves though. Dwarven law might not have anything to say about Urist McBroker deciding not to work ... but I sure have something to say about it! and I say Urist McBroker goes into the spear room! He will recieve X stabbings before he is allowed to come out. With X depending on my mood.

 Other than that I come up with constructions like a miasma chamber, which is basically two sealed-off rooms connected by a fortification or grate. Room 1 holds the prisoner and room 2 holds food. The food will rot and spread miasma through both the rooms.
 The chamber will also contain a well so that Urist McCriminal has the ability to drink - and will end up starving to death. All the while choking on miasma from the constantly-refilled rot room ... and if he can't take it he is welcome to kill himself by jumping into the well.