Ball Throwing Machine

project finished

Today was a long day....We made a latch, put casters, fixed the arm and much more, but we finished out project!!! If we had more time we definitely could've made our project a lot better by adding things that would make it easier to use but more complicated to make such as using gears and ratchets. As freshman in the engineering field, this was an interesting experience. We got to work with eachother design and build something that could help make things easier for people just as engineers do. It was a good experience because we learned how to do things on our own, of course we could ask questions but it was our work. When this project was assigned we all panicked because none of us had any experience with tools and building. It was fun for us to use our creativity and build something. It was definitely an experience that helped us as beginners with engineering because we learned how to use tools and experimented with them.

experience 3

We finally made our throwing arm out of PVC pipes but we decided to make it a little bigger so we could get the arm to release at the right angle. Before we changed the size of our throwing device, we tied the bungie cord tight and attatched it to the pully so we could experiment and find the angle we should have our throwing device at. We found out that the way we had our arm, was releasing the ball to late so the ball was being thrown to the ground. We decided that our platform wasn't working for us so we took it off and made it bigger so we could see at what lengths our throwing device would be best at. We figured if our length was too long we could cut it down more and more but if we had it too short we couldn't make it any longer.

experience 2

Today we wanted to change our throwing machine from wood to PVC pipes but we didn't have the PVC pipes and many other little things such as bolts that we needed so today was our shopping day. We went to HomeDepot, HSC and Lowes and went through each aisle to see what we needed and to see what there was so that we could come up with ideas of how to latch or release the throwing mechanism. Going through each aisle took a lot of time so we didn't get to work on our project today but we did get the PVC pipes and we also bought some casters to put our throwing machine on so it could easily be moved.

experience 1

We had a meeting yesterday and decided we were going to build a catapult. We started building our design out of wood, but we are thinking that we want to make it out of PVC pipess so it will be ighter and easier to move. We have not agreed on how to latch or release the throwing arm and ball. We still need to go shopping for more supplies that we need for this project.

Progress Report 2

Our group has adopted a catapult design throwing arm. We originally had two inch pvc tubes for the throwing arm combined with bungy cords to provide the necessary tension to launch a tennis ball. The bungy cord provided more than enough force using a pully (we may replace the bungy cords with surgical tubing), we were able to lower the friction on the bungy cord and increase energy to throw the ball. Our design is aproximately two and a half feet tall and two feet wide. As of now the design is too heavy and the throwing arm is too long. In the future design, we plan to implement a shorter throwing arm. Additionally, we plan to implement a reloading mechanism and develop a hooking mechanism to latch the throwing arm. One last item we plan to implement is the ball release mechanism.
Items that we have not developed yet is the logic system with sensors and the recocking of the throwing arm.

Progress Report

We are going to upgrade a ball throwing machine from Toys R Us. We are going to put it on a platform, paint in, and connect a wireless button to it.